Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
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Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
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No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
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No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
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No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
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No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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Portland where I live seems to be in a weird spot where the people at the top are trying to push towards transit, bikes, and pedestrians. Unfortunately they're pushing against decades of built infrastructure and a general culture of cars, cars, cars. There's also a metro area that isn't always in sync with the City of Portland proper on prioritizing non-car modes of transportation. It's at least good to see some good people at the top.
Portland doesn't really have the density to put in many more trains just because of cost. However, where it does have money is in two spots: upgrading bus service to better frequency, time of day, and facilities. That has been happening recently with one high traffic corridor. I'd also like to see some way to reach suburbs that are somewhat far away from a frequent bus line, but have many low income people who don't have a car.
How new would you say this approach is, where people at the top are making Portland less car-centric? (are we talking 5 years or 20 years?)
How successful and popular would you say the changes so far have been?
It started around the 70's with Portland's freeway revolt. There had already been some push back against one freeway by prominently black neighborhoods, but this was a more powerful movement from the city as a whole. One planned freeway that would have taken out 1% of Portland's housing was canceled, the Mt. Hood Freeway. Another proto-freeway that ran along the downtown waterfront was ripped out and replaced with a smaller boulevard and a strip of parkland, now the Tom McCall Waterfront Park after a governor who was instrumental in getting in built.
The federal money that was to go to the Mt. Hood Freeway was instead put towards the first 15 miles of track of the MAX light rail train. Since then, it's been extended to almost 100 miles and 5 lines. Bicycle advocates don't just have the ear of city council, they are city council. Portland's been building out bicycle infrastructure ever since the 50's. It's no Amsterdam, but we're decades ahead of most cities in the US. The area that I live in, Central Eastside, is within a safe bike ride of downtown Portland. Biking in isn't too different from driving in and parking time wise, plus I save a lot on having a car, paying for fuel, parking, etc.