I literally have a father in law that bitches about a new public transit bus line being put into his suburb to get to the metro. Americans will bitch about anything. I have to hear about it all the time.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Not even close to being untrue. I've listened to a lot of conservatives being anti-sidewalks growing up, complaining how sidewalks aided criminals.
I've listened to a lot of conservatives being anti-sidewalks growing up, complaining how sidewalks aided criminals.
I'm sorry, I'm not pretending to be stupid to challenge you, or challenging the notion at all, but could you please elaborate on what that "logic" is?
I just don't see a correlation honestly. Unless it's the same as like "universal healthcare helps criminals" in the sense that yeah, it's universal, it's also for criminals, but eveyone is helped by it, so... I... I fail how they could've even began to argue such a point.
But I know lots of conservatives are irrational dumbfucks who don't actually even understand what "logic" means.
Dense population attracts crime, dense population allows for more walking and cycling infrastructure. The coincidence of those two facts makes people think that walking and cycling infrastructure causes an increase in crime. Those people are confusing correlation and causation
The people that are open to exploration and travel are generally not the ones opposed to progressive city planning.
The fear-based mindset opposed to change at any cost is not exactly conducive to exploring other cultures.
As an American, I'd generally agree. However, I'd narrow it to those that are open to traveling and exploring on their own rather than the ones that only travel in large groups on buses or ships.
This is definitely true. Get an American on a packaged trip where they don’t spend any appreciable time in one place, spend it at some all-inclusive, and their transportation is provided as part of the deal and they will basically be fed a caricature of wherever they visited that required little effort on their part. Cruise Ships are definitely guilty of that; but I’ll offer that it depends on the individual and very much the destination as well.
Going to a new place and having to figure it out on your own is very valuable. Though I’m sure plenty of Americans are just like the comic despite the exposure to other ways of doing things.
My best friend and I travel really well together. We have a vague idea of the kinds of things we want to do and we figure it out while there. One time we were in a country with few English speakers, our housing cancelled on us, we were like fuck it let's still take the train to the next city we'll figure out housing on the way. The shit we get up to, problems we solve on our feet, these things help show how a place can actually be not how some tour agency pretends it is. I much prefer that
All true. Having unscripted time in a new city is incredibly valuable.
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I'm the other way around - I took one trip to the Netherlands and didn't expect to come back forever changed. I know what good public transit looks like now and can't unsee it. Since then I've picked apartments based on how bicycle and metro connected they are.
Same. My girlfriend used to be a car enthusiast and ever since I took here there she's gone full !fuckcars.
Yeees... yees... all is going according to plan
Hey we have one of these in Venice California ❤️
I've been to cities with nice public transit and clean streets.
I still don't like cities.
But I appreciate that if we make cities nicer and more convenient more people would choose them and they'd stop tearing up wild places.
I will not live in your cities. But I know why they must exist.
Unless you're making your own soap etc, you're still living in a society which wouldn't function without said cities. So live in them or no, you're still dependant on them.
Don't remind me.
I mean, you could just learn to make your own soap?
It's not that hard, just a bit labour intensive at times. But if you actually hunted game you might actually have the ingredients as extra. And you could easily still have it be nice soap, by also having a garden and making simple extracts from plants like jasmine and whatnot for scents.
I'm kinda jealous about some American "homesteaders" at times, because America is just way better for that, geographically and bureaucratically than Finland. Not that I could afford it anyway but... A man can dream.
We also have some pretty nice homesteaders in Danmark if you want to find som nearby to see.
Not a bad recommendation, I'll be sure to check it out.
Any links or search terms would be appreciated.
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Republicans are typically the people against good public transportation or bike lanes on roads. Republicans tend to be the people who don't travel outside the United States. Democrats tend to be in favor of these things and they are also the people who would be riding a bike around on vacation.
Imagine your typical red-neck conservative going to Europe on vacation. Hard to do? Now imagine them going on a bike tour. It's fucking ridiculous.
I see plenty of American conservative-looking tourists in Amsterdam, on bike tours too.
Not rednecks, but the kind of suburban chuds you see on TV holding up anti-abortion signs and driving squeaky-clean SUVs.
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It's telling that Americans think walkable neighborhoods are vacation destinations and not real places. They literally go to a place called "the magic kingdom" to walk around and enjoy but think it's at best a quaint ancient /medieval throwback or a fantasy land
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I doubt many Americans vacationing in Europe are opposed to walkable cities.
Then you've never met an American.
lol. Those Americans have never left the country and don’t have a passport.
Sadly no, nothing more disappointing being 10,000 miles away and being told "hey we are from america too, go trump" 🤮
Lots of Americans get passports and leave the country, it's just too expensive for most Americans to do it.
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How can you feel guilty for pollution if you don't believe in pollution? Checkmate libtards. Now excuse me, I have a plane to catch, going to the grocery store, both trucks are at the garage.
Dw, the boys at the yard were just on a test drive, and are already on the way back with your truck.
Fake. Those kinda people would never ride a bike. Instead, they would be stuck somewhere with their oversized car and would complain why they can't drive theough the inner city and do sightseeing from the inside of their car lol.
My hypothesis is people are easily frightened idiots. They don't like change of any sort. It frightens them and then they can't reason about if the change is good or bad long term.
If a place had bike lanes for years the same people who bike-lash would probably oppose removing them.
Like how they opposed getting rid of all of the street cars, light and heavy rail, etc. in the US in favor of cars and highways and gigantic parking lots? Or, how they opposed moving from living close together in the cities and inner ring suburbs to suburbs and exurbs because a family darker than them moved in to their neighborhood in the 50s and 60s?
Well, when you put it like that then my hypothesis doesn't sound very plausible. But maybe racism just Trump's everything else.
Racism and classism. For example, many of my fellow Americans unfortunately think only poor and black people ride bikes. So, they would rather there be no bike lanes on the off chance that such a person might ride through their community.
Reminds me of one of my favorite videos.
background
MARTA - Atlanta's transit system, created in the 1960s. It was originally supposed to go to the 5 innermost counties of metro Atlanta (Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton), but the 1965 'authorization to participate in the system' referendum failed in Cobb. Long story short, MARTA ended up only in Fulton and Dekalb until 2014, when Clayton joined. It's still not in Cobb or Gwinnett.
Cobb County - a county in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, known for being relatively white, wealthy, and racist (especially on its northeastern side).
In the decades since MARTA was founded, there have been repeated attempts to get Cobb to join, but it always fails and one of the biggest arguments the opposition uses is that it would bring "crime" (which around here, is well-understood to be a dog-whistle for "black people" in that context).
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God how i wish we could have that.
Shit started to go wrong as far back as the 50s most places, perhaps earlier in the US. Light rail, tram networks were ripped up all over the world in favour of private motor vehicles and US style real estate development with their car centric dead burbs and no local life.
Once you go all in on car centric planning it is difficult to go back. Housing development is a long way from quality entertainment, shopping, food, culture, work so people need to travel long distances but everything is so distributed and low density that its hostile to public transport networks.
Americans are correct. You can't simply swap to bikes and public transport on top of 70+ years of insane urban planning. Some older inner cities and very small towns can be fixed. The rest is a problem.
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It doesn’t really help that Americans can’t ride a bicycle for shit. Tourists on bikes are a major hazard, but so are tourists on foot in any city with dedicated space for bicycles. They just cross it and walk on it without watching or even a single thought. They just assume it’s part of the pavement.
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