#car dependent infrastructure

[malachitemalice]

saw this and i just felt like ruining yall’s day

[the-they-in-thats-what-they-say]

if you live in the united states, the united states is all "within driving range"

feel like i've seen a poll like this before but. i'm curious.

[angmallen]

Car(ule) 🚗

[reputayswift]

I was meant to live here instead of dealing with cars, roads, etc.

[catenary-chad]

Early uses of electric trains (that may surprise you)

This doesn’t explicitly apply about any canon characters, though you could use it to expand on/reinterpret Electra, the Nationals, or make OCs. I’ve just noticed a lot of people in the Stex fandom, and even just general railfans, that don’t realize that electrification historically has had waaaay more uses than environment friendliness and high speeds. Here are some other things it was used for in the days before global warming was on anyone’s radar and smoke was considered a sign of prosperity (the early-mid 20th century)

TUNNELS- burning things in enclosed spaces is a pretty well known way to get carbon monoxide poisoning. Even open-ended but long, slow-speed tunnels had issues with smoke and exhaust from steam and even diesel engines lingering and blocking vision/suffocating people, leading to gas masks or cab forward engines being used. So these became some of the first places to require electrification. And it wasn’t just subways, you also had underground mines and long tunnels through the mountains like the Cascades Tunnel.

HILLS: Due to electric motors being strongest at low speeds (and steam engines being strongest at full speed) and much better power to weight ratio, electric trains are REALLY good on steep, long inclines, especially if there’s any stopping involved. The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension, the Virginian Railway, and basically the entire country of Switzerland are fun examples of early electric lines on rugged mountainsides where even very large steam engines struggled. On top of that, running downhill with regenerative brakes dramatically axes the amount of total power used. And as an added weird bonus, extreme low temperatures and lower oxygen at high altitudes impaired the performance of combustion engines on parts of the Milwaukee Road but electric engines saw no losses or even outright benefits due to enhanced motor cooling (cooling traction motors is a big deal and why a lot of older electric engines have such loud fans)

ACCELERATION: Electric engines and EMUS especially are great at stopping/starting quickly, making them great for commuter trains with frequent stops. This allows greater train frequency without increasing tracks, and is a major benefit of electrification even today (see Caltrain’s electrification project). Also see the GER Class A55 for how extreme steam engineering had to get to compete at the turn of the century.

SHEER POWER: It’s hard to overstate just how much more powerful individual electric engines can be vs diesel or even steam, not having to carry their own power source allows them to access a lot more. Just take a look at the “most powerful locomotives” wikipedia list, and that one actually leaves off a LOT of mostly older electric engines that would outclass steam/diesel ones included. There are a surprising number of huge early electric engines like the PRR FF1 with a similar tractive effort to later large steam engines (albeit a lot of these were slooow due to the aforementioned trait of motors being strongest at lowest speeds). This is also why high speed trains are almost all electric, their monstrous HP numbers are more to pull moderate loads at 200+ mph.

HYDROELECTRICITY: Using hydroelectric power was a practical and not environmental choice in the early 20th century and where it was readily available (especially where fossil fuels weren’t), electrification became very lucrative. Switzerland is the most extreme example, without much of a domestic supply of coal but a lot of hydropower. The Milwaukee Road and Pennsylvania Railroad also used dams as a major power source

MAINTENANCE AND LABOR COSTS: This was a bigger advantage in the steam era because the gap between them and steam engines in terms of maintenance and availability was so wide, and you can run multiple electric engines with one crew but double/triple heading steam engines requires one for each engine. They’re still competitive if not cheaper than diesel power today, especially on high-frequency routes, and especially when the costs of pollution are included. Electric trains are generally the lowest maintenance and most reliable of all traction, and tend to last longer due to fewer moving parts (50+ year lifespans are not rare). Now it’s more a matter of paying more up front and less on maintenance vs less up front and more on maintenance. The actual wires and infrastructure are a BIG up front cost that’s very hard for private businesses to do alone without government help (just see how many lines got bankrupted by these projects in the US in the early 20th century)

BONUS: this is technically a promo by the company itself, but it’s relatively willing to admit their faults, The Milwaukee Electrification

Goes into a lot of the points made above in a pretty fun and concise package

[is-this-fascism]

hey please make sure you end homelessness before banning all the cars and turning all your cities walkable. or at least get them to put the benches back in the subway stations before they scrap my only shelter, thanks 👍

[coulsonlives]

[moonshynecybin]

hello! I am like... so close to pulling the trigger on going to COTA this year but I'm getting overwhelmed looking at hotels & google/reddit hasn't been super helpful— figured I would ask you because you've been before. Do you have any recommendations for hotels/general areas to stay in? I'm also wondering what the transit situation is like for getting to the track— I'm too young to rent a car so I'm trying to figure out if my only option is to uber everywhere or not...

— @faster-faster-aster

im not the best to help w this bc i went w my mom and we rented a car/did the airbnb thing... the track is like outside of austin next to the airport and a bunch of cowfields, and there isnt much public transportation to get you there. i think the BEST option if you dont have a car is to either shell out for an uber or another rideshare option... i know cota used to have shuttles for motogp from downtown, but i dont think it does anymore... so i'd scope out this reddit thread for info on how that works

as for places to stay, i stayed wayyy outta austin last time bc that was cheaper, but i think if youre gonna do the rideshare then its smarter to be closer to the city

[thebreakfastgod]

The car is a tool. A tool that is useful in specific situations. Even in a world where driving is not the dominant mode of transportation there will still be some middle distance trips where its the best option. They're not supposed to be fucking everywhere. They are good for certain situations, but it is the structuring of the US American transportation system entirely around the car that causes so many collisions, pedestrian deaths, pollution, and a million other issues. Sometimes online when people are talking about these things I will see someone will say that the REAL problem is PHONES, and there needs to be harsher punishments for offenders like suspending licenses. But in a country that basically requires both a phone and a car that is a short-sighted "solution" that is not going to actually help anyone. US driving laws are essentially designed to be broken, so distinguishing between "criminals" and other drivers is functionally useless. Cops can follow you around for 5 minutes and find some kind of driving infraction to pull you over for, which is most frequently used to racially profile Black people. Even if you could magic away all distracted driving, pedestrian deaths and car crashes would still happen at extremely high rates because it is the physical real-life infrastructure that exists which causes these things to happen, not individuals who may or may not be paying enough attention. Over 50% of car trips are a distance of 5 miles or less. The necessity for every person to have a car is artificial, and was created. It is absurd to expect every single person to independently operate their own high speed machine and be perfect in constantly pay attention, especially when road design itself encourages high speeds and considers pedestrians an obstacle to moving as many cars as possible as fast as possible. Multiple running representatives in my area have "traffic calming measures" as part of their platform, everyone fucking hates traffic! The solution to these problems is to use these tools for when they're ACTUALLY FUCKING USEFUL! and stop centering EVERYTHING AROUND THEM!

[doemiqwerty]

Occasionally I'll draft a post that says "Midwest mutuals, lemme come eat you out" and my brain chimes in "You and what vehicle, numbnuts?"

So uhh Midwest mutuals, lemme think about eating you out while I play Octopath Traveler

[elliecoreunderscore]

In the bike lane strait up doingg "it"

And by "it" haha, let's justr say, freaking out :)

at the inadequate infrastructure that has been handed to me by my city :))

[camels-pen]

ok. ok plans. plan. planning. tomorrow I will draw. and also I will, stay with me now, write. this is a plan that I am making. that way I can say I made a plan. like a planning person would do. in plansville.

[agnesandhilda]

forever sad about the dwindling/inaccessibility of third places in usamerican society

[alivehouse]

they need to make more shit to do in the evening. this post brought to you by i cant go out drinking without going on some kind of heros journey gang