Exactly. I don't understand why most car owners are so opposed to public transport.

the same reason omnivores are sometimes highly critical of veg*ns: there's a moral claim going on, so their identity/ moral standing is threatened.

It's not a question of moral standing or identity but rather that public transport (and vegan) advocates would like to force you to live like they do. Those things gaining too much popularity threatens the way you do things.

We have examples of this happening, eg smoking. It has become unpopular enough that governments pass nonsensical bans like banning flavored cigarettes or just making it entirely illegal for only a certain year cohort (literal age discrimination).

> public transport (and vegan) advocates would like to force you to live like they do

Is there a citation for this claim?

> governments pass nonsensical bans like banning flavored cigarettes

Is it nonsensical? There is research[1][2] showing that flavoured tobacco is one of the primary factors used to attract younger users. We know that tobacco is bad, and also that flavoured tobacco increases its usage, so unless you are against public health policy measures themselves, it follows logically that flavoured tobacco should be covered by public health measures.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9007155/ [2] https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/26/6/709

When public health measures turn into "hello, we're now making your life worse" then yes, I am against them.

Imagine you drink coffee your whole life. You rely on it. Now your government comes in and goes "coffee is now illegal, you're welcome!!!"

It changes your life against your wishes and you can't do anything about it. The only action that realistically works is preemptive - don't let coffee become disliked enough to enact such a ban. That's why people argue against it. Principles such as "people should be free to make their own choices" aren't values our society cares about. (Important to remember: it's popular to hate on things everyone else hates on, so you gotta keep it under a critical mass.)

>Is there a citation for this claim?

Asking for a citation doesn't make sense. You know damn well there isn't one. Nobody is going to credibly announce that their goal is to ban something popular, because that would make it harder for them to force that change on you. It's done piece by piece. Maybe the people that start it don't even want a ban, but it eventually escalates.

But logical reasoning can explains it too: people support public transport for climate reasons. Why would they not want you to make 'the right choice' like them?

yes, another successful example is slavery. another unresolved one is abortion. in all of these cases the freedom in question is arguably immoral. laws are downstream of moral convictions.

> would like to force you to live like they do

Okay, so it's exactly a question of moral standing and identity.

Vegans? Veg[a..z1..9A..Z]ns? Are there any vegyns out there who object to being put on the meat/no-meat spectrum? Are you afraid HN will censure you if you spell out the complete word?

Really now. It's obviously veg.+ns: vegans and vegetarians.

I didn't get that either; not that obvious after all! I thought they were making a joke about vegan being a swear/taboo word, given the context of saying people don't want to hear of it because it allegedly threatens their morality

Oh aha thanks for pointing that out. Now that you mention it that does seem obvious. I definitely didn't catch that from the first use though. There should be a better word to capture both those meanings that doesn't confuse my poor regex sensibilities like that. :|

My regex sensitivities only warned me about the persecution of veggggggggns.

I was more concerned about the vens

It's a regular veganza in here. (I'm sorry)

veg(etari)?ans

I suppose I really should use veg.*ns

Personally I'm not opposed to public transport, in fact I want to like the railway. I tried. But the German railway is in such a poor state that I never use it. Not for small trips (with regional trains that are covered by my 49€ ticket) and especially not for longer trips (long distance trains like ICEs).

Every time you enter an ICE just remember that its a coinflip on whether or not you'll arrive on time to get your connecting train. Or maybe you won't arrive at all, happened enough times to me that I frankly don't trust it anymore. And considering how expensive ICE tickets have gotten... yeah I'd rather take the highway, despite that I don't like driving much.

I don't know where you drive for long car trips, but going south from e.g. Hamburg on the A1, or through the Ruhrgebiet by car is a much bigger coin flip with respect to arrival times (while always being significantly slower even on good days). So why the complains about punctionality for trains, but somehow it's fine for car travel?

Can't speak for Hamburg since I'm from the south. And frankly, even if a car trip ends up in congestion and you need 6 hours instead of 4, its still somewhat preferable to being dropped off at some random station in the middle of nowhere in the night and hoping the last regional train at 23:48 will actually make it to its destination. (Yes this happened to me)

The Autobahn is like a Mad Max movie nowadays. Turn signal? What's that? I'm just gonna pop into your lane when you're going 50 kph faster than me.

It takes forever compared to driving in most cases, catching the transit often involves a walk, and a lot of public transit is kind of grungy. This doesn't apply or matter as much in some cases (e.g. the NY subway) but in general it's not great, at least not in the USA.

>catching the transit often involves a walk

Tell me you're American without telling me you're American.

Does transit not always involve a walk, even a small one? It's not like everyone lives next to a subway station, and most destinations aren't right next to a subway station either.

He implied that Americans are not used walking places, no matter how short the distance.

Walking is good for you.

Doesn't that depend on one's weight? Or was that jogging/running

Having a "walkeable" weight is also good for you.

Why do you avoid the rail system?

Because waiting im Stau (traffic jam) is so much better.

Because missing important appointment (Termin) that you have arranged 3 fucking months before by waiting in a phone queue for 30 minutes because your Sbahn was cancelled because of a nonsense signal-related reason is so much better.

I'm not denying that rail service quality has gone down the drain in Germany.

The foolproof transportation is to take a bicycle.

I kind of agree and disagree with you. My main train lines in Berlin are U8 and Ring and it can be annoying sometimes.

And I will still probably never get a driver's license. Been going without for 40 years already. Just being able to jump into any train, bus, tram or ferry anytime is really nice. I could pay double the monthly price for this privilege.

Sadly related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI8PlJkqvc0

Only 62,7% of the trains were in time (and by in time they use a rigged system to count what is in time and what is not). So it's basically a 50% chance if you will be delayed at your destination or in time. Also note, that if you have to change trains mid travel you have that chance again. That means you will be late very very often. If you travel as an individual and you don't value your time at all this is a great deal, if you travel for business purposes good luck to you.

Apart from that, it's a lot more stressful (and time consuming) to go to a train station and leave at a train station instead of just driving by car.

Punctuality of local trains is much higher than the long distance ones whose stats you’re quoting here. For rapid transit, punctuality is less of an issue, compared to frequency.

Not exactly hard to nowadays in Germany

Using the rail system? Now that’s a trick and a half.

Congrats, now you just need to be on board when tax money is used for that infra. I bet that latest there your opposition starts.

As someone who uses the German rail any time I can, I also applaud this move.

A old friend used to make the same argument for doubling the price of gasoline (in Germany)… something like “it will keep the rabble off the road”.

I can fully relate. No one wants to travel in these unreliable, piss-stinking trains full of drunken criminals and islamists.