A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
It’s so depressing. Our city in Australia had such a good robust tram network and they ripped it all out because they hired an American urban planner that promoted cars is the future. Now instead we have a long car tunnel named after the Lord Mayor that was responsible for it.
Brisbane! Largest act of public vandalism in history, pretty sure it was the largest tram network in the southern hemisphere
in the southern hemisphere
On a side note: I'm always amused by grand claims that get ever more specific.
"the largest in the southern hemisphere's third biggest metropolis that has a giant guitar with at least three strings and a large pineapple"
Remember to ~ask~ demand grade separate transit, folks!
Fyi: ~~ask~~ ⟶ ~~ask~~
Weird it renders right on my app/device. Good to know!
I’ve always read that freeways are too steep and turns too sharp for rail, but Brightline says newer European trains are light and powerful enough to make it up the Cajon Pass in the median of the 15, so let’s stop screwing around with a single track for trains in the median. Just take the leftmost lane in each direction. Most of the cost is right-of-way acquisition; let’s use the one we already have. It’ll be better than nothing.
The interstate standard max grade is 6% and that's only used when there's no other option over mountains. The limit for standard passenger trains seems yo be 4-5%. So it's not that different, the vast majority of the interstate corridor could support passenger trains. Not freight trains through, those need a much gentler grade.
The US has essentially built a railway network with the interstates, it's just paved over and less efficient.
Also for the extreme cases, don't forget cog railways. The steepest one is Pilatus railway with maximum gradient of 48%. Good luck trying something like that with a car.
What's a streetcar? A tram?
Yepppp
Think electric busses, on rail tracks imbedded in the street.
Yeap that's a tram.
Traffic, pollution, and the cost of owning a vehicle wouldn't be such big factors in day-to-day life. I'm sometimes floored at average commute times, it adds up to years of your life spent sitting in traffic. Not to mention car accidents.
Come to Melbourne, Australia. We have trams .
I'm always impressed how this point is usually happily ignored in the US. You had a sane public transport network ffs. You destroyed it on purpose to now pretend it's not possible.
I saw a stat going around a couple years ago that back at the streetcar peak, you could travel from like NYC to Madison,WI entirely by street car (I'm paraphrasing; can't remember the exact cities.) Does anyone know the stat I'm talking about? Would love to find the source