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As we have seen a rise of toxic behavior we have decided that it would be time for some rules. We would love other ideas too and feel free to discuss it here.

Also we are thinking about, to put in an Automoderation tool that could help us a lot. Because its currently not easy for us to scan every new comments and reports are rare currently. We want your opinons on that too, because its important to us that this community is based on the people here.

The shortlist that we have currently as idea for the Rules:

• Be Kind to each other
• No Hate speech
• Dont harass people
• No Racism, sexism and any other discrimination
• Dont attack other people just because they have differnt opinions (Stay on Topic)
• Do not double post

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:

• [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
• [article] for news articles
• [blog] for any blog-style content
• [video] for video resources
• [academic] for academic studies and sources
• [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
• [meme] for memes
• [image] for any non-meme images
• [misc] for anything that doesn't fall cleanly into any of the other categories

I have copied that idea from another community. I forgot which one so sorry!

Feel free to discuss that here, I would like that change because it makes it a lot easier

How do my fellow car-free people deal with moving heavy/bulky items without a car? What are the pros and cons of solutions you've tried?

I'm currently car-free in a city with decent public transportation (by American standards), but things are still very, very car-centric, and also a bit hilly. Living alone, I can manage weekly groceries with a backpack + 1 bag on each shoulder, but it's definitely not my favorite activity. The decent grocery stores are 1 mile (1.6 km) away, so a bit of a hassle to just go to more frequently. For heavy, shelf stable items, I usually try to get those delivered, but it's not always an option.

I also have 2 cats, plus I foster cats/kittens, so I very frequently need to transport animals to/from the vet. I have a backpack style pet carrier, but that doesn't cut it when I have to transport multiple adult cats or a mom + kittens.

I would love to hear other people's experiences, and the pros & cons of various options that you've tried. Some more detailed questions on my mind:

• Do you prefer something you can push or something you can pull?
• How annoying is it to transport when empty?
• How does it hold up to less than ideal weather?
• How does it handle stairs or curbs without a ramp?
• How does it handle poorly maintained sidewalks or unpaved surfaces?
• Is it well made/durable, or something that will probably break in a year?
• If it has pockets or segregated compartments, have those been handy or just annoying?
• Are there any uses that it's not a good fit for?

Edit: any non-bike options? I don't have the space to securely store a bike in my unit, and my building doesn't offer any secure bike storage. Due to all of the hills, I would have to get an electric bike, and was hoping to find some options in the range of $50-$200, maaaaybe $500. For example, I've been looking at collapsible carts/wagons, and pet strollers.

Hey everyone,

I'm just here to vent a bit, even though I know words won't change anything.

I'm from Saudi Arabia, where public transportation is almost nonexistent in most cities, including mine. I think Riyadh has some options, but overall, it's just not popular. So, like many others, I have to drive every day and fill up the gas tank weekly, if not more often. I absolutely hate wasting time driving.

When I say there's no public transportation, I mean it, no buses, no metro, nothing. There's a railway, but it only connects a few cities, not all.

Sure, Uber or taxis are available, but let's be honest, who can afford that for an entire month? Owning a car is much cheaper in the long run, especially for running errands for the family.

Driving stresses me out, especially at night with the bright headlights and fast speeds (most roads are 100 km/h, or about 62 mph). My daily commute to university takes an hour, and the traffic is terrible. I have to stay fully alert the whole time to avoid accidents, so by the time I arrive, I'm already exhausted, and of course there's no time to rest because classes start right away. I lose two hours every day just driving, time that I could be using to read, chat with friends, or even watch a movie if I were on public transportation.

I don't really have a solution to this problem, but does anyone else? It's becoming unbearable. Just to add, I don't have any close friends to carpool with. I once thought about sharing the driving with someone, but most of us have other commitments before and after college. In my case, I also have to drop my siblings off at school and pick them up later.

Living in a walkable city means my weekly shop is a few hours of walking or biking instead of being stuck in traffic, and I'm only mildly tired afterwards since I use a bike with pretty large pannier bags. Since I have no car related costs I can afford more fresh food, a healthier diet, and I can afford to be more choosy about the ethics of what I buy. There's a twice weekly farmers market about a ten minute walk away, and quiet walks through parks to get to the shops. Living somewhere with car centric infrastructure, as I used to, this lifestyle was far less feasible.

Have your experiences been different with moving to walkable/bikeable cities? Any questions or points to be made? I'm not very up on the theory side of city planning, but my experiences line up with the whole "fuck cars" thing.

I was surprised that even here in Portland, OR…not far from downtown…I was on my bicycle and pulled into a small shopping center. I guess you could call it a strip mall, but it was pretty small and completely surrounded by small residential streets.

So imagine my surprise when (a) I couldn't find any bike parking in front of the main grocery store. I had to walk entirely across the parking lot and over to the side of a dentist's office. Then (b) I went back to the grocery store and discovered it had no indoor seating. There was plenty of room from what I could tell—they had an entire wall dedicated to greeting cards and another entire wall dedicated to flowers. But nope, nobody can sit here—even though they have a significant large deli! They did offer a very bland outdoor seating area over on the side of the building, but given it's been windy and a bit drizzly I decided against it. (Also it was deserted for obvious reasons.)

Folks, I am so weary of bike/pedestrian-unfriendly retail. The accommodations car drivers get that we don't continues to astound me—even in areas which are presumably "progressive". 🤨

I can talk the talk, but this is really going to test that ……

I live in a fairly walkable town outside one of the most walking and transit oriented cities in the US. I’ve always been a transit and walkable communities advocate.

My town is centered on a train station/bus/taxi/scooter/bicycle hub and we have a traditional walkable “Main Street” with shops and restaurants that we pedestrianize for the summer. We have a new rail trail that will eventually connect to a statewide network, a riverwalk and even kayak rentals in the middle of downtown

Higher density housing is centered on the downtown, dominated by 4-6 story apartment/condos, including residential over commercial. Works great. Surrounding that is a belt of 2-3 story multifamily houses, townhouses, and small apartments. I’m the first street zoned for single family, but I can still walk to the town center, and take the train into the nearby major city.

I even spoke up in favor of new statewide zoning, requiring “as of right” zoning for large apartment buildings near transit …… maybe you see where this is going …..

When I was out walking my dog this morning, I saw construction …. apparently there are a couple huge 6 story apartment buildings going in just a couple blocks away. It all seemed like a great idea until it was my neighborhood. It was a great idea when things were grouped by size. But now it’s a behemoth towering over three deckers and the like, and even looming near single family housing.

I’ve “talked the talk” but really don’t know if I can “walk the walk”. This really seems excessive for the neighborhood.

What do you think? Could you still support higher density housing when it means something twice the height going into your neighborhood, hundreds of tenants where now it’s 3-10 per building? What would you do when you get what you were asking for but it’s in your neighborhood and way out of scale?

How are kids supposed to become capable and independent if they have to be chauffeured everywhere?

First off, I want to point out that I am totally on team /c/fuckcars. I highly believe in transit, walking, and biking.

That being said, I think it's fair to say that:

1. Cars aren't fully going away anytime soon
2. Even in our wildest dreams, it still makes sense for cars to be usable in some way, just that the other transport methods are highly prioritized.

So the discussion I want to have is about parking garages, and the hate I see towards them from the urbanist community.

I feel like parking garages vaguely align with urbanist views, because they are high density, and they allow someone to drive to a general area after which they can do the rest of their transportation via other methods.

To put it into perspective, I'd rather have 1-3 dense parking garages in a neighborhood than have street parking along all the roads plus wide open parking lots around grocery stores and whatnot.

I understand this is a lesser of the two evils discussion but it seems to me like parking garages are the clear winner.

One of these pulled up at my workplace today and I can not get over how stupid they look and that got me thinking, who thought making a shittier version of an Odyssey was a good idea.

This thing can't be useful as a truck, can't seat as many as a van, costs $50k and burns more gas then an Odyssey (10l/100km hwy vs 8l/100km hwy). Does anyone who drives these things think they are hot shit?

And we had a community feedback session on active transport accessibility last year which highlighted some key roads that could adopt bike lane infrastructure. One of these roads is scheduled for an upgrade but no allowance for bike lanes was considered.

The road was considered a danger to vehicles because of pot holes, not because there's barely any room to drive in a two way street. Forget cycling; there is no room to even squeeze between parked vehicles and moving cars, and a lot of them have a murderous attitude to cyclists.

We have 3 counsellors for a bike lane, and 3 against (citing exceeding budget, safety and accessibility concerns regarding loss of on street parking). There was a swinging counsellor who initially voted for the bike lane in one meeting, but then ultimately voted against in the next meeting because the bike lane went against the council code of conduct (going against majority of the resident's wishes to keep on street parking).

I'm just frustrated... My area is so anti everything except for cars, and it's so close to public transport and the city (less than 6kms). It's actually ripe for some decent active transport infrastructure but unfortunately cycling, for some reason, is seen as a 'rich' person's activity even though their super utes cost waaaaaaay more than what most people can afford.

At the last council meeting, there was so much hostility from the car owners, saying that getting rid of on street parking for cycling infrastructure was a waste of money, would stop deliveries and maintenance vehicles, and creates an unsafe environment where you'd have to walk 500m in the dark to your car. Any time cycling was mentioned, they'd yawn loudly or shout their opinions.

My local council has also declared 'a climate emergency' but actively working against cycling treating it like a hobby, rather than a legitimate form of transport. Stop the world, I want to get off.

Rant over.

Is there a difference, and what?

I’ve been reading about the “15 minute city” idea, and it is both fascinating and brings back good memories. I’ve lived in a few neighborhoods of Boston, where my biggest use of a car is finding some place to stash one long term. I had all my daily needs in a short walk, as was a subway station. Combine that with a monthly pass and the freedom to go anywhere was fantastic. I know people in NYC with similar experiences, including several who never had a reason to learn to drive. My oldest is at college and on experiencing campus life, commented similarly. I hope y’all get to experience this some day

However the Boston area has focussed on” transit oriented development “ for the last few decades. They use zoning and other development tools to encourage mixed neighborhoods with more housing, more retail, and even more office space focussed on transit hubs. It’s not just a train station but each is a “hub”, centering other options including bus routes, taxis, trails, cycling, and other personal transportation. This is a lot of what makes a “15 minute city” possible. Now we’re extending it to Eastern Massachusetts, where any town convenient to transit needs to have similar zoning actively supporting transit oriented development.

These two concepts seem very similar, except for the special case of college campuses. What’s the difference, or is it just evolving terminology? Which is better? Are there strengths of one approach that need more attention in the other?

When standing, do you generally hold onto the bars or the loop handles attached to the bars? What did you do this morning if you were on one?

E: Sounds like bars are the popular option here too, for many reasons. Hygiene was a big one I hadn't initially considered. Thanks for answering everyone!

Greetings from Athens, Greece,

A city with no sidewalks, no bicycle routes, lots of car traffic everywhere and awful public transport.

I was walking with my sister today and she found me walking in the middle of the street dangerous. So, I explained that this is my way of fucking with drivers. They have to slow down and wait for me to make way for them to pass me.

I usually do this in the neighbourhood streets where drivers usually are not speeding, so I will be able to dodge them in time if I need to.

All this discussion got me wondering what else I could be doing.

I was wondering what other methods people are employing. So, how are you fucking cars? Are you organized? Are you a rogue individual?

I'm about to get a motorbike and, while this is in no ways reasoning for getting the bike (it's pretty much entirely for fun), it's had me thinking a bit about the social impact of motorbikes/scooters, especially if they were widely used (like they are in India, South-East Asia, and a couple other places) for commuting.

They're obviously more efficient in many ways. Less fuel usage, less material required to manufacture and transport, less space required both when driving and for parking, less infrastructure maintenance cost, etc. However, they're less efficient for all these things than the solutions mostly advocated by this and similar communities - namely public transport, cycling and walking. All of which are significantly better.

In contrast to those alternatives, though, motorbikes need basically no infrastructure development to be used, so it would be far easier to make incremental progress with individuals riding a bike instead of taking the car, rather than requiring organised political action.

Specifically for the USA and, to a lesser extent, the more similar countries like Canada and Australia, it's probably also more socially acceptable to not be riding public transport with the plebeians, or having to do physical exercise. And you can easily overcompensate with a massive bike, while still being far better than the massive cars coming out of the US - a litre bike is big, while a litre car is tiny. Obviously this isn't a 'good' reason, but it does seem to be a real consideration.

The main counter-argument I can think of is safety. But if you look at the countries where motorbikes and scooters are common, they seem safer than riding a motorbike in Western countries (anecdotally, from people who have ridden there on trips but wouldn't think of it at home; if anyone can find statistics for it, I'd love to see them). I'd say this is because of their prevalence. You'd get rid of the selection bias for risk-takers, and for high-power bikes. You'd also reduce the issue that car drivers aren't aware of motorcyclists, and often don't notice them. Any collision that does happen would also be more likely between two motorbikes, which would be less deadly than a motorbike and a car. And if we transpose this prevalence of motorbikes to a western country with stricter regulations around licensing, required safety gear, road rules, etc., surely this would be even less dangerous than it is in those countries.

Also, the safety argument seems quite similar to the safety argument for large SUVs for ferrying kids to school. Inside the car, you're safer, but that's at the cost of safety and health of those outside the car, as well as all the other negative effects we're all aware of. Obviously it's not quite to the same extent, but it just strikes me as similar.

So, those are my opinions, which ended up a bit longer than I was expecting... But the reason for posting is that I'd love to hear yours. Do you think largely replacing cars with motorbikes would be beneficial but insufficient, infeasible, or do you think it would actually be worse?

There should be no question that oil-based car-centric cultures are unsustainable for the environment, and in some extremes like the US simply result in terrible city layout. No disagreements here, I hope.

But there's something I've never seen addressed, and it's how fucking miserable having to use public transport can get if the people you're sharing it with are simply rude.

You've just finished your 8,5 hours workday. Work was extremely dull, but even if it wasn't you could have barely got anything done anyway because there was were construction works right outside the office, and the hammering and drilling is still echoing in your ears. You need to get home at the other side of the city, and you don't have a car nor the money to take a taxi, so you take a bus. Can you finally relax away from that disgusting noise? Well, there should be no reason for anything being excessively loud, other than perhaps some vehicle's motor. Except that fuck you.

It's the year 2023 of the current era, someone has put 300€ into buying a last gen Xiaomi - but apparently they didn't budget appropriately, because rather than buying earbuds, that someone has decided to share with everyone else the sound of non-stop Youtube shorts. Apparently everyone else seems to have had a more sensible shopping list, because they start taking out their earbuds or headphones. Rather than, you know, have the person being annoying silence their phone.

On a different day, you sigh in relief when you find the bus near empty. Less numbers means less chances for disturbances, of course, you can even go at the very end of the bus to be alone. Someone enters the bus, talking through her phone. She stays near the entrance. There shouldn't be issues here, right? Normal people normally talk through their normal phones all the time. But does she need to SHOUT when she does it? Does someone in the literal opposite end of the bus need to hear all about her annoying kids and her annoying husband and her annoying life? Wouldn't she rather save herself the pain of a sore throat the next morning?

You take the bus again next week. There's a tough looking guy a seat in front of you. He is actually a polite person though, because he is using headphones. Not everyone seems to share the same impression, because two old women have clearly decided not sitting immediately near to him, to the point that one of them will take the seat next to you and the other one will stay up, just so that she doesn't have to share a seat with the other guy. No problem with their dumb prejudices yet. You do have a problem, however, when they start increasing their tone of voice further and further, as if you weren't right next to them, nor trying to read, nor blasting your headphones in a vane attempt to not to hear their rambling. Suddenly, two seats are freed up up ahead, directly facing the tough looking guy. You're finally about to find bliss, you think, as this lady who saw Tutankhamun be born surely needs a seat for her frail, old legs. But no. Their fear of young, fit men with cheap shirts is stronger than their desire to actually sit together, to the point that when you suggest to them to take the seats up ahead so that they don't have to shout to your ear they get offended.

I lived for some years in a city with great bus and subway infrastructure, but very early on I had to stop taking the bus because the people using it were indifferent to the fact that they were sharing a public space, that they don't have the right to make it as miserable for everyone else as they see fit. Do not dare to try and make them behave with some consciousness either, because it'll be a toss up between them actually recognizing the issue and doing better or actively turning into willing assholes.

Almost never had this issue in the subway, though, and I don't know why despite it being far more packed. Only exception was one night when an English football team was at the city, and so were its hooligans. I've used train far less, but I don't remember it being a problem either. People being annoying is obviously a cultural issue, we aren't naturally wired to always strive to be little shits. But when being little shits is the norm, having to share a space with everyone else becomes misery.

What would you do to incentivize good public manners, and to prevent antisocial behavior, at any level or scale?

I'm trying to use my car less and bike to places where I can. I've thought about getting an e-bike to extend the range of places I can bike to, but one things that's holding me back is what do I do with it while at the store? If it were just my crappy normal bike I wouldn't really worry too much about someone stealing it, but if I'm gonna spend a few hundred on an e-bike I am nervous about leaving it unattended.

What are your thoughts?

To explain my question, and why I'm asking it:

I've had this debate in the past with someone who was anti-car but didn't really know why other than that it was popular in his social circle.

I'm distinctly curious what a solution for unusual travel habits would be without cars.

My situation is thus; I rather frequently do cross-country, round trips. Simple enough, right? Well, it gets more complicated than that. I show dogs. I need to take myself, potentially a friend or two, and on average 4 dogs several hundred miles, along with all the equipment.

For a fun experiment, this is the details of the show that I'm currently planning this month:

• 4 hours from my house by car
• 2 humans, 4 dogs
• 10 36" dog crates
• 1 36" folding grooming table
• Extra equipment that would fill a large suitcase, roughly speaking.
• two small containers of clothing
• cooler of dog food (frozen)
• vault of dog food (kibble)

I drive a Honda CRV for reference, 31mpg average.