Search Results
7/11/2025, 10:49:30 PM
>>510114384
>You may not argue that they are more free.
Sure you can. You're limiting
>freedom
to mean
>ability to choose destination and set timetable
but the freedom granted by train transit is in other areas. Trains/good mass transit are the freedom to not buy a car; not get a registration from the government, not pay for insurance, not pay for inspections, not pay taxes (on fuel or the vehicle itself) and to not have to take any concern for the vehicle itself. That's also pretending that cars can go to any point on the map, but they are also constricted to the supporting infrastructure; in a good transit system, the mass transit still gets you 90% of the way to most places you'd want to go, rather than 99% of the way with a car.
The freedom of taking the subway in New York, for instance, is that I only have to pay for a metro pass and once I get off the train I don't think about my transit again. I don't have to park it, don't have to pay to park it, I don't have to maintain it, I just ride it and once I'm done it goes away. My tradeoff for that is the train shows up on its own timetable instead of mine and I'll usually have to use some secondary method to make the last bit of travel. And the final benefit is that public transit will keep working even when I'm old and unsafe to drive. Since someone else is driving, I can ride with no worries even with cataracts and a 500ms reaction time.
In most of America you can drive a car nearly everywhere, but you have no freedom to decide not to buy a car since the same system that makes cars so convenient also makes all other forms of transit so difficult as to be impossible. You are free to drive but you must drive.
>You may not argue that they are more free.
Sure you can. You're limiting
>freedom
to mean
>ability to choose destination and set timetable
but the freedom granted by train transit is in other areas. Trains/good mass transit are the freedom to not buy a car; not get a registration from the government, not pay for insurance, not pay for inspections, not pay taxes (on fuel or the vehicle itself) and to not have to take any concern for the vehicle itself. That's also pretending that cars can go to any point on the map, but they are also constricted to the supporting infrastructure; in a good transit system, the mass transit still gets you 90% of the way to most places you'd want to go, rather than 99% of the way with a car.
The freedom of taking the subway in New York, for instance, is that I only have to pay for a metro pass and once I get off the train I don't think about my transit again. I don't have to park it, don't have to pay to park it, I don't have to maintain it, I just ride it and once I'm done it goes away. My tradeoff for that is the train shows up on its own timetable instead of mine and I'll usually have to use some secondary method to make the last bit of travel. And the final benefit is that public transit will keep working even when I'm old and unsafe to drive. Since someone else is driving, I can ride with no worries even with cataracts and a 500ms reaction time.
In most of America you can drive a car nearly everywhere, but you have no freedom to decide not to buy a car since the same system that makes cars so convenient also makes all other forms of transit so difficult as to be impossible. You are free to drive but you must drive.
6/21/2025, 5:48:25 AM
>>508158086
>When building houses, they just went and sprawled it,
This is the reason. People like being in places worth being in, and sprawl ain't it. When there's a sudden bumrush somewhere, it seems like the developers all think it's magic dirt, like people are going for the smell or something. Property prices spike in cool places. Suburbs and sprawl are nowhere, no matter where they are.
>When building houses, they just went and sprawled it,
This is the reason. People like being in places worth being in, and sprawl ain't it. When there's a sudden bumrush somewhere, it seems like the developers all think it's magic dirt, like people are going for the smell or something. Property prices spike in cool places. Suburbs and sprawl are nowhere, no matter where they are.
Page 1