Yeah this is a much better analogy, if you think cars are useless you probably don’t have relatives in places where the bus goes maybe twice a day if there is a bus going at all.
And if you think that commuting to your job within the city where there should be well built out public transport is acceptable then you are also mistaken
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
Cars are only rendered “useful” by deprivation of public transit as a common good from the people.
With buses that run multiple times an hour everywhere, the car is rendered useless. People will move to where there are connections.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
There is no economical way to run buses multiple times an hour to bumfuck nowhere.
Just like there is no economical way to run 4 lane highways through cities and having 3 lane roads in the city all occupied by cars.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
Do we need to make everything about “money”?
I feel like improving general wellbeing is more important. Having incentives to make people in rural areas live along ‘lines’ would also help, then bus lines are also handier. You can have smaller community buses, too.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Roads are built first, they always have been and always will be because it costs almost nothing to build a dirt road.
Then once there is enough demand on the roads, they’re improved and widened and eventually replaced with higher capacity, more permanent links like trains.
That means that the edge of your transportation network is always going to be based around roads and cars.
Acamon@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I basically agree with you, the more public transport provided, the less people need individual transport. But as a society, there are times when the right transport soloution for a specific household is pretty much a car. There’s no point in having busses driving out to my rural property multiple times a day, just for me not to use it most of the time.
That doesn’t mean it needs to be a private car owned by me. A government funded by taxi service would still be more cost effective than empty buses. When I lived in another part of the country, that’s what they’d replaced the busses with due to lack of demand.
But it’s a complicated transition. Currently I mostly use my car and trailer to get heavy building materials, and recover architectural salvage. Sure, I could buy a new staircase and have it delivered on a lorry, but is that really better for the environment than dismantling an old one and taking a couple of trips to ship it my property? There could be solutions, such as municipal vehicle rental. But sometimes a car or van is the sensible middle ground between a bike and a bus.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Buses can have different schedules depending on the time. Here buses for example drive more often between 6-9, 12-13, and 17-19 o’ clock. Many places also have buses that drive well into the night.