• JohnyRocket@discuss.tchncs.de
    14024·
    6 months ago

    You can drive for 16 hours and still be in Texas, the european mind cannot comprehend this! <

    Yeah because driving 16 hours straight is stupid because you would just take the train and be driven 16 hours straight.

    Car centric infrastructure should have never been introduced.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
      36·
      6 months ago

      While public transport is undoubtedly fantastic, let’s not pretend that it’s a great option in many European countries. I’d love to take the train in the UK, but thanks to the Tories it would cost me more to take the train (when it works) than it would to drive and park.

      The key is public ownership of public transport.

      • WFH@lemm.eeEnglish
        102·
        6 months ago

        Public transport in Europe is often in a sorry state, but trust me, it’s nothing compared to the US. Here in France, a lot of regional trains are very unreliable at best but at least high speed trains on dedicated tracks are fine (very expensive, but ok).

        I don’t remember UK rail to be a shitshow and/or that expensive but my only experience is going to/from central London to/from neighboring counties and it was fine.

        But in the US, oh boy. About 15 years ago I was living with some roommates in Campbell, CA and we went to SF one day. 1h drive mostly on shitty concrete motorways, including probably around $5 of gas. They were heading north for a romantic getaway so I went back to Campbell by myself. It took almost 4 fuckin hours, on maybe 4 or 5 different private companies, and cost me like $25 to get back.

        Public transit in the US is so fucked up im almost convinced it’s by design.

      • shikitohno@lemm.ee
        62·
        6 months ago

        I think you just underestimate how awful public transport is in the US. Beating what’s available here is not a high bar to clear, especially when it’s nonexistent in many places. It can also vary pretty widely across and within regions. I imagine public transport in London is a different beast from public transport in Manchester, for example.

        When I was visiting Manchester in March, it was pretty great. I could get around the city via bus, tram or walking pretty easily, and trains between Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were all pretty clean, even late at night, and the most I paid for two round-trip tickets was £48.40 going to Leeds and back. Everything else was below £30 for two people, round trip.i Wherever I got off, I could get an Uber to where I was going for less than £10 if I didn’t feel like waiting for a bus, or there wasn’t a bus nearby. For a similar trip here, for one person going from NYC to Philadelphia and back would run me in excess of £100 with Amtrak making the trip in about 90 minutes, or closer to £30 round trip, but with each leg taking nearly 3 hours without any delays on NJ Transit. A 15 minute Uber here to work would routinely run me close to £20 each way, before accounting for a tip.

        Nobody was screaming in my face asking for “donations,” there weren’t people with amplifiers blasting music, or homeless folks left to stew in their own filth keeping entire cars unusable for anyone else due to the stench. Even walking about the cities at all hours of the night, I had a grand total of 3 people ask me for money in a week. Residents apologized a few times about how awful things were there, but it was absolutely lovely, even in the parts they thought were local embarrassments for allegedly being unbearably dirty or run down. Granted, it was nice and cool, so I didn’t get to see if Manchester gets the same lovely summer effect that NYC does, where every outdoor space smells like hot piss and garbage once the temperature clears about 27°C.

        Granted, spending a week in a city as tourists isn’t the same as living there, but from folks I know who’ve made the move, it was a massive upgrade in terms of things like public transit and general quality of life compared to life in the US or Canada. I ran the numbers, and it would actually make sense for me to take over a 50% pay cut if I could move there. Heck, it was cheaper for us to eat out for every meal for a week straight for two people and me buying several coffees out a day than it is for me to shop and prepare every meal at home and make all my own coffee here. Even if things aren’t as good as they used to be, they’ve still got us soundly beat in many regards.

      • dumblederp@lemmy.world
        42·
        6 months ago

        The UK just decided they’re not in Europe. The rest of Europe has better PT than the UK. In the UK it was cheaper to hire a van and drive to Exeter than to catch the train, absolutely ridiculous.

        • sassypablo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          6 months ago

          First mistake, going to Exeter. /jk

          Honestly the cost of rail travel in South Devon is eye watering. Went for a few days trip and had to rapidly rethink my budget after the first train

      • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
        162·
        6 months ago

        Even non-high-speed trains go faster than most car highways and don’t have to negotiate traffic.

          • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            6 months ago

            Sorry to hear neighbour. If it’s any consolation, on some of your highways, you can go hella fast.

            In Switzerland we don’t even have high-speed rail. We have at best pendular high-speedish trains but they are quite neat. We do pay a steep price for it but it beats being required to drive everywhere US-like (minus some exceptions).

            • The Menemen!@lemmy.world
              2·
              6 months ago

              Yeah, your highways are not great. But I don’t really like to drive, so I’d prefer you trains. :) What use are high speed trains, if they are 2 hours late?

    • Shialac@lemmy.world
      9·
      6 months ago

      I never get this argument of US Americans against public transport. Even in europe most public transport happens within one city, I don’t regulary drive to another country

      • DelightfullyDivisive@lemmy.worldEnglish
        161·
        6 months ago

        I think most Americans like the idea of public transport, and including a robust national rail network. The reason it doesn’t exist are the oil and automotive lobbies. (Mostly oil.). Poorly educated Americans (the ones wearing MAGA hats) are easy to manipulate by these groups, as well.

        • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
          31·
          6 months ago

          The MAGA people rarely travel outside of their county and think going to Applebees in the nearest college town of 5,000 is going to the big city. Why they hate it.

          They act like it their tax dollars when in fact most of them don’t work and sit around in their Methlandia towns on fake fibromyalgia disability claims.

      • moon@lemmy.ml
        2·
        6 months ago

        I’m genuinely curious if people actually use the phrase ‘US Americans’, or if it’s a reference to that Miss Teen USA contestant rambling about world peace

        • Thalfon
          1·
          6 months ago

          I spent a few months in Germany years ago, and “Americans” (Amerikaner) tended to be used to refer to people from the Americas (either NA specifically or NA and SA collectively) in my experience. If you wanted to say someone was from the US, you’d say something more like “aus den USA.”

    • ArcticAmphibian@lemmus.orgEnglish
      23·
      6 months ago

      The larger the area you have to cover with rail is, the larger the cost. The US is much more spread out in general than European countries - some people choose to live hours+ away from significant population centers. There’s no need to decide which system is inherently superior. Cars work for the US, trains work for Europe.

  • Altofaltception@lemmy.world
    12714·
    6 months ago

    It’s not that it’s unsafe to drive in Detroit due to crime, it’s just that the automotive industry lobbied hard to make the country car friendly, and that city faced the worst of it.

    • uis@lemm.ee
      126·
      6 months ago

      Original meaning - not a USSR or USSA. Nowdays - countries with worse quality of living.

    • Brutticus@lemm.ee
      11·
      6 months ago

      Kind of. The housing prices are rock bottom. there is also a sense of community that is utterly lacking in the airless suburbs. Seriously, there are some subs in places like Novi or Farmington that were built in the 80s and are completely lacking in sidewalks. Compared to that, some neighborhoods in Detroit have affordable homes, neighbors, and urban prairie. Seriously, Ive been to farms on land left to seed.

      Also, there is a wave of gentrification coming through… Mostly on the riverfront and along the Cass Corridor into Midtown. The Illitches and the Rocket Mortgage guy have both invested enormous quantities into fixing up that zone, and at least before the pandemic, there was really a sense that a recovery had begun. A lot of white people have been drawn to the area and a lot of old industrial or commercial have been redone into luxury apartments. And honestly, the corner of Jefferson and Woodward on a summer weekend is insanely nice these days.

      I want to point out that there are still rough scrabble areas in Detroit, like Brightmoor. But down by Hart Plaza? Wayne State? The Fox? You’ll be fine.

  • Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world
    3·
    6 months ago

    I live in Detroit and I don’t get why people are scared. Yeah, there’s a few scary areas, but the city itself is safe with a great nightlife scene.

    • Blackout@kbin.runOP
      1·
      6 months ago

      No one is scared in downtown anymore. But I used to live in downtown over 20 years ago and it was scary. Just walking down Woodward at night was dangerous but you look at it now and wonder how it ever was like that.

      • Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        My grandmother is convinced it’s still like that. She would not have let me go to WSU except it’s the only school in Michigan that offered a degree in Mortuary/Postmortem Science

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
    75·
    6 months ago

    That doesn’t sound like a good thing, at all, though?

    Why do people cheer for population growth?

    • Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee
      10·
      6 months ago

      In this case, it’s due to the way the infrastructure currently stands in Detroit. So many people moved out of Detroit years ago that 1/3 of the population is left to maintain the city. They need people to move back to generate money in order to rebuild.