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and I'm saying this as a HhV* owner.
Fixed.
I agree with the general thrust of what you say, of course, but to make some pedantic points--I don't think trains should be completely free, but that there should not be an expectation to make any kind of profit from them, keeping the amount that needs to be invested every year at a manageable level, of course.
Also, some people rely on cars for quite legitimate reasons, e.g. people with mobility difficulties, and for them driving certainly shouldn't cost a fortune.
Motorised transport is a good thing but we have absolutely no idea how to use it properly. I always think some of that comes from all the bullshit spewed by 'science fiction' writers largely in the 20th century, although most were, of course taking their cue from Jules Verne.
In Verne's work, the machines were always a tool to explore a then largely unknown (-feeling) vast world of huge complexity, whether going to the 'centre of the Earth' (obviously not), travelling 20,000 leagues under the sea, travelling around the world in 80 days, etc. Obviously, Verne also wrote very different books, but these are among his most famous.
However, he and his successors established a deep-seated cultural core in which the use of machines (as opposed to, say, hand tools) is a superior way of living to not using them. Most people, when asked, will give some specific reason for why they use a car or a plane or whatever, but that conditions have become such that these reasons exist in the first place is a product of said culture alone.
Fascination with machines isn't as new as that, of course, and you could probably go back much further than Albertus Magnus to detect it if written records existed. Nor are machines all bad. Still, if we're ever going to get back to some situation in which we think more carefully of which part of our identities we transfer into machines ('saving' work, 'AI' and all that), that culture of machine modernism, whose roots in turn lie in the nonsensical pseudo-philosophy of René Descartes, has to be tackled at the root.
* Heavy hippy Vehicle
Oliver Schick-
Heavy hippy Vehicle
It's basically a garden shed on wheels.
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I'd be happy if trains were even remotely competitive with driving. I mean £300+ for a Liverpool return could fly me half way around the world. Is it any wonder people just choose to drive. Same as going to Wales/Poole for a couple of audaxes last year. I think the trains were almost £200 and then you're stuck waiting for them and if you miss them you're fucked. Whereas driving costs me maybe at the most £100 for fuel and in this case saves time as well (at least the Liverpool train is faster than driving). The one time I try to take a train to Bristol for an audax and I almost don't get onto my "bike space" because ALL SIX are full. Six. FFS. Then I spend the entire journey standing up and it's an hour late because of some rowdiness (which was quite fun but still). So, basically, trains are fucked. Make them about 100x cheaper, put entire bike carriages on them and every station should have bike storage and hire. Then you'd be getting somewhere. Fuck the shareholders off and make it a useful transport solution.
hippy
Yep, it's cheaper to fly and cheaper to drive in almost every case I've come across. I have the luxury to be able to choose slower, more expensive but less polluting options but I still have limits about how much time/money I can 'waste' being 'green'.
Trains should be free, driving cars should cost a fucking fortune - and I'm saying this as a car owner.