Public transports are extensive, but they're overcrowded and perpetually strained to the limit of breakage. This week, a 400 tons concrete beam fell on RER C tracks. I suppose it will be weeks before it runs normally again. This sort of problems happens constantly.
Paris resident are only about 30% to own a car (a constantly dwindling number). Most cars in Paris come from the suburbs, therefore making motorists miserable isn't a problem for the mayor as most motorists vote elsewhere. This has the very unfortunate effect that nobody is really interested in solving the problem at its root.
At the moment, it costs a lot more inconvenience+money to use SNCF/RER than driving for many people.
If someone stabs you in the kidney, and someone stabs you in kidney and chest.
You don't thank the former.
Plenty of areas you can only move either with own car or calling taxi.
The next bus stop is a couple of kilometres down the road and only crosses a couple of times per day.
Yes, and it still sucks. Now imagine how much it sucks in other regions.
Except on rainy days in car I arrive at work warm and dry. On eBike I arrive wet, cold and miserable.
I jumped on the eBike ship very early but I simply can't leave it anywhere.
When people are out for a $5-$10 return for crack at 4AM, nothing is safe.
On the other hand, if anybody has any info if this will be a thing in Germany, please let me know! It's surely better than nothing.
Besides, removing cars from the road means that busses will be more reliable (less traffic jams) so you can avoid the trains in more situations.
I was surprised that the RER doesn’t have bathrooms on-board. In Ontario Canada, we have similar double-decker commuter trains and they have them. They’re about airline-style in terms of size (barring 1 “accessible” one per train), but they do the job.
The first reason is obviously cultural, but forbidding workers from striking would have some knock-on effects that the rest of society may not appreciate. The second reason, at least in Germany, has a lot to do with the semi-privatization of our train system which doesn't have inventives to invest in it's infrastructure and due it's cozy market position enabling rent-seeking.
The first problem, at least in the cities, could be solved with grade 4 automated metro according to the example of Copenhagen. The trains even drive much better than human drivers there, with no abrupt stops.
This would create unemployment, but it wouldn't infringe on people's rights.
The second problem we would have to solve by replacing the politicians that enable this. A much more difficult undertaking.
Also bomb defusing. F* you World-War 2, even for all the wrong reasons!
How can we use capital to create meaningful work, rather than the status quo oscillation left<-->right?
Using capital just automate for the sake of excluding workers is (IMO) silly. Improving safety and reliability, fine. But capital is also needed to start new labour intensive jobs, and anti-labour capitalism has a blind spot for this, and it leads to more political unrest.
I mean, that's the bazillion-euro question, right?
I would love to apply stochastic principles to it, using random choice to break deadlocks and force choice.
See also, models of collaboration between companies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3679737
Except that most people cannot live in Paris because it's too expensive and need to commute every day. And using the RER which is dirty, smells like piss and full of graffitis, overcrowded at peak hours and often on strike is so unreliable that it is hardly an enticing option.