this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (12 children)

I can see this working in places where there's a single abandoned line and no budget to recover it. I've seen plenty of these in SE Asia. A small government investment (skip all the app bullshit etc) could make these work to inter connect small villages that otherwise would waste hours on shitty poorly maintained roads. If it can be made low-tech, I can see this being useful.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 2 days ago (11 children)

and unsurprisingly it's a german project, a country which is absolutely fucking covered in rural lines that are just rusting away

like, holy shit, can we stop branding everything that isn't a bog-standard train as "tech bro gadgetbahn"? this thing very explicitly has a specific problem it's trying to solve.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Germans had a working solution to this for decades, but apparently gave up on it for some reason (not competitive with road traffic is probably the correct one)

It was called a railbus and they were once quite prevalent on European branch lines. Finland had and Sweden loads as well, in rural areas, until someone decided that a normal bus is better for some reason.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

the problem is that you still need a driver, so frequency is going to be limited, which makes the service barely usable. Lack of places for vehicles to pass also limits possible frequency on these rural lines.

the idea behind monocab is that you can just throw more vehicles at the problem, so people can either just order a cab or you can have them constantly circulating like a very strange merry-go-round.

Railbuses are still good, but they made a lot more sense in the past. These days people have very very little tolerance for waiting.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

If that pod can be automated, the rail bus can be automated.

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