#car infrastructure | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

governmentissuedclone · 9 months

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Listen to me okay!!!

A comparatively affordable, environmentally friendly, one time purchase that doesn't make you regularly line the pockets of Big Gas Executives and directly fund the fossil fuel industry.

Bicycles are far easier and cheaper to replace, repair, or modify to your liking by yourself! Pretty much anyone at any skill level can learn basic bike maintenance, they don't require nearly as much specialized knowledge and pretty much all the tools you will need can be easily and relatively affordably sourced from a hardware store, bike shop, or used.

'but they're not cool' first of all, caring about being cool automatically makes you uncool. Second, cool is a learned association and what is cool now won't be cool in five years. What was cool 5 years ago isn't cool now. We have been conditioned by movies and tv to think the only people who ride parks are losers and the butt of the joke. We can literally make bicycles cool by simply being a bunch of cool people who ride bicycles.

As car culture is the dominant mindset in North America a bicycle is, in fact, counterculture! Piss off drivers simply by existing! Although do be warned many think it is completely reasonable to attempt to murder you with their car because they had to slow down a little bit to pass you.

The first step to dismantling our current car culture and pedestrian hostile infrastructure is to opt out of using cars as much as possible. Cities are not and have not been built for people in decades. They are built for cars. You shouldn't have to be forced to clean out your wallet paying for a car, fuel, insurance, etc because a corporation hardcore lobbied your government to design the world around you to be inconvenient, miserable, and impossible to navigate without one so they can make more money at everyone else's expense.

The more people use bikes, the less money corporations make. The less damage they can do to the planet. The demand for bike and pedestrian friendly infrastructure rises. Cities become cleaner, nicer, and more liveable for everyone.

You deserve to be able to live.

#bicycles #bicycle #cars #car culture #car infrastructure #punk #punk subculture #counterculture #bicycle culture #bike #city infrastructure #walkable cities #urban planning #city planning #my thoughts

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freak-fox0003 · 1 year

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I hate you cars. I hate you Ford. I hate you GMC. I hate you car centered infrastructure. I hate you highway system. I hate you prioritization of motor vehicles. I hate you jaywalking. I hate you lack of public transportation. I hate you anti public transportation propaganda. I hate you trains you have to drive to. I hate you lack of sidewalks and crosswalks. I hate you giant slabs of concrete. I hate you stroads. I hate you lack of pedestrian safety. I hate you environmental destruction. I FUCKING HATE IT HERE!!!

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winterthebeau · 7 months

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#traffic lights #traffic control #pedestrian infrastructure #car infrastructure #europe vs. america #196 #literally 19684 #r196 #r/196 #city planning

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atomic-cat-weed · 9 months

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scaring a poor european girl by showing her american car infrastructure

#weedposting #weedpost #weed #america #europe #car dependency #cars #car infrastructure #infrastructure

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superanimepirate · 8 months

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I'm going insane due to American infrastructure and lack of transportation options.

I'm trying to fly from Sweden to the Midwest with my dog.

It's borderline impossible.

The dog is a Labrador, so he's too big for the cabin and must travel in the hold. I hate this and I'm very anxious about it, but I guess I understand why large dogs can't be in the cabin unless they are service animals. Fine.

The problem is that seemingly no airlines in the US transports dogs in the hold. Apparently only European and Canadian ones do that.

Since I am in the Midwest, not many of these airlines fly that far inland.

The airport that is closest to my hometown (2 hour drive), does not have any options whatsoever.

The next closest is a four hour drive. It has 1 option. After that is one that is a 6 hour drive, and they have a few more options.

Even if I choose the 4 hour or 6 hour drive from my home town, I still have to depend on my parents being able to pick me up. Which means an 8 or 12 hour round trip for them. There is absolutely no busses or trains that go to my home town. Any busses and trains that go somewhat near there (2 hour drive from the train station to my hometown), don't allow dogs to board, even in a kennel.

I can't rent a car either. I don't drive. Even if I did, I spent 2 years I Europe, so my license would have expired.

Even if it didn't, renting is needlessly difficult and expensive. Technically you have to be 21. But if you're under 25, you get charged extra. And extra pet fees.

Don't even get me started on shipping dogs as cargo. $7,500 was just 1 quote.

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willowstea · 1 year

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Been reading Road to Nowhere by Paris Marx, and one thing I've never thought of around EVs is there there's not enough lithium ion to replace all the combustion engines. I always think of it in car infrastructure terms, ie EVs won't solve traffic or the environmental problems of building roads, but if we can't even replace all the current cars with EVs it's a lost cause from the start. Musky can't save us.

We need to move away from cars period. Not saying that you can never drive anywhere, but you should have easy options to not drive when you don't need to drive. Plus, if fewer people choose to drive locally, your long-haul drive will be pleasant, with less traffic, etc. Most drives are done within 12km of your home, which can easily be replaced with walking or biking (plus if you're biking 40min a day, 20min each way, you're "commute" is technically 10min bc 30 of that 40 is your daily exercise). The rest, especially in a city, can be done on public transit if there is proper infrastructure, and let's be honest it would be super nice to have rapid inter-city transit instead of driving 7 hours and being stuck in traffic.

#willow's tea #road to nowhere #paris marx #reading #books #electric vehicles #car infrastructure #urban planning #oop should i bring my side-blog back lol i deleted it

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rthko · 6 months

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Notice how "I do not need a car," "I will use public transport," and "I will just take the bike" are not the same as you have to do this or that everyone can? Yes, tough luck, but also the thing about transit advocates is that they advocate... for transit... They know not everybody has a choice and want you to have that option. I personally am car free and not vegan but it's like the knee-jerk response to veganism where people say "you think you're better than me, don't you!" unprovoked. Insecurity.

#dare i add the 'not everyone has a choice' angle goes both ways and owning a car and driving is not an option for a lot of people #INCLUDING people who live in areas without bike infrastructure or transit

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angmallen · 11 months

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Car(ule) 🚗

#196 #r196 #rule #r/196 #car dependency #car dependent infrastructure is cringe #r/19684 is still open so i guess ill hang out there as well but tumblr has been pretty nice though so ill keep rule posting

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phoenixyfriend · 4 months

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Gonna fight the NYT podcast/a specific article. So are half the people in the comments.

The article is about increasing pedestrian deaths in the US, specifically at night.

They blame smart phones (and automatic transmission), increased vehicle size, and car-centric infrastructure being hostile to pedestrians.

I and everyone in the comments: IT'S THE FUCKING HEADLIGHTS

Had to leave my comment on YouTube because Spotify has a very low maximum character count.

I think the section on the change in cars is severely lacking in commentary on the factor that is changes in headlights. The lights are on average MUCH brighter than they were years ago, and paired with the increasing size of newer cars, they are often at the exact height to hit the eyeline for a driver in a sedan or other low cars. I and many drivers my age find that we DO NOT feel safe driving at night because we find ourselves blinded by oncoming traffic or cars in our rear view mirrors. This is not just a matter of the drivers, but the manufacturers; you can't really buy a car with weaker lights the way you can buy one with heated seats.

I'd have also liked to hear you touch on the factor of increasing fatigue in drivers coming home when you talked about the afterwork cell usage, since drowsy driving is known to be incredibly dangerous, and increasing wealth inequality means a lot of people in those low-income areas you mentioned are working multiple jobs and thus more fatigued when driving.

I do appreciate the explanation that the United States car-centric infrastructure is hostile to pedestrians, but I think it could have benefited from greater focus.

If you ever do a follow-up, I would suggest reaching out to urbanism activists like Not Just Bikes.

#United States #pedestrian deaths #car centric infrastructure #cars #trucks #politics #phoenix talks

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alpaca-clouds · 17 days

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Cars vs Accessible Worlds

Alright, let me talk about one thing in terms of accessibility in science fiction settings - and Solarpunk specifically - that also has more than one side to it: Cars and accessibility. Because it is more complicated than you'd thing.

See: The fact that our world is so car centric really, really hinders accessibility. Wide streets are a hindrance for even normal pedastrians, cyclists and so on. If I want to get from A to B, and the route crosses a street, and there is only a traffic light every like 500 meters, it means tat I usually need either to risk my life or take the long way around to get there. And that is a fucking bother even when you are healthy and can easily take that long way around. And the more car centric a society is, the worse the issue becomes. Here in Germany it is a lot easier still to cross a street than in many places in the US.

And of course this gets a lot worse if you are disabled. Be it that you just cannot walk that far. Or if you are blind and cannot even see in what direction you could go for the next traffic light. Or if you are hard of hearing or deaf, you might be more in danger of being surprised by a car. (And that is without going into how electric cars being so fucking quiet makes stuff even more dangerous.) And, you know, neurodivergent people might also just struggle with the fucking noise that is created by roads and is often inescapable in big cities.

And of course even outside of the environmental issues, the constant presence of cars is also a health risk. Not just because of the risk of accidents, but also due to the pollution and how it interacts. Even if we all were driving electric cars, there would still be all those microplastics created by tires and streets and stuff.

So, really. We do need to move away from car centric infrastructure to make our lives healthier and to make the world more accessible for disabled people too.

BUT...

But there is the issue that some disabled people still might be in need to use some sort of personal transportation device that can cover both short and large distances, because for one reason or another public transport just does not work and cannot work for them.

For example someone with severe anxiety issues, or someone who will be easily suffering from sensory overwhelm. There might be other issues, too. Just some folks will always need something like cars.

And of course there is also the fact that stuff like emergency services will still need streets accessible to cars. Because the emergency services will just not get around using something like cars to get to all the places they might be needed.

And this... makes things complicated. Because infrastructure should not be car centric, no. But it needs to be accessible by cars - and be it just for emergency services.

This is just something that I would love to see more talked about especially within the Solarpunk sphere.

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #infrastructure #car centric infrastructure #anti cars #mobility #public transport #accessibility #disability rights #disability #15 minute city #trains

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draciformes · 1 year

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#walkable cities #Car centric infrastructure #fuck cars #city planning #car dependency #car dependent infrastructure #capitalism #anti capitalism #Anticapitalism

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probablyasocialecologist · 3 months

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There are so many different road- and traffic-related ecological problems that it's hard to know where to begin. I think that one of the most pernicious ones is the barrier effect. The steady stream of traffic that rolls down so many busy highways forms what some biologists have called the moving fence, this impenetrable wall of vehicles that animals don't even attempt to cross. And I think that's a difficult problem to solve, because we've all seen the the dead deer or opossum or squirrel by the side of the road. But what you don't see are the animals that never even attempt to cross. And those animals can really suffer as a result. And in some ways, that barrier effect can be worse than roadkill itself.

#ecology #roads #cars and roads #wildlife #infrastructure

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imakemyownnotes · 8 months

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Freeways are NOT safer than surface streets, the most deadly accidents happen on freeways due to the high speeds involved. Look up actual statistics and go to drivers ed b4 you bootlick for freeways.

My very first ask! Thanks anon!

So, even though you called me a bootlicker for advocating for public transit, I'm going to address the core of your argument and leave out the ad hominem.

1. Couldn't find any statistics on freeway vs. surface streets percentage. If you've got it, let me know and stop using the smoothbrained alt-right "do your research" line. Only related thing I could find is that 17% of traffic deaths are pedestrians, which (statistically) don't occur on freeways.

2. I suspect you're right that more fatal crashes occur on freeways! However, we have to adjust for how much travel time is spent on freeways vs. surface streets. If they're far more heavily used (spoilers: they are), then even a higher number of deaths still equates to a LOWER number of deaths per capita, meaning they're safer. That's statistics, even if they don't agree with your world view.

3. (And this one is really important) Freeways suck. They suck for a plethora of reasons. There's so much scholarship and research on the suckiness of freeways. Public transit infrastructure is the solution to that problem. I will never advocate for the expansion of freeways (or even their use over surface streets), especially at the expense of a robust public transit system.

Huh, I guess I addressed the bootlicker comment after all, you sly devil.

#amtrak #public transit #freeways #infrastructure #bootlicking #trains #cars #transportation #half of my OCs are trains

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thebreakfastgod · 9 days

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