Green - An environmentalist community

you’re gonna make bad faith arguments about me wanting to take cars away or whatever, even when i explicitly talked about the inclusion of car based transportation in equitable future transport solutions for non-urban areas

You also talked about how great it would be if car infrastructure didn't exist. Cars would be unusable without car infrastructure, so it follows that you want cars to stop being a thing entirely.

if you want to continue to insist that cities are yucky and bad, and intimate that not having cities is somehow a more equitable and realistic solution to the problems cities face than actually ameliorating the issues real people have right now, you can do that i guess.

Grossly inadequate and overpriced living space is an issue real people have right now. It's an issue that I myself have right now. Why do you think I'm complaining so much?

it still leaves like a third of all people in urban areas, which are still people who deserve equitable transport.

My idea of equitable transport is everyone getting paid enough to have a car, and no one living in a place so densely packed that there's not enough room to park it.

having strong public transit just by consequence of its utility makes less people need cars.

No, it doesn't, because public transit is useless outside of densely packed cities, and no one should be forced to live in a densely packed city.

these sorts of resources are extremely valuable for people, especially people living with disabilities, people who cannot drive, people who are poor, and people who are unhoused.

No doubt. You'll note that I never advocated that public transit be abolished, and that is the reason why. Ideally, no one would need it—no one would be poor or unhoused, and cars would be self-driving—but we don't live in that ideal world just yet.

given that you’ve accused me of ableism for pointing out in passing that food deserts exist

No, I accused you of ableism for expecting people to walk or ride public transit with heavy grocery loads. Like I said, I live next door to a grocery store, and even that is too far to walk with 100+ pounds of groceries.

i’ll just throw it back at you. what if you can’t drive? what if you don’t have a car?

Then you have a big problem, and public transit will only mitigate it somewhat, not actually solve it.

paratransit is public transit

I hadn't heard of that, but according to Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to work very well in practice. At any rate, I don't see how it's any more environmentally-friendly or space-saving than cars.

Why should it be in the hands of Uber, Lyft, Greyhound, Amtrak, and the airlines?

public transit isn’t those things?

You were talking about freedom of movement. Neither public transit nor transit-as-a-service gives you freedom of movement; only your own vehicle does.

there are actually pilot programs for public services like Uber and Lyft, fleets of cars that can transport people cheaply from place to place if they don’t have a vehicle in the city.

You have an interesting definition of “cheap”…

i’ve lived in cities all my life. never ever been pickpocketed. legit don’t know anybody who’s had an experience like that, don’t know where you got the idea that that’s some sort of common city living experience, other than by watching movies or something?

Simple logic. Wherever it's easy to pick someone's pocket and get away with it, there will be pickpockets, and where is it easier than a crowded public transit terminal where you can walk anywhere without being noticed?

busses kept going during the pandemic because people needed them

Yes, and it wouldn't have spread so quickly if not for that. The fact that people need buses is a problem.

cars are just more dangerous overall, and are extra more dangerous when lots of people are driving all at once, and where people walking on the street are common casualties of vehicle accidents. now, you could take that as an argument that everybody should drive everywhere to protect themselves against the constant threat of fast moving metal boxes

Actually, I take that as an argument that people and workplaces should be more spread out, and work hours should be staggered, so that there aren't so many cars on the road all at once.

public transportation objectively costs less energy to transport more people than cars do. that’s one of the reasons why a lot of climate policy groups advocate for its expansion.

You're contradicting yourself again. That only applies to mass transit, not paratransit. It's only true if everyone, or at least almost everyone, uses mass transit and neither paratransit nor personal vehicles. The only way people are actually going to use mass transit is if they have no other choice, yet you claim you're not advocating for taking that choice away. So, which is it?

people live in cities. lots of people. lots of them love it there, and do not want to leave the communities in which they have built their lives.

I can't imagine that. I can't imagine living in a city unless there's no other choice. That's like telling me that prisoners would rather live in their cells than be released. It's patently absurd.

And that's why I interpret your advocacy for city living as a threat to take that choice away.

this one really pissed me off

Then you know how I feel about people trying to take away my family's means of getting to work in a reasonable time, and living in some semblance of dignity and comfort.

We can talk all we want about the utility and value of public transit, but the Nazis didn’t want their victims to have it for whatever reason.

Indeed. Public transit did not grant them freedom of movement, contrary to your earlier claims. That's the point I was trying to make.