• Marinatorres@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Usually it’s transit + walking + park-and-ride, not ‘giant garage under the market.’ When the space is for people, you don’t need to store cars there.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    1 day ago

    The worst part is when my fellow Americans are very “we tried nothing and we’re out of ideas” about it. Or worse, actively fighting any changes.

    • Serpent@feddit.uk
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      16 hours ago

      Holy shit… im in uk visiting. Had no idea this is what the internet is like now.

    • NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      Weird I’m in the UK and have the image… ah, forget that, while I’m not on vpn now I was earlier and it must have cached

  • LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Americans can understand if you phrase it differently.

    “You know how sometimes, you go to a big event, and the parking is so far away from the event that they have to ferry people from the parking lots to the event using a bus? Well, this is just like that, except you park at home.”

    • 18107@aussie.zone
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      1 day ago

      I refuse to take any kind of public transport. That’s why I carry my own elevator with me in case I need to enter a skyscraper.

      • LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Well, even when you park in the parking lot, you have to walk to the area where the bus stops in order to pick you up. For the sake of convenience, let’s call that area a “bus stop.” So, you simply need to find the “bus stop” near your home.

        • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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          2 days ago

          Okay but when you drive to the “bus stop” near your home, where do you park your pickup truck? And, are there multiple sizes of bus? If not, how will my community know that I’m the manliest man, if I don’t roll up in the biggliest vehicle?

        • MrSmith@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I actually lol’d. (not actually, but I’m in a better mood than I was before reading it, so it’s as close to ‘lol’ as it gets)

    • Luffy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Imagine McDonalds Drive in, but instead of everyone has his own car, everyone has 1 big car they ride in.

  • vrek@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    What’s funny is in my experience in the USA it’s not that there are not busses but they take SOO much longer. I had a job that was 2.8 miles away. It took 7 or 8 minutes to drive there(depending on if you hit the one traffic light on red). Theres a bus stop outside the company. There’s a bus stop on the corner of my complex. I looked up on the bus provider website how long it would take…9 hours each way.

    Years ago I was living in a different state, a friend was throwing a new years party in his college house and invited me. His college was 3 hours away. I thought about just taking a bus since obviously we would be drinking. I checked the bus schedule… It would take 2.5 days with 4 change overs each way.

    I ended up just crashing on his couch and drove home after I recovered from the hang over.

    Its just not feasible to take buses here due to how long they take.

    • redwattlebird @lemmings.world
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      17 hours ago

      Yep. It’s pretty depressing.

      A few years ago, I was in Texas with family and we wanted to visit NASA. My husband was adamant in taking the bus because my family are notoriously slow to get ready; fair enough. The bus ride took him 3hrs, which included a 20min walk from the nearest bus stop to NASA. It took us 40min to drive.

      Public transport is pretty hostile in the US.

      • vrek@programming.dev
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        17 hours ago

        Yeah, now imagine you work at nasa… You wouldn’t take the bus to/from work everyday would you?

        • redwattlebird @lemmings.world
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          17 hours ago

          Exactly! It’s nuts. It means that everyone at that facility drives to and from work. None take public transport… at one of the most prestigious engineering bodies in the world.

          • vrek@programming.dev
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            17 hours ago

            I worked at a company with about 1000 people at our location… I never saw anyone get off the bus to come to work(there was a bus stop infront of the building and on the side) and on good weather days maybe 3 or 4 bikes there… Everyone else drove.

      • vrek@programming.dev
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        17 hours ago

        I wasnt reading. It was a form on a website where I put in starting location, ending location and expected arrival time. It said what time I should go to bus stop and how long the trip would take.

    • NoXPhasma@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      9 hours? Jeez.

      Though, for 2.8 miles I wouldn’t even consider a bus. I’ll grab my bicycle and be there in 12 minutes.

      • vrek@programming.dev
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        19 hours ago

        True, totally doable and several people did so. There was even a bike rack installed on the premises.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        I have literally walked maybe twice that distance crossing the city central area of London at 4 AM (at time when there’s no Tube and just a handful of night buses once every half an hour or so and only for a few bus lines) coming from a night out and it took me a bit over 1h and I was drunk.

        Mind you, in cities in Europe you actually have proper sidewalks, even in suburban areas, so maybe the previous poster had not such conditions to just do it by walking. Also it was only the way back - the way in was done far earlier in the day when all public transportation was active.

        Anyways, the point being that even 2.8 miles is easilly a walkable distance, even drunk, as long as you have and hour or so to spare.

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        He probably misread the schedules because I refuse to believe 2.8 miles takes 9 hours. That is some serious “meandering”.

        9 hours!

        Frequency doesn’t matter if the route is somewhat direct, unless you say a 9 hour trip includes 8.5 hours of waiting on the bus?

      • vrek@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        Yeah I think it’s politics… “look we have busses and no one uses them we are just wasting money on them”.

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        There’s a bus stop just a few blocks from my house, but the bus only comes by once every two hours between 9am-5pm. There’s also a very stupid hub design to the routes, so if you live in City B, you need to take a bus 15 miles to the hub in City A, so you can transfer to the bus for City C, even though B and C are less than 5 miles apart.

      • Knightfox@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        In truth it’s probably a bit of both, there likely aren’t enough buses/routes and there are not enough buses on each route. Typically in most US cities, even State capitals, buses just don’t have enough usage to justify doubling or tripling them to either create more routes or reduce frequency. In some cities they do have super limited routes that may be meandering, but have less stops, or are short in length to maximize frequency, but generally this is for a very specific route.

        I used to live in a large US city in the south east that had a bus route that ran from a designated parking lot to a major industrial area. A one way trip for the bus was around 40 minutes (they had isolated bus only lanes with enforcement) and if you were to drive in traffic it would take 35 min to an hour. On the other hand my bus commute in that city would have been at least 2 hours to and from my workplace because it wasn’t that specific route.

        Similar situation when I was in college, the main campus was only like 2 miles long. My furthest class was about a mile away, but between waiting for the bus to arrive and then also waiting for it to drive across campus it was generally faster to just walk. After maybe the first week I never rode the bus again.

        • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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          1 day ago

          buses just don’t have enough usage to justify doubling or tripling them

          Smaller buses. Some cities just use vans for smaller routes.

          • Knightfox@lemmy.world
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            13 hours ago

            Sure, I’ve seen that, so you got me thinking on it. The largest city near me has 1 way adult bus fare at $2.20 one way and express bus fare at $3.00. The city’s internal minimum wage is $25/hour. To add an extra vehicle you would need a minimum of 8.3 passengers per hour of service to recoup costs of just the driver’s wages. This doesn’t include vehicle maintenance or all the other costs of employment (contributions to his 401k, contributions to the pension fund, the employer match for personal insurance, workplace insurance, etc).

            Realistically you probably need greater than 12 passengers per hour per extra vehicle you add and that’s on speculative hope that if you reach a certain coverage threshold people will use it rather than drive their own car. It explains itself why it’s a hard sell to politicians.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I went to a college that was 2.5 hours away by car and 6 hours by bus. And that six hours didn’t count the half hour it took to get a ride to the bus stop from my college. At least the bus let off in my hometown so my folks didn’t have to go far to pick me up.

  • death_to_carrots@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    There is actually a parking garage below. But you are really incentivised not to come by car, but by public transport. The tram tracks are just out of shot.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    In America, you have thousands in tiny cars. Weak and undisciplined, unable hold more than four people.

    In Germany, one big car on a long steel road carries thousands of people.

  • shininghero@pawb.social
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    2 days ago

    It still blows my mind when I look at Dutch intersections in Google’s street view. They managed to fit cars, bike lanes, and even commuter trains into their intersections without any issue.

    • TheAsianDonKnots@lemmy.zip
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      19 hours ago

      In the US, you can only choose 2 of those things. Add a third, someone is going to die.

      I have a buddy that went to Amsterdam. He’s a bigger dude and the FIRST thing he told me about his trip was “you have to fucking bike everywhere”. Sounded wonderful to me but his tone of voice suggested otherwise.

      • Kühlschrank@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I even don’t know what he’s getting at - I’ve never had access to a bike the many times I have been there. Transit and walking are also perfectly viable options and there are still cars outside the center

        • Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf
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          2 days ago

          Every time I visit Amsterdam, first thing I do is take a ferry to Overhoeks, grab a patatje with saté sauce and then proceed to walk through Amsterdam for 8 hours straight. Every time I take different routes. What I’m trying to say here is, it’s a damn fine walkable city.

        • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          It’s almost like it’s not black and white. Like I work in a major city. I can walk and bus everywhere I want. But I live in the “countryside”, as far as The Netherlands still has “countryside”, and there’s nothing in walking distance, a few local commodities in biking distance, but I have to take the car for anything serious (like a decent supermarket).

          • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            These kinds of posts are ignorant at best and elitist at worst. The reality is that mass transit is great for specific living conditions and locations. If you don’t fit into that then it’s worthless and you will need a car. Either these people somehow aren’t aware, or they think that everyone should live like they do.

          • Baŝto@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 days ago

            I have a similar situation here in a German village. There are a few supermarkets in 5km distance and more supermarkets + a train station in 10km. But I’m already on the denser country side with having 12 villages in a 5km radius.

            I think our bus service is okay as long as it’s not night, weekend or a holiday. With something coming every hour and for 3h half-hourly during afternoon rush hour. How is your bus service?

            • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              We don’t have a bus, but busses in my area are not fantastic. The coverage is very sparse, with few direct lines. So if you want to go one town over (5km), it might take you an hour or more, because you always have to go through the regional centre (small city).

              My town does have a train station, which takes me to the closest big city in 30 minutes (20km). That train departs every 15 minutes, except for weekends and nights. I can’t conplain too much about the train service, except that it m’s not very fast. But there’s plans to run a fast line as well, an “intercity”

              • TheAsianDonKnots@lemmy.zip
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                19 hours ago

                We have people that live in a state called Rhode Island, which is 16x smaller than the Netherlands. It’s insane to hear them bitch about not having a car.

                *I’m only comparing the Netherlands to a US state (not country) because Texas is 20x larger than the Netherlands.

    • FatVegan@leminal.space
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      23 hours ago

      They made a new tram lane in Germany, right at the border, and the tram crosses the pretty busy border. I was like: well that’s neat and solves a lot of problems. They put the tram lane on the road and now the tram sits in traffic too

  • Fabrik872@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    On a christmas markets or similar action i usually go to drink som alcoholic beverages how does it work in us if you have to drive home?

    • smoker@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Options are:

      Stay at a friends place

      Have someone drive you

      Get an uber/lyft/taxi

      Drive drunk anyway

    • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      There’s a reason we have so many drunk driving accidents. The responsible groups will designate one person to not drink at all so they can drive. You’ll see Uber or Lyft a little bit more now too.

      Basically everyone just gambles with other people’s lives.

    • @Fabrik872 @Sine_Fine_Belli Though we’re not the majority, there are plenty of USians who don’t live in sprawl hell and there’s probably some correlation between going to public downtown events and living and/or working near downtown. Suburbanites who commute to a downtown office are likely to be somewhat more familiar with transit options than their neighbors who never leave suburbia.