That’s cool that Londoners all live so close to each other and have a city built around public transportation. Unfortunately as someone who lives in Texas a car really us practically mandatory. Our Urban sprawl is large and it’s not something that can or will be easily fixed even over multiple lifetimes. To give an idea of what it is like over here, the nearest grocery store is a little over 3 miles (~5 km) away from where I live. There is no bus route within a 2 mile (~3km) area of me that provides transportation to that area.
The public transportation we do have is lacking in availability, accessibility, and coverage. and while there are ongoing efforts to update it. These updates primarily apply to the inner parts of the large cities and rarely cover the urban living areas where people actually live at. And these living areas are frequently very far away from where public transportation is available.
The main problem is that Texas cities are just too expansive in size for public transportation to currently be effective. This isn’t even factoring in how long commutes would take to be for some people even if they where somehow magically available tomorrow.
For example, many of my co-workers on my overnight shift live far enough away that commuting to work in a car during the dead of night on an empty highway road where they drive 75+ mph ( 120+kph) still takes them an hour or more to arrive to work daily. This is consider a common and even somewhat normal commute time and distance in Texas. If they had to take public transportation they would be looking at an over 2+ hour commute everyday at best. So that is not really a viable option for them.
Im really happy that Europeans have more dense cities and don’t have to deal with the same problems we have. But it honestly gets tiring hearing everyone say public transportation be the solution for everything in Texas. Yes it would very much help and efforts are being made. But due to how Texas cities where laid out and planned with urban sprawl in mind multiple decades ago before even my grandfather was able to give input. We can no longer have public transportation be a viable option for a large segment of the people who live here.
What Texas needs is both public transport AND better highway road planning, for example more exits and on ramps, more alternative routes to free up congestion on major feeder arteries. Not more lanes on the same congested routes, off ramps, feeders, etc.
Sorry for the rant, I just fucking hate the traffic here and it’s causes have become my mini soapbox of annoyance
At some point you have to make a choice. Either grab a hose to help put out the fire and fix things or you stand on your high ground, praising yourself for how noble your intentions are as everything around you burns.
High roading only works if your opponent has a conscience and can understand guilt. The side that is playing with matches and gasoline this whole time has shown very much that they do not have one.
And to address your original point, yes there very much is a difference. One side is doing things for tye sake of hurt others or progressing a goal that is downright evil and tyrannical. Your doing it to protect the people they’re trying to hurt and to oppose their tyranny.
Will it be clean? No… but anything worth fighting for has never been clean. The world isn’t just black and white. And the idea that stooping to anothers level makes you the same as them is about as binary as you can get. The world is filled with nuance and a whole range of colors that needs to be observed