this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
872 points (96.9% liked)
Technology
59588 readers
3051 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Question is what is the population density where you live?
If it's over 1,500 people a square mile, I get it. Cars suck and they screw things up for you while making relatively little sense. Any mass transit can be reasonably highly utilized with that volume of people. Meanwhile out-of-towners with their cars really screw with your day to day life.
But for places that are, say, 200 people a square mile, cars are about the only way things can work. So hardcore "we shouldn't have cars" rhetoric is going to alienate a whole bunch of people, for good reason.
The vast majority of people who are anti car are anti car centric urban environments. Noboby is expecting a small town of 300 people to build a tram, we are expecting places with congested highways to build transit instead of "adding one more lane to solve traffic forever"
Interestingly, I lived in a small town of 3,000 people and up until the 1950s it had a trolley to the nearest small city, which then had trains that took you to the big city, and from there you could go anywhere.
But now the trolley sits in the town square as a monument, mocking everyone as they drive by.
Sure, and I can believe it, but the rhetoric is not so well targeted or scoped.
"we move away from car-[dependence], though."
Is not going to be seen with the implied nuance by a large chunk of potential audience, and as stated may create opponents out of folks that really wouldn't care at all either way.
We shouldn't change our statement if they wouldn't care at all either way.
They wouldn't care if they knew you only were talking about cities they don't go to.
But they do care and fight you because they think you mean their life. This means they vote against your interests because they think their interests are threatened, even if they aren't.