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- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
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Bus lanes and trams are a symbol of “communism” and car is a sign of “freedom” until you realize that the ultimate freedom is choosing to walk, bike, take transit, or drive to your destination.
his employer won’t reimburse him for mileage once he fully transitions into his new role next month
2018 Chevy Silverado, which he uses to carry equipment and supplies for the hotels, this year.
Well, that’s a fucking problem. Don’t take a job in which you are expected to use a personal vehicle for work purposes. Work provided vehicle and submit receipts for gasoline. Insurance company won’t like it. You won’t like how fast your car goes through tires and then dies. Etc.
I feel like the legality of not reimbursing him for using his personal vehicle for work purposes is fairly dubious though I’d be lying if I said I knew the specifics of the laws there.
Employer: taps head They’re a contractor and I don’t pay then enough to live.
I think in his case he’s salary as a regional manager. Contractor is a whole other thing.
Given the cost of fuel, a bus pass for me (if I still had to commute, I work from home now) for a month is now just over $800/mo.
6 years ago, that was $375/mo.
I don’t think the issue is limited to car drivers, I suspect more than a few folks who took public transit with me are looking at a pretty impactful monthly cost.
Trains. Overhead wire. Green energy. Build it now or suffer later.
I agree.
That does nothing to address the current (rapidly rising) commuting costs happening now, though.
Buy a bike. Carpool. Work from home.
Militarize against police for eviction defense?
I think you missed the part where I pointed out that I do work from home.
I’d also point out that riding a bike for the commutes I’m mentioning is a non-starter, its too large of a distance for a daily commuter ride.
Again, the point is that this is not a car commuter exclusive problem, and its going to impact people who use mass transit. There are plenty of train lines that aren’t powered and require dual electric/diesel engines. Infrastructure installation to extend lines takes time, not to mention the lack of rail infrastructure in the first place that impacts the overwhelming majority of the US.
too large of a distance for a daily commuter ride
You didn’t mention this: what distance did you have in mind?
The current average commute for my state is about 15mi, but that number (annoyingly) includes WFH which skews the numbers.
Mine, for example, would be a 60mi commute if I still had one.
Edit: And I don’t think I should have to really mention that the overwhelming majority of commuters are leaving their town for work…
Ride that bike 20 miles to work. Easy!
I do know a guy who rides his bike everywhere and he is HOT. Saw him in a suit and he has the kind of body that suits were designed to flatter. Wow.
We need Americans to feel the pain hard enough they screen for trains
Would be wonderful.
Unfortunately the time to do it was years ago. Obviously the next best time is to start now, but it will be years before results and that doesnt help those impacted now.
We need to Americans to come to psychologically distrust driving.
We had electric buses with overhead wires in São Paulo in the 80s.
The US had electric interurban railroads in the Rockies a hundred years ago.
It can happen very fast.
Yeah. I feel very lucky to have moved to a place where I have an electric train and an electric bus system powered by hydroelectric.
Oh wait, climate change means our glacial flow is 12% of the typical rate and the province is announcing a datacenter construction plan?
Well fuck me too I guess.
I still don’t get truck culture.
I grew up kinda out in the sticks, fair number of religious nuts and racists.
You know what they’d say about trucks, in the late 90s?
If you need a truck, like, really actually need a truck, you get it and use it only for actually hauling shit, or towing something.
Then you have a sedan or similar for everything else.
Like, … the yokels of 20/30 years ago would all be laughing at the yokels of today.
I don’t get how these people can be this aggresively stupid, its literally an insult to their ‘heritage’, fucked up as that heritage may or may not be.
It’s masculine insecurity. Our culture doesn’t produce men who are secure in their gender identity so they have to constantly proofs it to themselves and others all the time. Once you see it, you realize it’s the root cause from everything from truck nuts to looksmaxxing
Your description of the 80s and 90s lines up with Charleston SC, but not with backcountry SC, or anywhere I went in Alabama or Texas.
The default is a pickup, sedans are for posh people.
It is going to be very funny (read: horrifying) watching the American economy entirely grind to a halt, due to our car centric design of everything just completely imploding as ICE vehicle commuting itself becomes a luxury.
We’re so fucking delusional about this.
Cars are unaffordable.
Gas is unaffordable.
Public transit basically doesn’t exist outside of some major cities, but not even close to all.
If it costs more to go to work and be able to go to work, than you are paid for working, it is imminently rational to not go to work.
Just most people in general will completely lose their minds as this gets worse.
What will win?
Just get an EV or Hybrid or Motorcycle or E Bike…
Or…
No, cuz that’s gay/stupid/‘unreasonable’… ?
Apparently motorcycles are selling really well. Ebikes are gonna be big winners in town too. Transit ridership appears to.be slightly up but lots of cuties are still below pre pandemic levels due to cuts
No, not commuting. Commuting in cars.
They could take public transit and spend three hours one way commuting to their eight hour shift.
I do two hoursand it’s rough. My bus route is a good cannidate for bus lanes and high frequency, though they’re not gonna run more than once an hour in the early AM because I’m an edge case
I like how everyone forgets EVs exist.
You mean bicycles, right?
I do. I’ll just bike 30 miles to work on the highway… it’ll be fine.
You could put your bike on the front of a transit bus if those existed.
I’m patiently waiting to see what else it takes for Americans to overthrow this government.
From his pedophile ring to unlawful executive orders, wars, tariffs… Trump keeps breaking the law and acts outside their beloved constitution. All with consent from the majority in both ruling parties, either by direct support ® or silence (D).
They won’t.
Despite what you hear on lemmy, the average american is not living in some kind of fascist hellscape. They are working a pretty decent job for a wage that pays their bills, and everything for them is more or less the same as it was under Biden. They are unhappy with the increased cost of things - but they aren’t even close to “riot in the streets”.
Instead, their strategy will be:
- ignore the federal government until the next election
- vote in opposition politicians in city and state elections in the meantime
Legally, the states can’t make laws that contradict federal law. But as the case of marijuana legalization has shown, the federal government is very hesitant to push back on laws passed by states with broad popular appeal. So in the meantime, we’ll likely see moves by the states to become more autonomous, and will see more anti-Trump politicians make names for themselves and get ready for the national stage.
My 60 year old dad straight up said “idk why people get so worked up, the president won’t affect your life that much anyway”. Even people who hate trump still have families, children, a life that while bad, is still worth holding onto for them. Better to keep their head down and try to scrape by with their loved ones than go off to die in a revolution. And who would lead them?
People like to talk about grand ideas of revolution and overthrowing government, but then reality sets in while trying to actually work out the nuts and bolts of it.
Your dad could be wrong. There is a turning point where a snowball effect will start where when the bottom part of the economy can’t make it to the end of the month, the rest of the country will feel the consequences.
If things continue as is, cities with expensive housing are gonna end up with shortages of janitors and baristas because they all left due to being priced out
Yep it’s the classic “first they came for” dilemma. Your dad is probably a straight white guy with a decent job cruising to retirement. That’s great for him and his family. No need to do anything to push back on the trends now while it’s easy because it’s not affecting him.
It’s definitely been awful for a whole lot of people though. Immigrants and brown Americans are getting ICE’d (the detention centers are worse than most people want to know 🙈). Trans people are being harassed and pushed out of society, they can’t even renew their passport without having their gender forcibly changed or feel safe going to the bathroom.
There are real things that folks like him could do to show the GOP that they need to pull back, but the truth is they are going to wait until they come for them, once it is too late.
I have a number of coworkers that are immigrants, black, etc. It’s still been hard to get them intricately engaged in the subject of politics, and they’ve still trusted immigration/customs when traveling internationally.
To a lot of people in more stable communes of the USA, it’s not life/death. But I will grant, “invasions” like Minneapolis, or the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk, do pull people into that fight.
(I will admit to being that second one. I only saw it as racism, until I read more into the oppression of Gaza. It was a subject I had been relatively ignorant on, or had a “both sides” attitude on until then)
There are street clashes happening in various cities periodically now. It’s just not full on storming the Bastille levels. Yet. The AI bubble is hanging over us, ready to implode any day now and the Iran war is gonna make that worse, nevermind any other unknown factors that might happen
It’s already happened, the coup is done.
If the average American is working mostly to pay rent and commuting costs, they’re less likely to look for a new job, or to try to improve conditions at their current job.
But hey. At least you know you’re FREE.
But we’re not even free. I want a refund
