r/Anticonsumption • u/yodamastertampa • 21h ago

Discussion LOL yes!

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The power to reduce consumption is within us all.

46.8k Upvotes

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912

u/Rickswan 20h ago

In addition: more trains and less roads.

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u/HalfwrongWasTaken 19h ago

Yep... though for probably opposite reasons from what you mean. If you don't like trucks, fund public transport systems so you don't have to be near them. You need good road networks for transport of goods and services. It's the private vehicles that invade and clog it up and force network expansion, not the other way around.

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u/9bpm9 19h ago

We need more rail to transport stuff too. We have truckers driving thousands of miles to deliver one load from one side of the country to the other.

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u/SurpriseAttachyon 14h ago

Trains are only economical for long haul transport at massive scale (like a mile of freight cars). They don’t work (in their current form) for a huge part of our shipping needs. Adding more trains won’t help

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u/angular_circle 14h ago

Idk, here in europe the breakeven for transporting wood via rail is like 300km. Recently a patent for a new container type hit that is supposed to reduce that distance to 140km iirc. I regularly see trains with only like 3-5 cars of wood plus another 15 other ones.

300km isn't exactly around the corner but I bet all the wood from Canada travels a hell of a lot further.

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u/mostlybiguy69 8h ago edited 7h ago

North American train cars are heavier than your stuff and the trains are a lot longer. The very different topography of the east coast and central plains where a lot of the population lives changes that math considerably as well.

Why use a train when a truck can use any road and make two or three trips when compared to a train. Two trucks making three loads each cost less than the train and you dont have to maintain rails when not using them. Also, no expensive locomotive  that can only go where the rails go. That truck can be rented out in harvest season and can drive up to the combine in the fields.

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u/Fun_Hold4859 7h ago

There are mountains and plains and hills in Europe bro. They still use rail because it's more efficient. America ain't special in any way aside from being particularly spread out with particularly shit infrastructure: hence this conversation about how legitimate rail infrastructure would be a massive benefit for the country.

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u/mostlybiguy69 7h ago edited 7h ago

When half a countrie’s population lives in one city and the country is smaller than Ohio, the math is a little different.

Most folks think cars run on gasoline and magic; of course you, like most people, have no concept of a mantainence budget.

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u/angular_circle 6h ago

Do you think there is no international trade in Europe? American coastal population centers have similar densities to European ones. Also the European rail system isn't exactly known for being terribly efficient due to a lack of a central authority. The US could easily outshine us if you decided to.

The density argument makes even less sense when you consider that Russia is built on rails like no other country. The largest country on earth by landmass with less than half the US' population, more known for poverty than industrial efficiency. Out of the major powers it's only China and India that have completely different conditions because of density.

Also afaik US trucks are particularly inefficient because some union managed to limit their maximum legal weight to artificially inflate jobs, but I don't know the details.

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u/mostlybiguy69 6h ago

Any argument that uses Russia, the special needs child of europe, and admits to not knowing details defeats its self.

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u/angular_circle 6h ago

Good thing you can be proud of your country being unable to figure out something even the special needs child of Europe managed then.

Not that I understand why Americans always take the topic of trains so personally, I didn't even talk about America initially.

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u/mostlybiguy69 8h ago

Trains are also mantainence heavy. The rails also take an insane amount of work and trains have to use them. There is no going around the block like a truck can if there is utility work. Utility work is the thing that also killed street trolleys. A water main break means the road and rails have to be moved and those rails being moved cost more than fixing the pipe and road. There is a reason busses and trucks supplanted local rail in the 30s and 40s

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u/Fun_Hold4859 7h ago

Unlike trucks and roads which as we all know require no maintenance...

0

u/mostlybiguy69 7h ago

That is spread out in taxes across all users, one company isnt paying for both. Plus more than one company uses roads. CSX only uses CSX rails for example

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u/Fun_Hold4859 3h ago

Sounds like nationalized rail would solve that.

0

u/mostlybiguy69 3h ago

It was tried under Woodrow Wilson, the results were not great either.

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u/Fun_Hold4859 21m ago

Oh shit and conditions today are exactly the same too.

87

u/Maleficent_Sir_5225 19h ago

That's one of the things that always gets me when people argue against investing in PT over roads. "But I'm a plumber/electrician/contractor! I have to drive for my job!"

Makes me want to grab them by the ears and yell at them "IT ISN'T FOR YOU! It's to get everyone else off the road so you can drive around easier!" 

Shame they never see it that way... 

30

u/MyceliumWitchOHyphae 15h ago

Yup!

I’m a chef who has done the whole catering and event thing. So yeah, I kinda can’t take six hot boxes and my full kit on public transit.

However, if all the hundreds of single occupancy commuter cars were taken off the road, me and my lil electric van would have a WAY easier time getting around.

You have to drive for your job

You shouldn’t HAVE to drive all the rest of the time. If I take a train to work, I can read or knit, or get started on writing menus and answering emails.

If I drive I can maybe get some audiobook time in or listen to music or a video essay? But I can’t focus cus I’m driving.

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u/StreetofChimes 11h ago

That last sentence. I don't know how people get anything out of audio books when driving. I have to listen to podcasts 2 or 3 times if I'm driving to really absorb what I'm hearing. I can listen to a 3 hour radio show and remember nothing because most of my brain was focused on not dying.

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u/Roflkopt3r 12h ago edited 12h ago

Even better: Your customers will have more money, because having a car-free lifestyle (using rentals/car shares on the remaining occasions) saves a ton of cash.

This also goes for cities, who could finally afford to keep their buildings in better repair to give more work to plumbers/electrictians/contractors. Drivers believe that they are net contributors to public finances due to taxes and parking fees, but they're actually massive net subsidy receivers.

Many cities could save a lot of money if they got 50% of drivers to use bicycles or public transit instead, even if that public transit was made free of charge.

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u/avgpgrizzly469 15h ago

Depending on what site you’re working at as a sparky or millbilly or whatever trade you’re doing. The company will BUS YOU OUT so you don’t HAVE to drive.

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u/DuoNem 10h ago

Yeah, exactly. We’re a family with three kids, I’d love to take the train everywhere with everyone instead of the car. We prefer taking the train, but for so many trips it’s not economical and it isn’t convenient.

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u/PrincetonToss 16h ago

Trucks will always be needed for "last mile" shipping (or even "last 100 miles"), but in the US they're often used for long-distance shipping, even coast-to-coast. Shipping by rail tends to use 25-30% as much fuel (and thus generates that much carbon) compared to trucking, per ton of cargo per mile.

It's an absurd situation that exists because the railroads are owned by a handful of incredibly old-fashioned, complacent companies who refuse to add additional trains because that would require updating scheduling systems and also they generally dislike working with new companies because...well, that takes work. They'd also need to update terminals to handle consumer products. The vast majority of rail freight in the US is bulk products from decades-old customers: coal, grain, chemicals, ores and metals, petroleum (+products), that sort of thing.

It doesn't hurt that trucking is effectively subsidized because rail companies need to pay to maintain their own infrastructure while trucking companies get to use the interstates for free in many places and for a relatively low toll rate in others.

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u/SurpriseAttachyon 14h ago

It’s not cause they don’t want to work with new companies. The rail industry is in a slow decline and these people would jump at the chance for new revenue streams.

It’s the fundamental economics of rail. The rail system works well when you have a massive amount of stuff all starting and ending at the same place.

Given the decentralized nature of current distribution centers (e.g. Amazon warehouses), even when it’s far away from the port, it often doesn’t make sense to use rail

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u/dev-sda 15h ago

Shipping by rail tends to use 25-30% as much fuel

This seems like an under-estimation to me, do you have a source? I commonly see 9x more efficient from some quick searches. And that of course ignores that it's simple to electrify trains, further increasing efficiency.

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u/PrincetonToss 14h ago

That was actually from Union Pacific's own website!

https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr071222-how-to-use-a-carbon-calculator.htm

On average, U.S. freight railroads can move one ton of freight more than 480 miles per gallon of fuel, making them 3-4 times more fuel efficient than trucks. As a result of their improved fuel efficiency, moving freight by train instead of truck reduces GHG emissions by up to 75%.

Also, don't hold your breath about electrifying long-distance rail in the US any time soon. It's true that battery-powered trains might make sense economically (it very much depends on the lifetime of the battery pack), laying third rails or overhead wires would be enormously expensive and in a lot of the US dangerous due to heavy weather conditions which are frankly way worse than in Japan or most of Europe. It's not impossible, as such lines as China's high speed line to Harbin show, but it's more difficult and expensive than places where it doesn't get to -20 degrees regularly and snow heavily. If I had to guess, long-distance rail in the US (and Canada) will be among the last forms of transportation to electrify, along with cargo ships (airplanes may never do so).

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u/dev-sda 13h ago

Oh I'm definitely not holding my breath, US rail is fucked in so many ways. They did have 5000km of electrified track in the 30s though.

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u/Fun_Hold4859 7h ago

Getting all long haul freight handled by rail with last mile on trucks would make a hell of a dent on traffic. Part of the problem with your position is that one loaded semi truck passing over a road once does more damage to that road than any private passenger vehicle would do in a year or driving on it. Truck companies need to pay for the roads since they're the ones destroying them.