|
ASAPRockySituation posted:The point is this: there is a toxic euro viewpoint that Americans luv 2 drive, cars cars cars, guzzle my gasoline, etc. when it is simply a byproduct of how the population is dispersed and how impractical it would be to build out transit infra to all relevant points. The idea that Europeans do not use cars as much because they know better is preposterous. The stats bear out that in dense areas, Americans use public transit nearly as much as Europeans. This tells us that transit use is tied to population density far more than it is to "car culture". The stats also bear out that despite the monumentally better transit system, nearly as many European households have access to a car as do American ones despite Americans absolutely needing the cars and Europeans not needing them as much. To blame the culture is a correlation/causation issue that needed to be addressed. This is simply not true, because even in dense areas American cities make much more accommodation for cars
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 19:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 10:46 |
|
|
Ever since the start of the European project, it has been the utopian ideal to forge an European identity that supersedes the old national and ethnic identities. In place of bickering and sometimes hostile nationalities, Europeans would rise above these petty differences and find out that they have more in common with each other than what separates them. Only together Europeans can survive in globalizing world. EU has tried many different programs to this end, like the Erasmus program with its tracking of "eurobabies" born. But no one, not even the most intelligent technocrats in Brussels, had the faintest idea what would become the cornerstone of European identity: Stupid internet slapfights against Americans where the idea of homogenous country of Europe is alive and well!
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 19:31
|
|
|
Badger of Basra posted:This is simply not true, because even in dense areas American cities make much more accommodation for cars There's too much car infrastructure, but it is absolutely true Americans will use public transit as much as anyone else if the public transit is good. The problem is there are very few places in the US where the public transit is good enough that a car is more of a liability than an advantage. In the places with solid transit, you see very high usage. Few people are ideologically wedded to a form of transportation, most people want to get from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible. If that's a car, they drive. If it's a train, they'll take the train. And it's not like Europe has been public transit since time immemorial. A lot of places rebuilt as car cities after WW2 and didn't start reconsidering that and promoting public transit until the oil shock in the 70s. Amsterdam famously now is public transit and bikeland but was a car-choked wreck into the early 90s. There are plenty of US cities that were built for public transit and could relatively easily go back to it if the political will were there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 19:36
|
|
|
ASAPRockySituation posted:The point is this: there is a toxic euro viewpoint that Americans luv 2 drive, cars cars cars, guzzle my gasoline, etc. when it is simply a byproduct of how the population is dispersed and how impractical it would be to build out transit infra to all relevant points. The idea that Europeans do not use cars as much because they know better is preposterous. The stats bear out that in dense areas, Americans use public transit nearly as much as Europeans. This tells us that transit use is tied to population density far more than it is to "car culture". The stats also bear out that despite the monumentally better transit system, nearly as many European households have access to a car as do American ones despite Americans absolutely needing the cars and Europeans not needing them as much. To blame the culture is a correlation/causation issue that needed to be addressed. See, you got the right idea basically, but the causation is the other way. The American exurb lifestyle and infrastructure developed as a result of cars being seen as the transportation of the future. So the American infrastructure outside of the big cities (and you can look up white flight as an aside there) was purpose built to make cars the primary form of transportation, which unsurprisingly made public transport or walking and biking unfeasible. Most of Europe didn't turbofuck their infrastructure quite as bad, which is why you can (mostly) make do without a car if you're not in a rural area. Rural areas generally got car infrastructure in Europe too instead of public transportation, which reinforces car culture. And even city dwellers like my neighbours insist on driving daily, despite it being unnecessary in Copenhagen, as evidenced by me, my wife and my single mother not even having licenses.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 20:34
|
|
|
I think both sides have a point. Car culture is absolutely a thing in most of Europe, and plenty of people (especially in the suburbs) drive cars for their daily commutes, but at the same time there's an active movement (particularly among young, left-leaning people) to limit their use as much as possible. Additionally, many major cities have made serious efforts over the past few decades to become as car-free as possible.  I see plenty of these in the wild, freely translatable as '[again] one less car'. As Grand Fromage said, I think that's the main difference between the US and Europe, the political will to push back against car culture, at least in the cities.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:Goons' hatred of malicious "car culture" is really embarassing 
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 21:13
|
|
|
  If only the US had as developed and dense of a motorway infrastructure!
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 21:35
|
|
|
King Hong Kong posted:
This highlights how empty the western USA is, and how densely populated Europe (except Spain) is.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
Even the archtypical bike cities of København and Amsterdam used to be car cities until like the 60s. The mayors of both got death threats when they started limiting car traffic and putting bikes in first. Even in Stockholm that has the oldest and biggest metro train network in the Nordics still gets thousands of angry car people complaining every time they expand the Drottninggatan pedestrian only zone. I've only driven in Köben and Stockholm and it's a nightmare and I understand why no one does it (too much traffic). I'm told New York is similar.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 21:45
|
|
|
ASAPRockySituation posted:The point is this: there is a toxic euro viewpoint that Americans luv 2 drive, cars cars cars, guzzle my gasoline, etc. when it is simply a byproduct of how the population is dispersed and how impractical it would be to build out transit infra to all relevant points. The idea that Europeans do not use cars as much because they know better is preposterous. The stats bear out that in dense areas, Americans use public transit nearly as much as Europeans. This tells us that transit use is tied to population density far more than it is to "car culture". The stats also bear out that despite the monumentally better transit system, nearly as many European households have access to a car as do American ones despite Americans absolutely needing the cars and Europeans not needing them as much. To blame the culture is a correlation/causation issue that needed to be addressed.  Nobody is saying that Americans are genetically predisposed to driving cars or anything. Cheap gas + car lobby + cheap land => low density, car dependent infrastructure => public transport is more difficult and gets sabotaged anyway. New Jersey has the same population density as Netherlands (488 vs 508 per km2) but having been there, there's not much public transport. I had to use my cousin's car to go visit a friend there. Because even though there was some sort of train there, I'd never make it to my buddy's place, let alone back to NYC. The starting point of the discussion was that taxes would encourage more transit and walking friendly infrastructure and better fuel economy. Also I think you're misreading the stats somewhat. Yes most households have a car (it's mostly a product of income) but the other stats show that they're used half as often for commuting and overall much lower annual distance traveled. Grand Fromage posted:There's too much car infrastructure, but it is absolutely true Americans will use public transit as much as anyone else if the public transit is good. The problem is there are very few places in the US where the public transit is good enough that a car is more of a liability than an advantage. In the places with solid transit, you see very high usage.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:00
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:I don't disagree but what do you think would happen if Biden came out tomorrow and said "cars are bad, m'kay" on TV? I'd bet it'd be stove-gate * 1000. Of course they would flip out. And then in 20 years, the ones who live in cities that now have great transit would use it and never remember that Fox News told them to be mad about it ages ago because they'd be busy being mad about whatever more recent dumb bullshit they made up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:09
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:The mayors of both got death threats when they started limiting car traffic and putting bikes in first. Every time they expand the car-free zone somewhere, local traders complain, but it almost always ends up working out for them. Turns out that being situated in a nice pedestrian-only shopping street or district does wonders for foot traffic.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
Both the US and Europe went through the same trajectory for most of the 20th century where the advent of personal vehicles made the majority of old passenger rail lines go defunct and allowed for new low-density developments like never before that became the new normal in the return to normalcy after the war. We're also going through similar bounces back towards higher density urbanization right now, just Europe mostly started its bounce a couple decades earlier. I think the reason for that bounce is mainly that Europe started to run out of room faster since it has so many more people, and there's also a lot of small countries that ran out of room faster, and there's a lot of social and cultural force preventing people from just moving to where there's more room. It's much less of a deal for somebody to move from New Jersey to California than it is for somebody to move from Italy to Macedonia. Europe also had a lot of centuries-old cities and villages to encourage people to stay clustered around while the US had its centuries of encouraging populations to go out into newly available/viable land to develop it instead. I think even technology came out to make it more viable to live in the formerly sparsely populated areas of the US in ways that it just didn't for Europe. AC makes it possible to sprawl all over Arizona in ways that you still can't over the Alps. Europe has a lot of mountains. But while the state of things in the US is that we are still wrestling with trying to recreate density in ways that Europe was a little earlier, cars still have plenty of place on both continents, and I think a lot of that is very visible in how you can see how while French rail has clearly bounced back up from its nadir at like 1980, it still is nowhere near the amount of density of lines going everywhere that it had in 1910. There's no movement towards getting back to that. I think cars generally have a lot of security over that sort of midrange transit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:13
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:Even the archtypical bike cities of København and Amsterdam used to be car cities until like the 60s. New York is extremely similar to the point that the idea of driving into it or even through it fills me with dread. Going from CT to NJ by car it is extremely usual to go way out of ones way to take the Tappan Zee bridge instead of the I-95 through the Bronx and over the GW bridge. Going INTO the city by car is drat near unheard of unless you're doing something like going to some attraction in an outer borough (the zoo, the airports). Train is the way to go.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
I drove in Gothenburg and it's a worse experience than amputation. I've tried both.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2023 22:40
|
|
|
Grape posted:New York is extremely similar to the point that the idea of driving into it or even through it fills me with dread. "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." --Groucho Marx, Yogi Berra, Will Rogers, or possibly even Mark Twain, I honestly don't know which
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 02:59
|
|
|
Marx Twain
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 03:10
|
|
|
those red highways seem incredibly impractical
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 03:35
|
|
|
Archduke Frantz Fanon posted:those red highways seem incredibly impractical Impractical perhaps, but they tend to have absolutely stunning views.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 09:49
|
|
|
Pretty handy if you just want to drive the circumference of a country
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 10:28
|
|
|
I drive in NYC every day for work. It’s really not that bad. Just don’t drive to NJ during rush hour
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 11:17
|
|
|
Akratic Method posted:You may be thinking of VAT refunds, which some countries offer to tourists leaving the country. That's not really part of the VAT concept per se, just a tax incentive for foreigners to do a lot of luxury shopping on their vacation. This is probably what I was thinking of
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2023 17:51
|
|
|
King Hong Kong posted:
Not all of the roads in the Europe map are even dual carriageways, mind you; the A9 road through Scotland is pretty much all single-carriageway north of Perth, although the Scottish government would like to see it upgraded for safety reasons.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 00:49
|
|
|
Badger of Basra posted:This is simply not true, because even in dense areas American cities make much more accommodation for cars I live in an American city without public transport worth a drat and it loving sucks. I wish I could use a train or bus instead of sitting in gridlock
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 02:16
|
|
|
TinTower posted:Not all of the roads in the Europe map are even dual carriageways, mind you; the A9 road through Scotland is pretty much all single-carriageway north of Perth, although the Scottish government would like to see it upgraded for safety reasons. Yall still got carriages over there? Crazy
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 02:20
|
|
|
TinTower posted:Not all of the roads in the Europe map are even dual carriageways, mind you; the A9 road through Scotland is pretty much all single-carriageway north of Perth, although the Scottish government would like to see it upgraded for safety reasons. Yeah, that’s 100% not a 1:1 map (the E road one is showing theoretical numbering not the actual state of the roads) but I wanted to make the railroad network joke that sometimes gets made. Actually, the US map has some oddities/inaccuracies of its own re: limited access highways now that I take a closer look. King Hong Kong fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jan 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 02:28
|
|
|
TinTower posted:Not all of the roads in the Europe map are even dual carriageways, mind you; the A9 road through Scotland is pretty much all single-carriageway north of Perth, although the Scottish government would like to see it upgraded for safety reasons. Well yeah. Most of the Finnish ones not in the vicinity of the Urban areas aren't dual carriageways either.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 10:20
|
|
|
Issaries posted:Well yeah. Most of the Finnish ones not in the vicinity of the Urban areas aren't dual carriageways either. Yeah nor are like... any of the Norwegian roads that are on that map, and the Turkish network is also super wrong. Probably lots of other major issues too. Plus they're not on the same scale. It would be a pretty bad map if it were purpose-made to compare US to EU highway networks. This appears to be a more accurate map of highways in Europe (2017, so some issues in places with expanding networks like Turkey and Poland)  Russia's miniature dual carriageway network is surprising. It's not even dual carriageway between Moscow and St Petersburg? E: looks like that exact route actually did open sometime in the past 5 years -- 2019. Here's a 2021 map but the coloration is godawful and moreover makes some things impossible to see, like the Norwegian south coast motorway. 
Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Jan 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 10:32
|
|
|
TinTower posted:Not all of the roads in the Europe map are even dual carriageways, mind you; the A9 road through Scotland is pretty much all single-carriageway north of Perth, although the Scottish government would like to see it upgraded for safety reasons. Take a look at the mighty E 16, the major road between Oslo and Bergen in Norway. https://www.google.com/maps/@61.1512613,8.6520394,3a,75y,88.09h,72.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sH_7IhbwRKgYzkpjegPgJZg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 10:39
|
|
|
Offler posted:Take a look at the mighty E 16, the major road between Oslo and Bergen in Norway. The first map was just a "highway" map of Europe, the next two are "motorway" maps of Europe, which are all (?) two lanes in both directions. They both seem to be done with pretty good attention to detail, for every edge case I could think of to check, except that they're both somewhat out of date. What is missing in some countries, e.g. in France, is that some places also have other two-lane-each-direction-separated-by-median highways that are functionally all but identical to motorways but are not classified as such for some reason. Like in France, the ones which limit at 110kph instead instead of 130 kph... which means they're still faster than official Dutch motorways. Italy has at least some of these 110 kph roads too, e.g. Sardinia has a fair amount of dual carriageway+median roads that are functionally indistinguishable from 'official' motorways. I tend to specifically look for these in France since they're free and not like €5 per kilometer* like the absurdly expensive paid toll roads. *slight exaggeration, but the French paid autoroutes are insanely crazy compared to any other tollroad in continental Europe.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 10:45
|
|
|
110kph (well, 70mph) is the upper speed limit in the UK, although, for example, if you're going over the tops on the M62 you'll see a lot of stupid bastards putting their foot down as soon as they leave the speed cameras in the Manchester/Yorkshire section behind. The crosswinds on those moors are hard enough to deal with at 60; I'd hate to see what they'd be like at 80.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 11:14
|
|
|
* Googles "dual carriageway" * Oh, okay. Never knew what that was called.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 11:24
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 12:46
|
|
|
https://youtu.be/N9qYF9DZPdw
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 13:49
|
|
|
My wife and I have a car in our driveway, but we only use it every two weeks or less. I'm checking both boxes, just to gently caress with those maps. [X] Nature-hating dieseldriving German [X] Nature-loving public-transport-using eco-hippie
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 14:11
|
|
|
Saladman posted:Russia's miniature dual carriageway network is surprising. It's not even dual carriageway between Moscow and St Petersburg? The soviets invested a lot into a usable rail system so a lack of limited access highways* makes sense. I'd bet a lot of the other eastern block highways are capitalist constructions. *you commies
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 16:04
|
|
|
Some interesting splits here:
Of course the #1 factor in that map is "people in warm and sunny places go outside and don't sequester themselves to play DnD." Or you live in New York and theoretically have other things you can do.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 16:13
|
|
|
Judgy Fucker posted:Some interesting splits here:
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Do we even know how they got the data? I notice that many of the higher population states all have a lower rate. Could be other factors of course but what data is being used to determine the map/ranking? I'd be curious to know the methodology as well, but I'm also not too invested in the validity of a map of "states that play the most DnD." Just trying to extrapolate what I can from a fun map for shits 'n giggles.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 16:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 10:46 |
|
|
Judgy Fucker posted:I'd be curious to know the methodology as well, but I'm also not too invested in the validity of a map of "states that play the most DnD." Just trying to extrapolate what I can from a fun map for shits 'n giggles. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2023 16:32
|
|