Cars fulfill a very self-indulgent narrative. ‘I get to decide where and when I travel’, makes people feel “free” snd “important” even when millions of them are silently coming to the same decisions-- like going downtown at 09:00 on weekdsys-- that allow huge efficiency plays.
Notice how many ads feature fantasies of open roads and trips to faraway attractions, not the real world of “I need to sit in rush hour traffic from 6:30 on to get to the Work Factory”
Maybe public transit needs to focus its message on the freedom from drudgery it offers-- you don’t have to be staring at the driver in front of you, scanning the traffic reports
Exactly! This is why I love micromobility and quality public transit so much. With micromobility like electric scooters or bikes, I can zip past traffic in the protected cycle lanes in my city. With the frequent metro service in my city, I know I can show up to the metro station at basically any time and know it’ll be a max 5-minute wait for the next train. And when I’m on the train, I can just chill and scroll on my phone or read a book instead of stressing about traffic. The freedom to think about something that isn’t traffic.
Unfortunately as it stands in some places the infrastructure is awful. Take England for example; catching a train to London takes about 20 minutes for me, however there are often 10-15 minute delays that you now have to start accounting for, you also have to sit in a cabin with someone blaring their music that isn’t to your taste. Hopefully you’re not in a cabin with a toilet, because it’s going to stink of shit.
Now the return journey, fingers crossed it’s not cancelled otherwise you have another 40 minute wait for the next train! Last train home is a real anxiety inducing experience, will you be getting that train home or has it been cancelled? This is unfortunately all too common here. Sadly because public transport is for profit rather than a necessary service we have someone trying to do the bare minimum to make that money, and then pay the bare minimum to their staff who don’t give a shit. It all begins to unravel and people just have a better experience sat in that morning traffic which is a more consistent and pleasant experience to the public transport.
The problem is once they started to turn public transport into for profit, there is little way to turn back. They invite private companies to build the network, do the operation, now how can they go back to be non profit to be a public service to the people ? Unless they do subsidise fares which will look like they are siphoning money from government to private companies. It’s a no winner situation. If the government wants to nationalise the public transport they will have to spend a significant amount of money to buy them off , which may or may not be affordable to them.
I’d say it is more about
convinceconvenience. You decide when you leave and you leave from your door. You don’t risk being late to work because you missed the train by 1 minute (baring queues, but you get the point).This can also be achieved by high frequency transit.
Yeah, if the train comes every five minutes, that’s going to be way more consistent than traffic over time.
Every five minutes is not enough, every minute is definitely needed for rush hour. Thankfully, I live in London where tube trains come every minute, yey!
Really depends where you live. In my town I also decide when I leave, and I don’t risk being late because I missed the train by one minute. I’ll just take the next one. More risk of being late because of car traffic.
The problem when people compare cars to public transport is that they compare the current state of public transport in their area. We need to compare what would happen if we were spending as much billions as we do on cars.
If I’m doing a short trip locally in the city, I get that convenience out of my bike. There are times I would have taken a taxi somewhere, but when the app told me how long it would take for my driver to arrive, I just end up cycling there (often rolling past some long lanes of traffic in the process). That process can be even better if a city is built with safe biking paths.
Unfortunately that’s super weather dependent and seasonal. Plus, some of us would be a sweaty mess by the time we biked to where we needed to go.
Bikes don’t have to be seasonal. Some Nordic countries have well maintained and plowed biking networks and they see significant use throughout the winter.
I get heat warnings every other day lately, and unless it’s the rare cloudy day my UV index is at the top of the scale. I don’t worry about snow here, I worry about heat and sun. I don’t see a good solution for that unless you want to build covered bike routes with ventilation fans all through the metroplex?
That’s an unfortunate aspect of global warming I don’t see talked about a lot, as more places approach wet bulb, any kind of physical activity outdoor will become deadly.
For me it’s moreso the cold. But the act of biking should warm you up anyway. I think it really depends. The pathways are definitely clear, the question is if the weather would make someone drive vs bike.
I would’ve expected winter time to invalidate options of bike transport, but in city areas where the snow doesn’t stay down, it doesn’t end up happening as much. You’d of course want to bundle up for the weather, but then it’s not so bad. NJB has even talked about how there are some areas of the world that have permafrost under them, and they still prefer bikes. Rain, in my experience, is just miserable either way, so I’d usually prefer the flexibility to go when a downpour has halted rather than keeping a dedicated roof-mobile around to force my way through. That said, buses have been great for rain too, so again, flexibility.
The sweaty mess remark matches with my experience when I was unused to cycling, and when going uphill. The former becomes less true after even just a week or two of experience on the pedals; I didn’t even need a ton of acclimation after recovering from a leg injury. The latter may be a symptom of poorer city planning - which prefers bikes treading flatlands for long distances. It shouldn’t end up being tiring when you’re basically moving your legs in a walking motion at a low pace (traveling for chores is naturally going to be very different from the Tour de France).
Hang on, the sweating goes down with more experience? I was under the assumption it’d just stay that way.
What it really comes down to for biking in the winter is how cold it is vs how much biking itself warms you up. I think most of the time it’s probably fine, but there are definitely conditions where it’d be unsafe but a car wouldn’t be.
What bothers me is that climate change is making those conditions more frequent, but biking is a good solution to combat emissions too.
At my old job we had showers there, so in the morning I’d just grab a quick bite and pedal off with my change of clothes in my backpack, and shower when I got there.
I still would love to see a YouTube channel that takes the audio of car ads, and re-edits it with shots of the car in question just sitting in traffic.
Not to mention that well built mass transit achieves the same level of freedom. You’ll wait 5 minutes for the train and away you go.
I dunno what country you are from, but here in the US of A, the monopolies that own all the train infrastructure make sure to keep trains as public transportation as cost prohibitive as possible.
This always reminds me of the movie, Roger Rabbit. I was a kid and the movie taught me a much deeper/darker lesson than it was meant to teach me at that age. It still irks me.
I used to watch roger rabbit as a kid for other reasons
I think I know exactly what you mean and I was in 3rd grade.
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Spoiler alert- the villain buys the transit system and shuts it down, basically steals a town it served, and plans to demolish the town so he can build a freeway over it and profit.
In case you need a hint, it was Doom’s plan.
Big Auto has been destroying any idea of high speed rails for decades. Our trains are complete trash because of car lobbyists.
Muskrat is one of the biggest ones to blame.
And they expand the roads and freeways to have rails literally no place to go
Denver has decent rail, but I have to walk/bike across this insane hellscape of cars trying to kill me for 1 1/2 miles to get to the station
Because as much as trains and buses are great for everyday commuter movement (and having amenities within walking distance is key as well), there’s two issues:
- Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done. Ripping up concrete, tearing down existing business and homes to increase densification, that’s a huge undertaking.
- Trains never replaced the horse drawn carriage. You can never fully eliminate the need for cars because sometimes you need to move something big like a couch. Even if there’s less cars on the road, it’ll never be 0, as this also includes things like ambulances, and fire trucks that can’t rely on schedules.
Changing the infrastructure and zoning of an existing city is much easier said than done.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
Including destroying neighborhood-after-neighborhood with highway overpasses.
It in that case the people with power wanted the change. They could profit from it, so it came easily.
Once those same people can make money by densifying urban areas into rental hellscapes and monopolizing public transit, you’ll have that. And it will suck.
Literally destroying buildings to build surface level parking.
That’s what rentals are for. Yeah, there’s always going to be a need for low volume cargo transport and emergency response, but ultimately building cities so 90% of trips can be easily and comfortably accomplished via mass transit should be the goal. Nobody is suggesting transit can replace all cars.
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Yes. If we had infinite money, infinite time, and the ability to put people into stasis while we tear up entire cities to retrofit them for a train system… that still wouldn’t solve the problem.
Cars haven’t existed forever and we managed to build places around them. There’s no reason we can’t start building everything new around other modes of transport.
If you live in a city, you are done. If you live on the outskirts of a city?..
I live in Switzerland, and none of the problems you mention in the next few paragraphs exist here. I mean frequency of public transport isn’t as good out of the cities, but I can get a bus or train to pretty much anywhere a car can get to, and some places they can’t. The buses are nice and work well, they have priority in the city so they don’t get stuck in traffic. I can get train, tram, bus, or bike to the airport no problem and if I need something bigger than I can carry I’ll just get it delivered. Yes Switzerland is rich but there’s a lot of money to be saved if it wasn’t being spent on cars, car infrastructure, and all of the externalities of driving. It’s also small, but our trains don’t go particularly quickly.
Even then, the vast majority of people in developed countries (and the majority worldwide) live in urban areas. If the people living in podunk towns need to drive, power to them. Focusing on urban areas will have a bigger impact.
But unless you are rich enough to live in the city center, you are still going to deal with a lot of headaches.
And the alternative is being rich enough to afford a house in the suburbs AND a car for every member of the family? Walkable doesn’t have to mean the city centre, and it’s much easier to achieve if you don’t have to kowtow to a bunch of suburbanites who want to drive their SUVs through your neighbourhood.
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First: Your baseline is Switzerland? The 6th highest GDP per Capita (how the hell is Ireland 5th?!?!?!) which ranks 132nd for area.
Please read my entire comment, I addressed this already.
Again, if you live in Tokyo or even freaking New York City (arguably all of New York+New Jersey but upstate NY is REAL republican), you are more or less good. You might be a bit inconvenienced if you don’t live near a rail station, but you’ll probably be looking at a 20-30 minute pre-commute.
The vast majority of people in developed countries live in urban areas, so for the vast majority of people that drive, this isn’t an issue. It is the rich suburbanites who are driving into cities.
Actual poor people are the ones who benefit the most from better infrastructure. Public transport is a lifeline for the homeless, and access to it is the biggest factor in whether they will be able to escape homelessness. Owning a car is really expensive, and The burdens of vehicle dependency fall disproportionately on marginalized people, especially those who are low-income and those who are Black.
Yes. If we had infinite money, infinite time, and the ability to put people into stasis while we tear up entire cities to retrofit them for a train system… that still wouldn’t solve the problem.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
EDIT: lol so the !fuckcars on lemmy.world is just pro car drama addicts, got it.
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We did it over multiple centuries
My brother in Christ we haven’t BEEN HERE for multiple centuries. Fun watching people give zero fucks that their defense of the status quo doesn’t make a damn lick of sense or even adhere to basic knowledge of reality.
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OOOOHHHHHHHHH You’re comparing apples to turnpikes and claiming it a win. Gotcha. Have fun mate.
Well said.
More headaches than wet bulb temperature?
Yes, bc no headache when you’re dead.
I was thinking as your brain fries it might hurt, but you’re right! It won’t hurt for long.
The image in the post is of a yogi of some sort stating that electric cars are here to save the car industry first, and my impression of it is that it’s suggesting that exploring the idea of electric cars is unwise.
And hell yeah, efficient transit and walkable cities are the goal. But while we’re working on that goal, we should also focus on electrifying cars! Tackle the crisis in multiple ways. Because there’s no way we’re gonna stop using cars overnight, and if we can make cars more environmentally friendly while we taper off of them, that’s a win.
If a solution involves lining a billionaire’s pockets, he’s unlikely to offer you an alternative.
Electric cars are palatable for most of us because it just involves a straight swap. No lifestyle changes needed. It’s a much easier sell than lugging all your shopping home on the bus.
Actually most cities had rail laid out and working commuter trains. The car manufacturers bought them up and purposely ran them into the ground to increase car sales. (Think Twitter) they were run like that.
Some cities, yes. LA is an example, right? And how they wrecked the street cars.
But not my city. Calgary was built as a stop on the Trans Canadian Railway, and that still exists, and there’s an (okayish) light rail train system here that’s slowly been built over the years and not torn down. Fully wind powered, too! Edit: our public transit kinda sucks though, I’m not saying we’re great. My commute to the office would be over an hour by transit and twenty minutes by car, I’m lucky I work remote.
A majority of North American cities that have grown within the last hundred years (coinciding with cars) were built from the ground up with cars in mind as the primary form of commute.
But not my city. Calgary was built as a stop on the Trans Canadian Railway
Calgary had a pretty extensive Streetcar network around downtown once upon a time.
https://saadiqm.com/2019/04/13/calgary-historic-streetcar-map.html
Hey neat!
Just goes to show how history gets erased. Hopefully the green line gets built and we’ll have even some of this coverage back.
Yeah, all of those things weren’t problems at the dawn of the steam engine. Those are all problems brought on by the automobile and oil companies designing cities in the 40s.
Lots of places can’t support trains either. Kelowna area would not work well because of altitude changes and lakes.
Trains only run on a specified track and there isn’t one near me. A car isn’t bound by a track and can go anywhere.
and there isn’t one near me.
That’s exactly the problem that this community wants to fix.
But that’s a certain level of naivete. I’ve lived in Europe and in the Western US, and for people who have lived in urban or suburban situations their whole lives, they simply can’t comprehend the vast tracts of land that exist in most of the US. Public transport isn’t viable when your nearest neighbor is at least five acres away.
Well yes, if you live in the middle of nowhere with literally no one else nearby, then public transport obviously doesn’t make sense. But that’s not where most people live.
A large part of the population in the US doesn’t have access to public transport not because it wouldn’t be viable, but because car-centric infrastructure was built instead. And often better designed cities were bulldozed to make room for it.
I was also going to recommend the Not Just Bikes video @Katana314@lemmy.world linked, definitely check it out!
True, but a lot of US real estate, even in big cities, started out agricultural. Those underpinnings are still affecting them today, given that they are less than 300 years old. They just don’t have the history of being piled on top of each other that Europe has. The original American inhabitants didn’t have the infrastructure Europe has had since the Romans, even if their population HAD been so concentrated.
The U.S population density is less than half that of Europe, even today.
Please. I have gone to Italy and seen far vaster landscapes in the mountainous areas than I’ve ever been cognizant of in the United States. And yes, I saw these locations from the window of a bus taking the highway system. The key thing is, people are not going to those far-out locations frequently. Actual transit problem-solving relates to the broad majority of the use cases people have, not about abstractly going to a pin thrown on a map.
You can’t put railways everywhere.
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Trains could have intercity connections. Walk/bus to the train, ride the train, walk/bus to your destination.
I have metro+train and it already wears me out so much that alI arrive at the office tired. I can’t imagine how I would survive through 3 different transit options twice a day
I do the same and if anything, it just helps me wake up or wind down after a long day. Out of pure curiosity, how does it wear you out?
I don’t know, I could not even imagine the transit switch to be not overwhelming, it’s just way too many changes for me in a short span of time, like too many tasks. go down, wait for metro, try to not miss the stop, get up on escalator, go to platform, wait there, it’s just sucking out energy out of me, if I spent all that time just sitting on the train yes I unwind and I love it but dragging my laptop around and standing and waiting and having to concentrate instead of getting into the flow is disruptive for me. Plus I feel like underground is super dark and dirty and on the bus I get nauseous from so many braking and stopping and all the vibrating from the road
I’m sure you’re aware part of that anxiety can come from the unfamiliarity. I’m surprised it doesn’t end up being compared to the stress of merging from an on-ramp in a car, or watching crosswalks for pedestrians, or even just backing out of a driveway in some people’s cases.
100% anxiety from unfamiliarity. My last job had me flying over the US (terrible but it was for a renewable energy company and I was part of the Ops team). The first trip, I missed my flight, on which was my overnight bag.
But from that first flight, I knew exactly what to do, where to go, and when to do it.
If people take time to learn these systems over time, then these fears go away. Just takes courage to learn something new
Sure buddy, spend a few hours hopping public transport each day is so much fun.
Cars are superior in every single way, it’s paupers that cry out of jealousy we’re seeing here.
They know cars aren’t the problem, there are industries out there that spew out the equivalent of millions of cars but they don’t bitch about that.
hmmm, do I want to sit in a train, flip my laptop open and do some work, then walk through a park to the office for today… Or do I want to sit in traffic and do nothing…
Tough choice there
no, I absolutely do not want to work on my way to work
Work time starts when I open the laptop. I’m not volunteering that time, since i’m not completely insane. It makes a huge difference whether my workday starts in the office, or in the train.
unfortunately, where I work, worktime starts when I scan my keycard at the front door
Yeah, that’s not really an option then.
You’re right. It’s been raining all day today with a forecast of thunderstorms, I absolutely want to sit in a warm, dry box and not walk through the park :p
I’m gonna be real, I’d 100% rather sit in traffic. It’s somewhat relaxing to me.
I hate this trend that we need to be working all the time, even during our commute.
To each their own. I prefer 2 hours of working in the train and 6 in the office to traveling for 2 hours and working 8 hours in the office
To each their own. I prefer 2 hours of working in the train and 6 in the office to traveling for 2 hours and working 8 hours in the office
it’s paupers that cry out of jealousy we’re seeing here.
Found Andrew Tate’s account
Ugh, vegans.
That’s rude
Well trains can transport alot more people at once
Those industries don’t pump out their emissions in my city for me to breathe in, nor do they threaten to maim or kill me on a regular basis.
Thats not really true and you know it. Cars are like trains, limited mostly to paved roads that need to by built.
Are you seriously trying to tell OP that he’s lying about not living near a train? Or are you trying to say that the part about them running on a fixed track isn’t true? Either way, this is a really dumb take.
Also, you clearly haven’t been to rural areas, where dirt and gravel roads are common. Cars handle those just fine.
But those roads are far more numerous and further reaching than train tracks. Trains go from a to b. Cars can go which ever route you want. And you don’t build train tracks around a house.
Thats not true also. Rails have junctions that alow switching tracks and work like a normal road. The reason theres more roads is irelevante as it depends on investment. Some places invested more into roads and others did in rail. Check out old rail maps on the US
It is, don’t be such a little bitch about it.
Nope.
can go anywhere
As long as there’s road, no serious traffic, and fuel stations along with rest stops.
which is practically everywhere
You must be new at this
You don’t need a road.
This is your brain or advertisements :)
In reality:
I would just settle for sidewalks, where I live in the USA it’s just streets with no sidewalks everywhere. I used to live one mile from where I worked and I could barely even bike there because of crazy car drivers and nowhere to go if someone wasn’t paying attention. Rural America is going to be car dependent for a long, long time.
Cities in America too. I’m currently in Charlotte, NC and the amount of times that the sidewalk just ends is a little bit insane.
My daughter can’t walk the 1/4 mile to school because it’s on a major road with no sidewalk. So we drive her, every day. It’s bad for the environment and bad for her health.
I love trains
Man, I went to England and we took trains (or a bus) everywhere and it was super convenient (and comfortable!).
Thank you for your service.
You ever try taking your new mattress and bed frame on a train?
In Germany electric trains are standard for local public transportation.
Not everywhere. There are still enough lines that aren’t electrified so diesel locomotives have to be used.
That’s regional public transport, not local. I dare you to show me a city with diesel subway trains.
That is as local as it gets around here. We don’t have subways or street cars, it’s either busses (diesel) or train (motor coach actually) for even single digit km distances.
But yeah, it is real rail, not some separate local network.
But they are usually low frequency lines or in remote ish areas.
Uh, appparently only 61% of German train lines are electrified. I know of at least 2 heavily used lines that aren’t (so far). One is the connection Basel towards Bodensee, the Hochrheinbahn. Another is Ringzug.
The Bodensee one is getting electrified soon!
Website in german https://www.die-bodenseeguertelbahn.de/
Huh interesting, didn’t think it was that little. Thanks!
People here are saying a lot that cars are convenient because there’s more roads… like… let public transport run on those roads? People seem to literally be unable to realize that things are the way they are now solely because you refuse to believe they can be in any other way and don’t solve problems because “it’s not practical”. Short termed thinking runs too much
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Public transport do run on the roads, too. It’s not “private car only”.
never said it’s private car only, but i did use wrong wording, sorry. what i meant was, those are the same roads public transport runs on, so the “cars can go anywhere” point kinda falls unless we’re talking offroading. mildly inconveniencing, but that’s just a tradeoff, it’s the entire point of fuckcars
The problem with public transport is that it only goes on pre-planned routes. If you want to go elsewhere, you can’t without a car. And replacing all nature with rails and asphalt is a very bad idea.
you don’t need to replace anything, the roads are already there. and if you wanna go somewhere super specific, just walk, keep in mind that if transport is more invested into, it will barely be different from car travel. the mild convenience created by cars isn’t worth the clutter that 10 times the volume of automobiles will create. also parking is already a problem now.
The problem isn’t the roads, but needing to create a route that touches every single road. Public transportation can’t really do customization, it’s a one size fits all deal.
My city has a door-2-door system of minibuses that are a bit like the missing link between taxis and buses. They pick you up from wherever you are and take you to wherever you’re going, they just pick up other people on the way too. It’s generally marketed towards the disabled/elderly, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be scaled up and be marketed as either a bus+ or a taxi lite.
This is actually the first I’ve heard of this, and it’s actually the perfect solution. If 1/3 of the fleet is dedicated to first come, first serve transportation, it helps a ton with what’s otherwise the use case for cars.
Taxis exist.
A quick search suggests that here in the UK the average driver is spending up to £200 per month on their car (excluding any financing to pay for it in the first place). That much money would easily cover a monthly travel pass in most cities I’ve lived in, with plenty left over to pay for taxi rides when you need the convenience of door-to-door travel at a time that suits you.
I live in London zone 5, travelling to Zone 1 will cost me £267.30 monthly. One of my colleagues lives in Petersfield. His monthly ticket would be £613.70. You don’t know much about train fares in the UK, do you? If you live in Scotland and need to travel to London, it is always cheaper to bloody fly! Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a car for one trip and then just dump it, or, even better, sell it and recoup your costs!
there’s more roads
Which, by the way, would not be there like without a government making it so. And if those governments went “nah” to the idea of a stroad and any highway expansion beyond 6 lanes, and threw it all into railways in the '70s, the USA may have had a bullet train network today that’d make Germany jealous.
It’s the path of least resistance. If public transport was more effiencent and faster, people would opt for that.
But then you’re also dealing with the weather, or some people like the privacy or they enjoy driving their own car. Or not having to worry about time tables and waiting.
All these factor in, and that’s why many prefer cars.
and that’s what I’m talking about, selfishness and short termed thinking
Because cars aren’t stuck to tracks.
since wen this sub is full of carbrain? like bruh.
I have an electric car because I refuse to pay any more money to fossil fuel companies but still need to drive. I use public transport where possible, but many trips just aren’t viable.
It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the nearest shopping centre, but 2 hours to get there by public transport, or 5 minutes by car.
As an average citizen, I don’t have the means to build or fund new railway lines. I am, however, lucky enough to be able to refuse to drive fossil fueled vehicles and still survive.
Electric cars don’t solve a lot of the root problems of cars. They still require massive amounts of energy to move thousands of pounds of steel. They also still rely on sprawling roads and parking lots.
Electric motors are between 95 and 98% efficient, while ICEs are in the 80’s on a good day.
You are aware that electric trains also use electric motors, just like electric cars do, right? And you are aware that electric cars rely on an electric battery while electric trains rely primarily on overhead electric power lines, are you?
That means cars require one extra component and an extra conversation of energy which trains don’t need. Every conversation of energy reduces efficiency of the final outcome. The more conversations, the less efficiency.
Trains use: power lines -> electric motor
Cars use: power lines -> electric battery -> electric motorFurthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
That means cars require one extra component and an extra conversation of energy which trains don’t need.
Well, tbf, both trains and cars require converters (i.e. inverters like variable frequency drives or VFDs; or rectifiers) to match power between the local electric supply and traction motors, in the case of trains, or between the battery and traction motors, in the case of cars.
You need to be able to ramp up or down voltage or current (or both) depending on the drawing load that the motor sees at each and every moment of a trip (cars and trains). Then there is the possibility of your train jumping between different electric systems along its route, and so you need to have a way to accommodate those difference if you want to serve the most amount of passengers.
There are Battery Electric Multiple Units (BEMUs), too, out in the wild today that incorporate batteries in addition to electric service on trains (or just batteries alone), mostly in Japan and some in Europe. These are in the minority though compared to electric-supplied units.
Interestingly, there are some projects, most notably in Germany, where overhead lines are being introduced to trucks, fuzzying the differences in transportation modes even more.
I still get your point about the conversions, though. Batteries don’t have 100% Coulombic/Faraday efficiencies, meaning that they don’t charge up from 0-100% every charge cycle: you might start at 0-100%, but the next charge cycle might be 0-99.9999%, then 0-99.99%, then 0-99%, etc. This efficiency loss isn’t as great as the other losses you might find in the converters previously mentioned, or other resistive losses such as via Eddy currents in the motors/axles, demagnetization of the motors, etc.
Trains use: power lines -> electric motor Cars use: power lines -> electric battery -> electric motor
A better description of these processes would be:
Non-BEMU Trains: power lines -> converter -> electric motor (acceleration)
Non-BEMU Trains: electric motor -> converter -> power lines (deceleration)
Cars/BEMUs: power lines -> converter -> [battery -> converter -> electric motor] (charging [acceleration])
Cars/BEMUs: [electric motor -> converter -> battery] -> converter -> power lines ([deceleration] discharging)
Furthermore, bigger machines can be built to be more efficient than smaller ones. So bigger motors can use (electric) fuel more efficiently than smaller motors.
Totally. And trains that add batteries onboard can reduce the advantage that non-battery EMUs have, moreso resembling locomotives with big diesel engines and fuel tanks. I still find BEMUs better though because you can run the trains as married units, just like EMUs (and I suppose DMUs), but batteries can also be distributed along the rolling stock to allow for greater weight balancing. Idk if the major manufacturers like Siemens or General Electric have plans to design systems this way, but greater adoption may lead to more varied designs.
Hope this helps the discussion!
Well, tbf, both trains and cars require converters
Totally! My idea was that -> arrows represent the converters and to put it simply more arrows = more efficiency loss. But right, since power can also be injected back into the network, which is a good thing, there could be <-> arrows, or maybe <=> to better hightlight the bi-directionality:
power lines <=> electric motor
Since you mentioned putting power back into the grid:
I heard another potential use for car batteries would be using them to balance out local power fluctuations in the grid to make it more stable. Since cars stand still most of their life anyway, they might as well be connected to the grid whenever they’re parked. Not as a big energy reserve, since that wouldn’t be very efficient and capacity would be too low, but just to keep things more balanced which is a healthy thing for the power network. I suppose that also applies for train batteries.
Nissan has already started rolling out Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) or Vehicle-to-X (V2X) chargers for its offering of vehicles since 2022, so it’s already happening.
Chris Nelder, who runs the Energy Transition Show podcast and who is a member of the Rocky Mountain Institute, published a paper even as far back as 2016 arguing how the potential for the US consumer rolling stock of BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles; grid + batteries only) and PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles; grid + batteries + gas) offering Demand Response services to utilities is enormous.
I’m not sure about the V2G compatibility of BEMUs feeding energy back to the grid to serve Demand Response is where the industry is going currently, instead favoring the implementation of overhead line islands as compared to extensive grid rollouts, but that reality is 100% feasible. The island approach I believe is also what Siemens is aiming for with the overhead-fed trucking solution I shared earlier.
Still exciting nonetheless!!!
Not to say trains are not more efficient than cars, because they are for a myriad of reasons. But electric motors scale relatively linear to my extent of knowledge, so usually it just ends up being that trains use many motors instead of one big motor.
Thanks for the info, I didn’t know how exactly this works, but I was aware that this factor is different for each device.
Thinking about it I guess that explains why small electric motor powered devices exist often while small combustion powered devices are rare? The only items I can come up with are forestry/gardening devices, tools for cooking and I guess lanterns. With the latter only using the heat/light and not actually moving anything.
I was responding to your assertion about EVs not being much better than ICEs.
I did not make any prior assertions. The post above was my first comment here.
To clarify, when you say ICE you are talking about trains, right? As in intercity express. And when you say EV you mean an electric car, correct?
I don’t understand why you argue that cars are more efficient than trains in this aspect. My argument is that since both machines use electric motors the motor efficiency can be nearly equal. Other factors probably favor a train more than a car if anything.
I don’t make a claim, but assume that even diesel locomotives might be a better choice than cars using only renewable energy, since the latter are idle most of the time, take up a lot of space, and require a lot of resources both in the car itself and in infrastructure. Surely something worht looking into.
Absolutely. And the benefit trains have over cars is that you can reduce the amount of other stuff per person needed to get people moving.
For a local train of mine that seats 93 people with empty weight of 54 metric tons, that comes out to ~0.58 tons/person.
My sedan weighs in at about 1.5 metric tons empty, and since I’m the only one that uses it, my weight footprint is ~1.5 tons/person.
Forget about fuel economy too. Trains don’t have traffic (most of the time) to deal with, meaning they can accelerate to coasting speeds and spend most of the ride at best-efficiency. Cars are subject to traffic conditions, meaning efficiency can be as-designed by the manufacturer, or it can be much, much worse on a per trip basis if you contribute to the daily rush hours on freeways.
There is also much less friction on rails compared to rubber on roadways. If demand increases the length of the train can be increased or more trains added. This helps prevent the cycle of needing more lanes (rail lines in this case).
energy is a non-issue
Running errands on public transport is an absolute nightmare. Imagine having appointments, hauling bags of groceries and maybe even having a child or pet on a leash, all while trying to catch busses and trains. Public transport is great to get a lot of people to a common place, but that’s about it. Its not exactly cheap either. Where I live, a single one direction train ticket costs roughly as much as 2 liters (~½ Gallon) of gas. 2 liters can get me in and out of the downtown area about 3-5 times, depending on traffic. Or once with an hour of parking. If an electric vehicle would fall out of the sky into my lap and the only thing I had to care about is fuel (electricity) I’d definetly would save money and time compared to public transport. Public transport is absolutely necessary, but not the solution for everything.
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Doesn’t mean it’s not a nightmare, and that doing it with a car wouldn’t be easier. Try doing this with two toddlers one day, lol, I promise you it’s not as easy as watching someone else do it.
Depending on how rowdy kids are, it’s not even easy in the car. You’re strapped in, focused on roads, and any “incidents” they incur may require you to pull over.
The other thing about public transit heavy cities is, in order for people to use them, they have to be much more walkable - in other words, not wasting their wide open space with eight-land roads, or ocean-sized parking lots. That also means, if all you’re going out for is groceries, it would be a waste of time to get in a car, or a train; just walk to a grocery store and back. Plus, if the trip genuinely does work out conveniently, you would not need to buy huge quantities in bulk each trip - just take multiple short trips through the week.
I happen to have a somewhat lucky city living situation, and this is pretty much how it works out for me. Sometimes when someone visits me, they offer to drive me to the grocery store, and it’s basically just as much hassle as walking, thanks to the pedestrian underpass I normally take home.
I can fully understand your position. People in big and densely packed cities profit a lot from proper public transport and vice versa. Plus the city itself is layed out to function with public commute in mind, I’ve experienced it personally in New York. I’m from a rural area. Our public transport system can’t fully replace cars. The main transit traffic is concentrated around rush hour in the morning and evening. To provide most people with public commute would require an immense increase in busses and train lines, only for 80% to be idle during low traffic hours.
There’s often a visual comparison between how many people a full car and bus can carry. Obviously the bus wins. But you rarely see the comparision between the space needed for a single empty car or bus to be parked. Cars can park on the side of the road or have a parking lot on location (even underground). Busses need ports and infrastructure. Trains are an even bigger problem to store. Their ports can easily take up a good chunk of the entire city. That’s why there’s always a financial incentive to have too little busses or trains than too many. People can tolerate waiting, but can’t tolerate higher prices to sustain a surplus on transport.
Also, public transport is often confined to local bubbles. Go outside your bubble and things start to get messy. When I was in High School, we had about ¼ of our class commute every day from one city over. They were either way to early or always late, because one cities train and bus plan wasn’t tuned to the others, resulting in people either having to get up about 2 hours before school starts at 7 am to catch a train or run the risk of missing their bus connection to the school. It’s even worse if you are crossing train districts and have to buy multiple tickets. When I was in college, some people came from another major city about 40km away. Their district covered half the state therefore their price was ~300€ per month and additionaly they had to pay 90€ per month for our smaller district. And both of those were the reduced prices for students. I could leave my car running idle for 20 days straight for that price.
EWs are important because cars are never going to be replaced by even the best public transport systems. But at least with could reduce the amount of cancer we get from sitting in traffic and breathing commute air. If I could choose, I’d rather have a power plant spit out steam and gas through state of the art filters somewhere in the outskirts, than to be surrounded by combusted gasoline resedue all day.
First lets start with the obligatory mention that thanks to zoning laws in the US you are even in this predicament. My grocery store is like just a few hundred metres from my apartment and on my way from work. Instead of weekly shopping I just do it daily / every other day with just the few things I need for those few days. No for hauling grocery bags. And like you wouldn’t go shopping before appointments either…
Also you completely forget to factor in the cost of owning an maintaining a car. A yearly ticket for public transport for me is around 500€. I don’t own a car so my expense on public transport is just that 500€ with a bit more for holiday trips etc compared to the cost of buying a car every X years, paying for maintenance, and for fuel.
I’m in Europe, not in the US. You are very fortunate to be living in a way that doesn’t require a car. That’s not the case for most people. Here, we have a lot of smaller towns and ignoring backeries, they have zero places that sell food. I see a lot of elderly people commute by bus for daily grocery shopping. But in this heat, they are in serious danger spending that much time in barely climate controlled busses and trains. Mostly, somebody from their families swings by once a week to fill up their fridge. The most common scenario is a family, both adults working 9-5, 1-2 children school aged. With children and jobs most people don’t have the time to do daily grocery trips. That’s why shops are usually overfilled on Friday evenings and Satruday mornings (I worked those shifts in retail). From my experience growing up, a full week of groceries for a mid sized family is impossible to carry by hand. Also from my experience, public transport is a godsend if you live alone and are tight on money. It takes the burden of maintanig a vehicle of your back. But in a family or a close circle of friends, a car is usually a communal workhorse, used by everyone for everything to avoid the hassle of public transport.
i agree with everything you said, but i do have to say that the problem with Europe isn’t proving that public transport isn’t that good(i know that’s not what you’re saying but I can’t think of any other way of wording it rn), but rather than the city planning is… unfortunate
Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. In r/fuckcars and also here the term “car centric” and “pedestrian centric” cities is thrown around a lot. Europe is often praised for being build before cars were invented and is therefore naturally friendlier towards pedestrians. But it’s not like busses are hovering above the buildings, they are as much car as an SUV, even bigger and bulkier. They have to squish themselves around tight corners. Whole roads get turned into one way streets because a new bus line was opened and now a bus and a car wouldn’t be able to pass each other in this medival inner city alley. Public transport requires infrastructure, which means property has to be acquired. One douche not wanting to sell his shed to the city, can grind a whole project into halt. Even if the government took extensive action to invest into public transport, there’s only so much they can do. And theres a long line of burrocracy between cause and effect.
In my city at least, I’ve never experienced the government trying to cull the public transport, there’s been a steady improvement over the past 15 years. New lines, Better busses (also electric ones) have been added. Busses have their own traffic lights to give them time to de- and accelerate. But the city is literary at its capacity. It has reached the point of diminishing returns for public transport.
Part of the problem with American public tranist is cities assume the transit to be directly profitable. Tramsit functions best when heavily subsidized (just like car infrastructure is). The value brought by transit it terms of property value and connectivity will outweigh the cost of subsidizing it.
I doubt the US even has a say in these dissussions. Their intercity train system is mostly commercial to transport goods from coast to coast or border to border. Sparse availability of public trains means spending roughly the same on 48 hours train ride or a 1 hour plane flight. Building a single highway trough dessert heat of the Midwest is already a toll, but building a countrywide train system would, even if subsidized with the full military budget still be a nearly impossible task. Furthermore you have 50% of the population screaming to stop this socialist nonsense. There are enough examples of unfinished train sections that show what happens if money runs out.
And one might ask them self, how did the US get from cowboys and farms to the beacon of technical advancement? The answer is oil and slaves. They played dirty for 200 years and got ahead. So how does the entirity of Europe have a extensive network of rails spanning millions of kilometers? Was it because they where built before unions and labor rights were a thing? Turns out multi continental projects were mostly achieved through human suffering and disregard for safety. None of which goes nowadays to the same extend as back then. If a project isn’t finished within one legislative period, why even start? Policaly you won’t reap the fruits of your labor.
I know I’m exagarting, but the principle is simple. The early bird gets the worm. Europe has their trains and the US has their cars. Better to let each one figure out their own thing and then share the knowledge.
The system does not need to just suddenly be country wide. There are many major population centers within the same state or neighboring states that could greatly benefit from high speed rail connection. In this meme’s argument trams serve a similar purpose and could be implemented much more locally. Many rail lines have a troubling past but we should not use that as an excuse to not build new ones with modern labor and safety standards.
I can only speak from the experience I have, which is New York and Flint, Michigan. Both are obvious contrasts between one of the richest and poorest cities in the US. New York has maybe one of the best Subway systems in the world. Having a car in NYC is insane. Everything that isn’t covered by bus or train, is bridged by rentable bikes on each corner of a block. Flint could desperately use a couple of busses and a tram, but they can barely afford to keep their river and parks clean of (hopefully) dog poop. I remember seeing tram rails on the road but they where in an inoperable state. The north and west coast has a decent railroad system already but its basically inaccesible without having a car taking you to and from the station. It really felt like each city in the north was fending for their own. A bus system is quite the investment for a city. You can’t just start with a couple of busses and then expand. Otherwise you are running the risk of it being the first thing people point fingers at, once city funds run dry.
A lot governments in the world push for increased public transport spending on the federal level. But it seems everybody is to busy trying to put out political fires to properly appropriate state funds. And if they are approved its often half assed and the cities have to make due with what the have anyway. It’s the same in my country, I bet its the same in the US. Just because the urgency increased, doesn’t mean the capability did es well.
As an examlme of intercity travel, the average annual milage for cars in Michigan is ~12,370 miles . Let’s say that’s mostly work commute (which from my experience, it is) so that’s roughly 50 miles a day during week days. A US class I railroad trains average speed is ~25 mph, a cars about 50 mph (source: readout from my car back during my stay). You’ll spend roughly twice the amount of time on your commute. Thats excluding the fact that a car goes door to door and not station to station.
In rural areas of the US a local bus and tram system would surely improve the life of some people. But its not enough of a reason for Americans to change their car culture or for cities to put some money on the table.
People do that all the time on transit, groceries are the biggest problem though.
You’re forgetting the cost of buying the vehicle, maintaining it, and perhaps parking it. You can’t leave those out and then say driving is cheaper.
I personally consider the price of the car as the privilege of ownership. Its not like you can change the color of the train if you don’t like it or throw you trash in the corner. If the train is to slow, you can’t put a turbo in it. Plus, you can always sell you car, but you can’t sell your used train tickets.
I’ve owned my car current car for roughly 4 years now. I got it used and it lost about -1,000€ in value. Maintance is incredibly low, roughly -300€ in total. Insurance was the big money drainer with about -2000€ in total, but I got in a couple of minor fender benders that weren’t my fault and only resulted in scratched plastic so I got a payout of about +1300€. So in total, if I were to sell it right now, my car my car cost me 500€ annually over the course of 4 years (fuel exluded). Thats a fair price for the freedom a car gives you.
But there are certain situation that essentialy prohibit using a car. Getting to the airport is far easier by bus (my city has a direct line) and you don’t have to pay for weeks of parking. Late night bus lines make going out to parties and clubs actually enjoyable, because you don’t have to leave your car in a shady part of town over night. Parking is another problem. The US feels like 80% parking space but Europe doesn’t have that. The biggest parking area in my city is basically right at the central bus hub. So it wouldn’t make any difference time wise to go by car. But thanks to 20 traffic lights, riding a bicycle doesn’t either.
Bicyles are like the best extension to public transit. And its highly undervalued. I’d rather have them reduce prices for train tickets that include a bike, than build more train lines. Currently they are nearly twice as expensive as normal tickets (because a bike takes up more space I guess).
You can sell it and then it’s called depreciation from use anyway. It’s cost of ownership. You can’t ignore it and say it’s cost of gas only.
I didn’t say it cost gas only. Quite the opposite, I ignored the gas cost and shown only my rough cost of ownership. It’s just the fact that the huge entry price of buying a car is put in parallel to low ticket prices, when really, it shouldn’t. Otherwise you could also add the cost of shoes and clothes to the train ticket, because well you can’t exactly ride a train barefoot and in your undies. And all the food for the energy spend walking from station to station, can’t forget that.
Yes a decent car can cost between 5 - 10K used, but if you take care of it you will get most of that money back. And I’m not talking about SUVs or Pickup Trucks, but compact hatchbacks with 30mpg or 6-7L per 100km. The engines easily last 10+ years with regular but minor maintanace. 2000s Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas can easily outlast multiple generations of trains and busses.
My city has gone through 4 generations of bus fleets while my buddies dad still rocks a VW T4 camper probably on his 2nd milage gauge loop. We figured out how to make the perfect car in 1993 when McLaren build the F1. Nothing beats low weight and a reliable engine. The big mistake was letting heavy SUVs become the go to car for everybody. Historicaly speaking, it’s an overcorrection from the US being invaded by small cheap and reliable Japanese hatchbacks in the 90s. An that I itself was an overcorrection form gigantic 20 feet long cars from the 70s and 80s. SUVs and Pickup Trucks are like a fashion trend, they are not here to stay. Slick E-vehicles seem to be the newest trend, they just haven’t fully found the shape they want to be in yet.
From the point of physics, a train weighs hundreds of tons and is pulling another hundreds of tons of weight. A hatchback weight 1-2 tons. They work on the same principles. They need energy to accelerate their mass. Trains need to carry a lot of people to break even otherwise they are just pulling themselves for nothing. You should be uncomfortable having a whole cart to yourself. Sure a car might be 100 times lighter but the train can carry 200 times more people at max capacity. Max capacity being an important factor. Most trains travel way below that. Remove all the traffic lights and hills from a cars path and it will be just as efficient as a train. Trains are just really good mass haulers.
One of the major advantages that trains have over cars is their electric engine. Electric engines have an efficiency of roughly 80 - 90% for transferring energy into motion. Car engines only 20 - 40%. And combustion engine are at their economical limit. Putting electric engines in cars is putting them directly on par with trains.
Thats why we shift towards EVs, because we already have everything but the batteries and charging figured out anyway. Public transport is a political issue, EVs are an engineering and marketing issue.
Jeez I’m not reading all that. You have now twice tried to discount the cost of the vehicle. First you wanted to account only for gas. Second you wanted to call it “privilege”, yes you then broke it down for some reason but you want to call it a “privilege” and not account for its cost in the actual transportation.
Fair enough. I realize that I mixed up owning a car, and being able to afford one. I double checked, and, one can own a car in my country while having low or no income and live in subsidized housing. But the value of the car is limited to a certain amount. So I stand corrected, technically “No” owning a car is not a privilege but is considered a basic necessary by our government. But thats only the case if you start collecting financial aid and already have a car. You won’t be able to afford to buy one with the aid alone.
I was fortunate enough to have my parents pay upfront for my first car that I couldn’t afford while I was in college. I paid them back in full over 2 years and didn’t have to pay intrest to a bank. I call that privilege.
Groceries are solved by having smaller but more frequent supermarkets, I can walk to 3 different ones from my house including one that’s literally 2/3min walk away (and I live in the countryside), we go daily so we can just carry it back because it’s smaller groceries. If bigger, personal carts exist and are gaining popularity around here.
I think grocery delivery is the more likely and better.
Yeah that would definitely be easier to implement in North America, due to the current layouts, I was talking about my own environment in Europe.
If that’s what already happens, then there’s no issue to be solved.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}