r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[74164978231]

Can these luddites in live in Amish communes away from cars that they hate.

How would they browse reddit and order funkpops?

 

[Glowie]

How would they browse reddit and order funkpops?

Drive the carriage, send letters to Reddit HQ asking about current karma and buy funko pops through mail order

 

[teriyakiburns]

The "rail to trail" projects often get pretty close do doing it right. A (gasp) well designed suburb will have windy shitroads to prevent cars from crossing it and avoiding the arterials - but the same suburb can have a walking/bike backbone that goes pretty direct. I've seen them, and when well done, it's fucking amazing. An entire development where you can drive into the garage on each house, but you can also walk from the back door of each house to the main road without ever crossing a street.

I used to live in a place like that. It was built in the 70s, so the quality of the housing wasn't great (mostly terraced 2 and 3 bed houses and some small apartments), and it was mostly inhabited by the sort of people you'd fine on a sink estate. There were paths everywhere. You could walk the entire estate and barely see the roads, if you wanted. My cats loved it.

The reason they're not built like that today is because all those paths mean one less house crammed into the development. If these "urbanists" took the more rational stance of advocating for greater open space in suburban housing developments, they might actually get somewhere.

 

[IdiotPlusPlus]

Even California is better than this. They only allow cyclists to bike on the shoulder if there's no viable alternate route and they must take every exit because even they recognise the insanity of forcing drivers who are almost always travelling at high speed to "be aware" of cyclists crossing the offramps.

Oh god, it's actually worse then I remembered lol, I love a 200m warning on a 100km/h busy freeway xD



But you know, fuck cars, and not the dickheads who not only proposed that insanity but actually implemented it xD

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Don't I know it. You probably already know, C-5 and EDSA were intended to be ring roads for Old Manila. They got eaten by the sprawl in the last few decades while we were having 1973 Oil Crisis Moments, Marcos Moments, and 1997 Asian Financial Crisis Moments. We've got a big infrastructure debt, and it shows in the traffic interest.

The way I like to put it is - you always wanna buy your kid's uniforms a little too big so they grow into them. Don't do that for a few years and they'll be way too small.

We're that kid with pants up to their shins and a shirt that shows off their navel.

I'm actually not that familiar with Filipino highways, I just was eyeballing the city and looked for actual freeways. The thing is, and we've discussed this, North American highways are also underbuilt (not to the extreme in Manila), the population in the metro area increases dramatically but the highways usually have the same capacity, so "one more lane" isn't that effective.

 

[DavidS877]

Pretty sure it's for employee safety, with a car door there's a certain clearance that's arm-length, someone walking up or bicycling up, especially after dark, is likely going to do that to rob the place.

As I recall it's due to insurance and safety for the pedestrian.

A car comes around the corner in the drive through and they're not going to expect someone in all black or on an all black bike with no reflectors standing there. Cars and motorcycles have at least a minimal size and required reflectors and lighting.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

As I recall it's due to insurance and safety for the pedestrian.

This is the main reason, yes. Smaller restaurants will sometimes ignore those rules because they don't have much insurance or anyone to yell at them.

It really only matters in niggertown anyway, where the drive thru stays open after the sit-down part closes.

I'm actually not that familiar with Filipino highways, I just was eyeballing the city and looked for actual freeways. The thing is, and we've discussed this, North American highways are also underbuilt (not to the extreme in Manila), the population in the metro area increases dramatically but the highways usually have the same capacity, so "one more lane" isn't that effective.

American highway "remodeling/widening" is often decades overdue when it finally gets done, but the planners have wised up to that shit, which is why new areas will get fuckoff huge freeways that seem oversized.

And it's pretty much the best in the world, really. I don't think I've seen anywhere better especially as a whole "system".

 

[quaawaa]

American highway "remodeling/widening" is often decades overdue when it finally gets done, but the planners have wised up to that shit, which is why new areas will get fuckoff huge freeways that seem oversized.

And it's pretty much the best in the world, really. I don't think I've seen anywhere better especially as a whole "system".

It is among the best in the world judged by travel and commute times. Urbanists will complain about drivers spending hours stuck in traffic but they get real quiet whenever you bring up this:

Source (Archive)

How can car-centric US have 50% faster commutes than the Holy Land? They don't even have grassy trams or bike lanes?!?!

That exact graph actually got shared to /r/urbanplanning a few months ago:

Spoiler: Links in post

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/average-commuting-time/ (archive)
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/4xw84xvo5to81.jpg (archive)
https://archive.nytimes.com/economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/commuter-nation/ (archive)

The response from the urbanists:

"It doesn't matter that public transit commutes are longer because they're so much more pleasant than driving":


This is an incredibly dumb comment:

Then the commute would be shorter, not 30-40% longer. How is living close to work a benefit if your commute is longer than someone who lives farther away? Also, you can't exclude wait time when calculating commute times and the commentor doubles down on the stupidity when confronted about that:


In transit-brained logic, 30 is less than 25:

Someone points out that this logic makes no sense because they're comparing average time so modal split is irrevalant:

Just some Japanese salarymen enjoying a book:

and some New Yorkers getting a free cultural seminar:


Drivers don't include time spent finding parking so their commute times must be higher! (Keep in mind that only a few comments ago someone said that waiting times should be excluded from transit commute times):

Link in comment (archive)

Muh "Gym of Life":

Source (Archive)

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

These fucking retards. These absolute mongoloids. Even a child can figure out that a system that involves direct point to point travel will be faster than anything else, all things being equal. And cars are about the same speed as busses or trains when moving.

The only way public transit can win is either in "total number of trip-miles served" where the density of the japtrains is more than any reasonable road could handle or where it has routes the cars cannot take (imagine if all bridges to NY were train only, or something).

 

[gagabobo1997]

do these niggers think people just drive in silence and do nothing? cars have had radios and speakers forever. Listening to music or the news or a podcast is just as good as reading a book if its just to fill the time when commuting.
You can also eat breakfast while driving but its a bit dangerous if you aren't skilled at it

 

[DavidS877]

do these niggers think people just drive in silence and do nothing? cars have had radios and speakers forever. Listening to music or the news or a podcast is just as good as reading a book if its just to fill the time when commuting.
You can also eat breakfast while driving but its a bit dangerous if you aren't skilled at it

It's not hard to balance your phone or tablet on the steering wheel to watch the MATI podcast while you're driving.
But even if you can't, don't you want to spend more time with your family, maybe more sleep, literally anything except sitting there paranoid of someone stealing your shit or stabbing you(these days, in US public transit at least).

I did bike to work for several years, but I was close enough it took nearly the same amount of time, but had to shower at the office. And it was nice since I could take the longer way to work or home if I wanted more free exercise. But I still drove when I had shit to do after work, or groceries, etc.

 

[Bonesjones]

do these niggers think people just drive in silence and do nothing? cars have had radios and speakers forever. Listening to music or the news or a podcast is just as good as reading a book if its just to fill the time when commuting.
You can also eat breakfast while driving but its a bit dangerous if you aren't skilled at it

The main benefit of cars is that you have a sizable private storage area with you on every trip. This allows you to be more time and energy efficient at a negligible cost. If you want to do things like go to the gym, to Target, and also the grocery store, you can do all 3 in a way that benefits you the most. Instead of either being forced to make multiple trips or stack the errands in a way that is more time and distance ineffective. What if on a day you'd go to the gym a friend (lmao like they have any) calls you up to do something else. Instead of carrying your tote bag everywhere, now you can just safely store it indefinitely.

 

[TowinKarz]

You can also eat breakfast while driving but its a bit dangerous if you aren't skilled at it

I honestly think the impetus behind inventing the breakfast burrito was so you could eat something with one hand and drive with the other...... Yankee Ingenuity!

The main benefit of cars is that you have a sizable private storage area with you on every trip. This allows you to be more time and energy efficient at a negligible cost.

Not just storage space, but, complete freedom from the dictates of routes and timetables and transfers and such.

Yes, I could daisy-chain several bus rides to get from campus to downtown to almost my neighborhood, but, for probably less per-trip-capita that the bus fares cost I can afford a private vehicle that does it quicker leaving me more time to actually live life.

There's no health or psychological reason I can't walk the 3 miles down to the corner store to get milk, but, doing so would take 45 minutes out of my life, longer the more I buy and have to schlep home.

Now, why do that when I can be there back and done in 10 minutes by car leaving me wit a half hour of bonus time in the day to do something else?

Why is this such a perverse idea to the supposed champions of efficiency and minimizing impacts?

Also, with that extra storage, I can actually make it a full-on grocery run, stock up for 2 weeks, and not have to make another trip the next day for whatever other little thing I ran out of this time, like, if not milk, then it's probably gonna be bread or eggs or whatever....

And also, note how the public transport devotees, especially the bikes crowd, are awfully silent about how they expect you to stay fit enough to ride a bike multiple miles in your 50's, 60's and 70's... let alone walking, even the best athlete can't do it forever. What then? Do we all just curl up and die?

I think the leftists who infest "urbanism" are just jealous others have freedom that they are perfectly willing to exercise while also being a part of a meaningful community wether it be cars as a hobby or just as a member of the masses in the commute who 9 times out of 10 will work with each other to get where they're going.... which is also why they hate guns....

Samuel Colt and Henry Ford are dirty names to them because they made everyone EQUAL, in a meaningful way, WITHOUT communism, and that just won't stand.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

There's no health or psychological reason I can't walk the 3 miles down to the corner store to get milk, but, doing so would take 45 minutes out of my life, longer the more I buy and have to schlep home.

This hits real hard right now, because night is falling and yet there's some time left; I could walk to the park with the kid or I could drive the mile. One gives him almost 30 minutes more playtime ...

 

[Gigasneed]

We've had bike lanes in my city for about 3 years now and I've only ever seen a handful of bicyclists use them. We have bike lane traffic lights that add to the total time of red lights by quite a bit, but the few bicyclists I've seen actually use the lane completely ignore their special traffic signal and just go when the regular light is green.

The only routine use I see is from homeless people using them to panhandle.

 

[quaawaa]

Japanese stuntman makes funny video showcasing common bicycle accidents:

0:25

Every single accident is the cyclist's fault. /r/fuckcars' take:


Source (Archive)

---

They deliberately slow down traffic with road diets and then mock you for complaining about slow traffic moves:







NYC has ~550k fewer people than in 2020:

so it can't possibly be because there are more cars than ever.

The top comments on the article (archive) bring up the real reason:







He says on an article showing that traffic increased despite the population decreasing because capacity was removed.

/r/fuckcars complains that the WSJ commenters are carbrained (and they've clearly brigaded the WSJ comments):

Source (Archive)

 

[TowinKarz]

"hard to comprehend that people don't grasp the basic concept of alternatives"

It's harder to comprehend how some people think an alternative by itself is always better than status quo for no other reason than "it's different".

But such is the backbone of the social tinkerer: If given a choice to move or stay put, regardless of situation, a person is to be classified as a superstitionist and shunned if he won't move off the ground he occupies and towards the "new" without hesitation.

 

[Atypical Dog]

I'm actually not that familiar with Filipino highways, I just was eyeballing the city and looked for actual freeways. The thing is, and we've discussed this, North American highways are also underbuilt (not to the extreme in Manila), the population in the metro area increases dramatically but the highways usually have the same capacity, so "one more lane" isn't that effective.

In North Luzon in particular our freeways would be McArthur Highway (which joins EDSA around Metro Manila before continuing south under a different name) and Maharlika Highway (which joins C-5, Circumferential 5, before continuing south).

Metro Manila's roads are interesting in that the major arteries actually tell you their purpose - R's are Radials and C's are Circumferential. I'm sure these numberings made sense when the Metro was much less densely populated, but now it's all just sprawl, all generating its own traffic, and obviating the point.

Skyway Stage 3 and NLEX Connector are supposed to be above-ground toll roads that let you pay to fly over the whole metro area in order to not clog up the circumferential roads. They are very popular. So are the big toll arteries going north and south - NLEX/SCTEX/TPLEX up north and SLEX/MCX/STAR down south.

Yes, I could daisy-chain several bus rides to get from campus to downtown to almost my neighborhood, but, for probably less per-trip-capita that the bus fares cost I can afford a private vehicle that does it quicker leaving me more time to actually live life.

There's no health or psychological reason I can't walk the 3 miles down to the corner store to get milk, but, doing so would take 45 minutes out of my life, longer the more I buy and have to schlep home.

Now, why do that when I can be there back and done in 10 minutes by car leaving me wit a half hour of bonus time in the day to do something else?

Why is this such a perverse idea to the supposed champions of efficiency and minimizing impacts?

Because they assume you're doing this somewhere where the roads are excessively demanded, not some practical shit like "it's not as densely populated over here". There is an urbanist assumption that more progress = more denser = more gooder.

American highway "remodeling/widening" is often decades overdue when it finally gets done, but the planners have wised up to that shit, which is why new areas will get fuckoff huge freeways that seem oversized.

And it's pretty much the best in the world, really. I don't think I've seen anywhere better especially as a whole "system".

Size for what it will be, not what it is. Convincing other people that this highway needs to be that wide, or that metro is going to pop off, however, is a whole different can of worms.

 

[Yamamura]

/r/fuckcars member tried to go through the McDonalds drive-thru on his bike and was turned away:

Or course once again the first thing they turn to is vandalism. Inconvenienced? Better resort to vandalism. That will surely convince them to serve you on your bike.

You know CityNerd did that projection- er I mean psychoanalysis thing of the average truck owner. What if we did a psychoanalysis on the average urbanist.

• You feel impotent in the amount of control you have over your own life so you resort to wanting to control others
• You have grandiose visions of what you want the world to be but the peons are just too stupid to know what they want
• You are prone to anger, but can only resort to petty vandalism to vent your frustrations. Knowing if you got into an actual fight you would die
• You have no friends or romantic relationships but shift the burden to fault of an inanimate object.
• You generally blame society for the shortcomings in your life and why you're unhappy.
• You're unambitious and aim low in life but try to hide it behind a thinly veiled attempt to force everyone to live at your level

Gee, one would think "psychoanalysis" is just a disingenuous way to insult someone, but try to make it seem academic.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Because they assume you're doing this somewhere where the roads are excessively demanded, not some practical shit like "it's not as densely populated over here". There is an urbanist assumption that more progress = more denser = more gooder.

There is this strange assumption of urbanists that density is for the upper-middle class, when in reality, historically it has not been true, and in third world countries (sorry, the Philippines would be "third world" for this example) this is still the case—high density is abject poverty.

"hard to comprehend that people don't grasp the basic concept of alternatives"

It's harder to comprehend how some people think an alternative by itself is always better than status quo for no other reason than "it's different".

But such is the backbone of the social tinkerer: If given a choice to move or stay put, regardless of situation, a person is to be classified as a superstitionist and shunned if he won't move off the ground he occupies and towards the "new" without hesitation.

Urbanism isn't the only thing that does the "you don't use the alternative? clearly there must be something wrong with you" stunt. If you don't believe me just look at the Epic Games Store shills on /v/. Yes, EGS is an alternative to Steam. No, there is nothing wrong with sticking to Steam.

Drivers don't include time spent finding parking so their commute times must be higher! (Keep in mind that only a few comments ago someone said that waiting times should be excluded from transit commute times):

Door-to-door time means that higher density will get with harder commute times. Live on an upper floors of a big apartment building and expect to add another five minutes for every trip.

do these niggers think people just drive in silence and do nothing? cars have had radios and speakers forever. Listening to music or the news or a podcast is just as good as reading a book if its just to fill the time when commuting.
You can also eat breakfast while driving but its a bit dangerous if you aren't skilled at it

There's the simultaneous assumption that drivers can't do anything AND are simultaneously jammed up with lights and congestion. Not only is congestion a tiny part of my commute (if it happens at all) that's the best time to do whatever. Years ago I remember getting stuck in Houston traffic and I remember thinking "I've got a delicious Whopper, I'm playing my favorite music, and the air conditioning is blasting in my face. All things considered this isn't bad."

The disconnect happens because these people don't actually drive. They just look at the same meme pictures and think "hmmm cars bad" like the brainlets they are.