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FuckCars
Tried to post this yesterday, but lemmygrad was getting stuck on a bus in traffic with no BRT. I was a big fan of FuckCars on the other site, I wanted to create that community here. There's also a lot of intersection of resisting capitalism and cars. Cars a prime example of capitalism extracting wealth from the working class and trapping them in wage slavery to maintain it. Cars were popularized by Henry Ford, famous for being a good friend of Nazis. They kill thousands of people directly by collisions, and are a huge factor in killing everyone via emissions and climate change. Even EVs pollute either at a power plant, or the tires they use emitting particulate on the roads. Mining the required lithium to make every car electric would be incredibly extractive and difficult. They take up huge amounts of space to transport on average 1.3 people. Communities have been needlessly bulldozed to put up highways, and are then divided by them, causing more alienation and less community building. Cars also restrict mobility to those who can drive, both physically and monetarily. Someone without good eyesight or motor control is unable to drive, and that means it can be difficult or impossible to get around in car-centric cities. On the other hand, we have human-centric cities. Look at China pumping out high speed rail while America plays in the mud. Anyone who can move can ride a good bus or train. You see people face-to-face on a train, making you interact and grow community. Public transit is often more affordable than a car, and can be made free (really should be). Trains are miles ahead on efficiency compared to electric cars even, and trains can be much more easily electrified without need for a massive battery. Bikes can be used to close the gap from a train to a final destination, or all by themselves for medium range journeys. Get an ebike and you can even further extend how far you can ride, for a fraction of the resources, monetarily, space, and environmentally, of an electric vehicle. Down with cars, down with capitalism, solidarity to everyone on transit and foot, and extra solidarity to those forced into car ownership against their will.
>BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China's 62-day summer travel season has concluded, with the railways handling a record 887 million passenger trips between July 1 and Aug. 31, up 6.7 percent year on year, China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (China Railway) said Sunday. >During the period, the daily average number of passenger trips handled by the country's railways was 14.31 million, according to the company. TRAINS are the Best!
mastodon.scot
::: spoiler Wikipedia article on the new tunnel Kaisantunneli (Swedish: Kajsatunneln) is a tunnel for bicycle and pedestrian use in central Helsinki, Finland, serving as the main east-west cycling thoroughfare in the city centre. The tunnel is located directly underneath the Central Station, and joins the city's eastern and western cycling routes, cutting previous travel distance around the station by up to 600 metres (2,000 ft) and avoiding several sets of traffic lights, as well as removing much of the cycle traffic from the busy Kaivokatu street. Its western end connects directly to the Baana cycle path. The width of the tunnel is split roughly 50:50 between pedestrian and cycling lanes. The tunnel allows direct access to the station platforms, and connects with the separate pedestrian-only tunnel under the station. Additional cycle park for 900 bikes, as well as bike servicing facilities, will be opened in the tunnel later. Construction of the tunnel began in spring 2021 and was expected to be complete in autumn 2023, but in the end the tunnel opened to the public on 4 May 2024. The construction was especially challenging, on account of some old masonry and timber support structures underpinning the station, which were only discovered after construction had already begun. The construction cost c. EUR 33m, with the final figure exceeding the budget by some EUR 10m. The tunnel is expected to be used by up to 10,000 cyclists daily. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisantunneli) :::
[Photo credits: Not Just Bikes and 新星]
94 is built through a former prominent African American neighborhood. After seeing similar pics, it is incredible how nasty white supremacy can be if you look at how cities in the USA where changed after the 60s. Also, the Cathedral of St Paul is outlined as a reference.
www.youtube.com
YouTube user Drew Gooden made a great video and rant about regressions in modern car design from his perspective as a driver, with a large portion of the time dedicated to our favorite abomination: the Cybertruck. He also touches on those fucking brighter-than-daylight headlights that have been proliferating for several years now which anyone here, forced to own and drive a car to maintain the most basic existence, likely has seen in person. Alternate [Invidious link](https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=_S7GU9lDpq8)
Context -> This is in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The family turned down an offer of $50 million from property developers. Also, not a single shop, daycare, school, mall, community center, public park or hospital in a 10 km radius. It is awful.
Capitalism always wastes precious resources for the sake of profit.
Transcript: "We welcome global top music legend and entrepreneur Chris Brown to become the next FF 91 2.0 Futurist Alliance owner and Developer Co-Creation Officer. He will also take delivery of his vehicle at a future “Delivery Co-Creation Day” event. Mr. Brown hosted FF Founder and Chief Product and User Ecosystem Officer YT Jia at his Los Angeles home where they discussed FF 91 2.0’s features and highlights and officially began the Co-Creation process. Mr. Brown is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer, actor and businessman and one of the most iconic R&B singers of all time. His unique style has earned him prestigious recognitions, including a Grammy, as well as MTV Video Music, AMA, and BET Music Awards. #FaradayFuture #FF91 #FFIE #DeliveryCoCreationDay"
But no that'd be turbo communism, wouldn't it? Each charging station enjoys the freedom of potentially having its own app clogging up your phone *and* if it's a fucking Tesla station you better have a trademarked BazingaMobile (with le epic fart noises and higher chance of being trapped in it during an accident) or you're shit out of luck and can't charge there.
thisishell.com
>Sudip Bhattacharya talks about his article at HardCrackers.com, "Socialism or Suburbia." Sudip is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also a writer, organizer, and you can find his other work at outlets like Protean Magazine, CounterPunch and Reappropriate, and the Aerogram.
I've been wondering about that for decades. 
I'm assuming the non Donald Duck'd side of this was seriously pitched as a way to make  horny in a crude yet effective way so they buy in.
www.youtube.com
They are choosing to pay parents $300 each instead of just paying bus drivers better? Absolute nonsense
So I made a passing comment of "it's almost like private car ownership is a really inefficient use of space and resources" the other day, which I didn't really pay much mind to. But all the replies were either explaining the concept of public transportation as if I don't know that's the solution to private car dependence (not in a constructive way adding to my comment or anything, I got the sense that they were trying to explain the concept to *me*) and someone even basically said "well I'm sure you think urban sprawl is an efficient use of space then." Are the "normies" this oblivious to how anti-car sentiments work? Do they think we're against the *concept* of a metal thing with four wheels and not its effects on urban development and society? Why the hell would I be against public transit or pro urban sprawl if I hate cars? Cities before cars were invented had public transit and were tightly packed and walkable. You don't think I support that?
ecologise.in
cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/59233 > Really great description of the american sprawl. These issues eat away my soul every single day, and this guy wrote about it in 1973. > > Some of my favorite excerpts: > >The invention of the personal automobile, and destruction of public transportation, was a triumph of capitalist drug-peddling; suddenly, all at once, everyone’s personal mobility became dependent on a single, new commodity, gasoline. Without it, we are unable to function, since urban sprawl and suburbanization now means we can’t even walk to work if we wanted to. > > >“The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes .Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren’t restricted to asphalt roads.” > > >You’ll observe that automobile capitalism has thought of everything. Just when the car is killing the car, it arranges for the alternatives to disappear, thus making the car compulsory. So first the capitalist state allowed the rail connections between the cities and the surrounding countryside to fall to pieces, and then it did away with them. > > >These splintered cities are strung out along empty streets lined with identical developments; and their urban landscape (a desert) says, “These streets are made for driving as quickly as possible from work to home and vice versa. You go through here, you don’t live here. At the end of the workday everyone ought to stay at home, and anyone found on the street after nightfall should be considered suspect of plotting evil.” In some American cities the act of strolling in the streets at night is grounds for suspicion of a crime. > > >No means of fast transportation and escape will ever compensate for the vexation of living in an uninhabitable city in which no one feels at home or the irritation of only going into the city to work or, on the other hand, to be alone and sleep. > > https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1364150 >
Also, lemmy should raise the 1MB limit on pics