cars and events
ohnotheydidnt dropped a great wank post today: US Swifties can't comprehend the concept of public transport in Melbourne. But, probably because it was posted when America was awake and the rest of the world was still asleep, there is a bunch of bizarro comments like how people would rather sit in the comfort of their own car for two hours waiting to get out of a parking lot than face the anxiety of being jammed onto public transport with literally the exact same people they were already jammed into a stadium with just minutes beforehand.
And it's like, girl, you don't have anxiety. You have selfishness.
I don't even get the thought process of people who look at the problem of how to move a large group of people and think to themselves, you know what would make this work efficiently? If everyone had their own private vehicle.
You don't need to be a genius to figure it out. If a car can fit 4 people into a vehicle that's 4.5m long and a bus can fit 30 people into a vehicle that's 12m long then even if every seat in the car is occupied it's taking up almost three times the amount of road space. If you assume that buses will also include standing passengers then cars are taking over six times the road space. It's cars that make moving large groups of people inefficient, and it takes a special brand of selfishness to complain about traffic while sitting in a private vehicle that is literally the cause of the traffic jam in the first place.
What boggles me is how many people who grew up in places where there was no public transport (or who grew up with the privilege of always using a private vehicle even when public transport was available) have developed a neurosis about it. In some places i lived it felt like i was surrounded by fragile snowflakes that'd put the princess from Princess and the Pea to shame, so terrified they were of sitting in a chair next to a stranger. "The inconvenience! The filth! The smell! The danger of being sexually harassed!" Nut up and join the rest of society, Jesus.
And, i suppose, this is one of the areas where hanging out with hippies is disappointing, because despite all their save the planet rhetoric, they invariably own internal combustion vehicles so they can drive from their homestead to their favorite surfing beach, or to a national park to go hiking, or to the next festival.
There were a couple of badass solo travelers who showed up at the new year's gig on a scooter and pitched a small tent or just strung a hammock. I spoke to one of them, M, who exemplified the Taiwanese version of a hippie by talking about dreadlock maintenance and hitchhiking around the world to exotic party destinations while also taking one morning to zoom up to a remote mountain village to buy 小米酒 (millet wine) as a gift for her parents. Can you imagine a western raver coming home from a party with a gift for their parents?
Badassery and filial piety aside, i suppose motorcyclists are slightly less evil than car drivers, since they use up less space on the road and consume less fossil fuels, but as someone who lives on a main road in Taipei, i can safely say that they are absolutely shit for air quality.
I quit smoking in 2024. I didn't want to mention it before because i wasn't sure it would stick. But now it's been almost two months since my last cigarette. Not that it really matters, because the toxic fumes coming from all the internal combustion vehicles outside my window are probably worse for my health than my one-pack-a-month smoking habit was.
One of the things i talked about to another person at the party who hadn't traveled to Europe before was the public transport emphasis at festivals. Stepping outside of the rave bubble for a second, i did actually go to a rock festival when i was a kid. Just once, but it happened. I hated it. Too many people. Not enough techno. I didn't hate the transport, however. There were dedicated train services and shuttle buses to ensure everyone could get to and leave the event quickly and comfortably.
The funny thing is this was the largest event i have ever been to in my life, but it was still less than half the size of the average football game in the US. I'm always saddened when fflo shares daily postcards of the US, especially aerial shots from city areas that feature an arena, and half the space around it is concrete parking lots. Like, even in major cities of America, they can't figure it out to transport 70,000 people to a football game in the middle of a city when 25 years ago in the Netherlands they were able to get 30,000 people out to middle of fucking nowhere on buses.
I guess i can be a bit more forgiving when an event of less than a thousand people thrown as a labor of love doesn't provide more than taxi service for the small number of folks who took public transport down. But that was my point talking to this Taiwan raver - another public transport hero herself - that in Europe even at the parties with only a couple thousand people they still figure out a bus service. Car tickets are strictly limited and cost significantly more than people tickets. I'd like to think that trying to keep a low carbon footprint is baked into the scene, but this happens at rock festivals and football games too, so perhaps it's more just that Europe has a strong environmentalist movement.
That's a movement that's lacking in the US, and in Canada, and here in Taiwan too for that matter. I think it's one of the things i miss the most about living in Europe, or at least northern and western parts. Fuck cars is not a controversial statement over there. And it really shouldn't be. Cars fucking suck.
And it's like, girl, you don't have anxiety. You have selfishness.
I don't even get the thought process of people who look at the problem of how to move a large group of people and think to themselves, you know what would make this work efficiently? If everyone had their own private vehicle.
You don't need to be a genius to figure it out. If a car can fit 4 people into a vehicle that's 4.5m long and a bus can fit 30 people into a vehicle that's 12m long then even if every seat in the car is occupied it's taking up almost three times the amount of road space. If you assume that buses will also include standing passengers then cars are taking over six times the road space. It's cars that make moving large groups of people inefficient, and it takes a special brand of selfishness to complain about traffic while sitting in a private vehicle that is literally the cause of the traffic jam in the first place.
What boggles me is how many people who grew up in places where there was no public transport (or who grew up with the privilege of always using a private vehicle even when public transport was available) have developed a neurosis about it. In some places i lived it felt like i was surrounded by fragile snowflakes that'd put the princess from Princess and the Pea to shame, so terrified they were of sitting in a chair next to a stranger. "The inconvenience! The filth! The smell! The danger of being sexually harassed!" Nut up and join the rest of society, Jesus.
And, i suppose, this is one of the areas where hanging out with hippies is disappointing, because despite all their save the planet rhetoric, they invariably own internal combustion vehicles so they can drive from their homestead to their favorite surfing beach, or to a national park to go hiking, or to the next festival.
There were a couple of badass solo travelers who showed up at the new year's gig on a scooter and pitched a small tent or just strung a hammock. I spoke to one of them, M, who exemplified the Taiwanese version of a hippie by talking about dreadlock maintenance and hitchhiking around the world to exotic party destinations while also taking one morning to zoom up to a remote mountain village to buy 小米酒 (millet wine) as a gift for her parents. Can you imagine a western raver coming home from a party with a gift for their parents?
Badassery and filial piety aside, i suppose motorcyclists are slightly less evil than car drivers, since they use up less space on the road and consume less fossil fuels, but as someone who lives on a main road in Taipei, i can safely say that they are absolutely shit for air quality.
I quit smoking in 2024. I didn't want to mention it before because i wasn't sure it would stick. But now it's been almost two months since my last cigarette. Not that it really matters, because the toxic fumes coming from all the internal combustion vehicles outside my window are probably worse for my health than my one-pack-a-month smoking habit was.
One of the things i talked about to another person at the party who hadn't traveled to Europe before was the public transport emphasis at festivals. Stepping outside of the rave bubble for a second, i did actually go to a rock festival when i was a kid. Just once, but it happened. I hated it. Too many people. Not enough techno. I didn't hate the transport, however. There were dedicated train services and shuttle buses to ensure everyone could get to and leave the event quickly and comfortably.
The funny thing is this was the largest event i have ever been to in my life, but it was still less than half the size of the average football game in the US. I'm always saddened when fflo shares daily postcards of the US, especially aerial shots from city areas that feature an arena, and half the space around it is concrete parking lots. Like, even in major cities of America, they can't figure it out to transport 70,000 people to a football game in the middle of a city when 25 years ago in the Netherlands they were able to get 30,000 people out to middle of fucking nowhere on buses.
I guess i can be a bit more forgiving when an event of less than a thousand people thrown as a labor of love doesn't provide more than taxi service for the small number of folks who took public transport down. But that was my point talking to this Taiwan raver - another public transport hero herself - that in Europe even at the parties with only a couple thousand people they still figure out a bus service. Car tickets are strictly limited and cost significantly more than people tickets. I'd like to think that trying to keep a low carbon footprint is baked into the scene, but this happens at rock festivals and football games too, so perhaps it's more just that Europe has a strong environmentalist movement.
That's a movement that's lacking in the US, and in Canada, and here in Taiwan too for that matter. I think it's one of the things i miss the most about living in Europe, or at least northern and western parts. Fuck cars is not a controversial statement over there. And it really shouldn't be. Cars fucking suck.