“Small price to pay for the freedom to travel”
-An actual thing that’s been said to me before when I brought up other environmental issues
Nothing says “freedom” like a tool that costs tens of thousands to buy and thousands every year to maintain and use.
Meanwhile I can amtrak to DC for $30 round trip 🤷
From where?
This statement doesn’t make much sense without context.
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It varies a huge amount. You can get DC to NYC tickets for under $50 if you buy at the last second. Most trains don’t fill up and they basically give away the remaining seats with like 8 hours to go.
I’ll have to remember this 🤔
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58cent is IRS estimate which is under estimating the cost inherently due to state bias.
Also, not even accounting for crazy car prices recently
And parking and sitting in traffic
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What costs are you adding for a train…
Asking for a friend
Sure, but I’m not disclosing my location on Lemmy. 🤷
I’m sure a bit of diddling on their site could give you an idea of how far $X will get you.
Our freedom to travel was stolen from us and sold back to us
“Small price to pay for the freedom to travel”
Well, they pay a small price for their freedom to travel. It’s everybody else that has to suffer the externalities of their choices.
Let’s tax antisocial behavior, so that these externalities are internalized. Carbon tax, vehicle weight per passenger tax, vehicle volume per passenger tax, etc.
‘Be careful now, you’re starting to sound like a communist.’ they say.
Seriously though, you’re right, we should do all that. Switching over to EVs won’t solve very many problems. Everywhere needs to have fewer vehicles in the road and that’s public transit.
Fuck them.
They also call me a communist now because I think a 40 hour work week should put a basic roof (efficiency on your own or maybe a basic 2br with a roomie) over your head no matter what you’re doing.
Turns out the “Red Scare™” will always return whenever capitalism starts fraying at the seams to keep people from exploring even the slightest reforms.
40 hour work week
Hell with that, make it more like 20…
Can we just get some real public transportation options in the USA? I’ve visited Washington D.C., Boston, and New York City recently, and I’m in love with the subway (etc). Where I live would still require a car, but afaik, none of the major cities around me have anything more than a lackluster bus system.
Best we can do is another lane on the highway. That should fix the problem!
Ok, hear me out: What if we were to dig a system of narrow tunnels under the city, and then let people drive through them. Of course, cars would need to be on some form of automated tracks to make it safe. Then you could link up multiple cars and make long lines of cars following the tracks to the same destination.
It’s a brand new concept, I know, but modern problems require modern solutions. Maybe we can sell hats and flamethrowers to generate support.
(/s in case it wasn’t obvious)
This is a great idea! It might work if you give everyone fake steering wheels and pedals.
Trains.
Man, that would have been great 20 years ago.
If not now, when?
This is mostly just me being a doomer, paraphrasing from The Newsroom.
It wasn’t the plastic straws after all?
I’m shocked, shocked.Plastic straws are still very harmful for many sea animals and are apart from that entirely unnecessary (unlike tires).
As I read on masto, we should replace the tires with steel to stop the plastic pollution.
Of course to protect the road that would also have to be steel. And we’d need to link all the vehicles together to make best use of the limited steel road surface.
(It’s trains)
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And here I was walking to work trying to suck some coffee through a damp piece of cardboard, while it turns out that the suburban Panzer IV commuters were to blame? What’s next?
The use of tires will be a daunting thing to change. If somehow we all managed to change to bicycles for instance, there are still tires.
The amount of wear on the tires of a bicycle which let’s just assume the heaviest person riding the heaviest e-bike would be a few hundred pounds wearing on the tires? Compared to several tons for an auto pressing down on 4 tires it’s a LOT less.
The wear is drastically different, at least.
Probably easier to develop an alternative too when it doesn’t need to support two tons.
As per the quote below, a car loses about 0.08g of tread per km.
Compared to a car, a bike tyre is about the same diameter, 10% of the width (~20mm), 28% usable tread depth (~2mm), has 50% less wheels, and can travel 10% the distance (~10000km).
This suggests a (very approximate) tread loss of 0.08 * 10% * 28% * 50% / 10% = ~ 0.01g per km for bicycles.
For replacing longer car journeys less typically travelled by bicycle, rail transport is the best solution and removes the issue of tyre wear.
Quoting [deleted] in r/theydidthemath:
Using the same assumptions as above (215/60R16 tires, 7mm of tread loss over 100,000 km), I estimate the loss of tread by volume from each tire as follows:
Cylinder with a diameter of 664 mm and a height of 215 mm has a volume of 74,412 cm3. Cylinder with a diameter of 664-(2x7)=650 mm and a height of 215 mm has a volume of 71,307 cm3. The volume difference between a new and worn out tire is 3105 cm3.
Typical land to sea ratio of tires is 60-70% land, depending on the type of tire. If we go with an about average value of close to 65% tread, we get the lost rubber volume of about 2000 cm3 or 2,000,000 mm3 over a single tires lifespan.
Each revolution of a tire loses about 0,04 mm3 of tread, which, according to Wolfram Alpha, is a bit less than the volume of a medium grain of sand.
If we look at the entire car with 4 tires over a kilometer of road, we get 80 mm3 or about 0,08 grams of tread lost per car per kilometer.
Yeah way to not think about the problem or its multifaceted solutions at all. Just write out the first thing that pops into your head and hit post.
If only we could have a one company pick people up and deliver them to another point or work from home and have our stuff delivered.
The thing that picks people up could even have metal wheels as it follows a fixed route, and run on metal roads
I mentioned this in a discussion a while back. Tires are a huge problem for society.
Forget about the ocean. There is a more pressing matter as they are closer from tires than oceans : our lungs !!
