I’m interested in a lot of transit activism in N America but I swear people would think you’re a total weeb if you talk about transit in places with good transit. Trying to imagine talking to people in Singapore or Hong Kong or Seoul about.. loving trains
I think they would back tf away from me and run away.
Like my friend always says ‘I don’t want to be a transit fan. I just want great transit’
@skinnylatte nope. people love trains.. there are railfans all over the world. even in ...maybe especially in places with good transit.
Singapore has a very nice railfan website for its system https://www.sgtrains.com/ includes a simulator - experience what it's like to be a train captain
@rustoleumlove look, i'm autistic, i'm into trains. i've found my people. i know from experience not to talk about with normies. transit is not a thing that regular people talk about. i was interested in transit as a 'i like trains!' idea living there, but not in the 'transit activism!' way i'm perceiving in N America
hence my statement 'people would think you're a total weeb' and i am that weeb and i know that from experience!
Not to mention the class issues behind telling working class people who have no choice but to use transit in those places that you really really love trains. I mean I’m sure they’re glad they can take trains to work at 5:39 in the morning but I don’t think they love trains the way transit fans do. Also they can’t imagine not having them so they probably can’t imagine.. advocating for them
i'm not saying there are no train lovers or transit fans in those places. i'm saying there's no equivalent transit advocacy
because it's a public good! it'd be like, 'i'm forming a nonprofit to clean the streets!' in most parts of the world people are like, wut? the govt does that?
but in san francisco and other US cities, it's.. many many nonprofits, cleaning the streets. why? (rhetorical. i know why)
@skinnylatte non-profits or some marginally gamified City organized crowdsourced effort to get basic stuff done, like keeping storm drains clear so streets don't flood...
@skinnylatte
Americans don't really have a concept of "common good," so introducing them to public transit is more difficult, thus requiring more direct advocacy.
@skinnylatte The rural piece of the transit puzzle in the US is important. There are vast parts of the country where "transit" means getting in your car or truck to drive the miles to town because that's the only option.
@skinnylatte I think it's "look at these other countries with people who look like us where the government still appears to work and people don't seem to be in a state of constant precarity".
(In other words, white people just see other white people and don't necessarily realize that e.g. there are still major cultural differences. But also I relate to the frustration with how awful certain things are here that we could totally fix.)
@tess i always say that american transit fans should strive for the transit system and efficacy of chennai or bangkok or mexico city. many of the lessons of W European cities are not broadl applicable in many ways. it also makes advocating for their urbanist cause much less diverse and for me personally i rarely want to engage in that space because of that.
@skinnylatte I dunno, well, France had extensive road networks, but in Paris at least the bicycle mode share is reported to have increased quite a bit. The French roads also tend to be narrow, blocks and lights were not notably long, as they are in Seoul. But this is not about transit so much as cars.
@fdr greater paris is exactly like this also. what they've done in the city center is great, but just outside where real people live, people are also car-brained and infra is also like this. which is also true of hk and singapore. and outside city centers of big european cities. at least it is possible to have good suburban rail most of those places, but most people who can will still drive.
Hmm. I went to France last May, and I was mostly (far) outside Paris. But looking at streetview and comparing it with what I experienced in more sparse cities I was in, I can't say I agree with your assessment about the magnitude of pedestrian hostility being comparable in Greater Paris.
That said, Seoul is likely special in this respect, perhaps an unfortunate legacy of American influence. I’ll find myself in Taipei before too long, which seems to have a more extensively developed bicycle share system… and the street design to make it useful.
@fdr Taiwan has a significantly higher traffic fatality rate than Singapore and Hong Kong but lower than Seoul. That’s largely because outside of Taipei the infra isn’t as developed. There’s high speed rail but there’s not a subway yet in Tainan as they do in Taipei. I find it much more pleasant to cycle / motorbike in but not as a pedestrian.
@skinnylatte I thought that Seoul has great potential for utility cycling, but some adaptations will need experimenting with. The reason I thought this is the most efficient way to get around under human power is walking these common and incredibly long blocks with wide 50km/h roads and center dividers. But you could roll them quickly on a cycle, in principle. If we presume the block structure isn’t going anywhere, it seems like a slam dunk. Yet … complications. I may write about it
@skinnylatte I think an equivalent might be people without access to good plumbing saying they love toilets; people in rich nations would scratch their heads. Ubiquity of a thing makes it mundane.
@skinnylatte not much is more fun than having to ride 10km by bicycle just to get to a 45minutes trainride to your morning shift.🤪
We came up with a shared car ride Pretty fast.
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