solarpunk memes

It already does. Where I live, you can just rent an electric scooter by the minute/kilometer. Just grab one from the street, scan it in the app and go. Plenty of people who never bothered to get drivers licenses or just haven't bought cars, have electric scooters.

Electric bicycles seem a bit more efficient and comfortable, but scooters are soooo portable. Easier to fit on trains, buses, hallways... And even in your car. Have a car and an electric scooter? Drive to another city, park the car in a lower density area, take your scooter out and go. No longer dependent on intercity transit times, and yet you save a bunch of fuel (because city consumption > highway consumption) and nerves (because fuck city traffic) and don't have to work about expensive and crowded city center parking...

Anyway, new electric scooters start at like 300 EUR for Chinese ones that probably spy on you somehow. Ones with more range and power cost a bit more.

public transport is just 10x as comfortable as any car could be

Yes, nothing beats walking to a bus stop and waiting there in the cold, rain or burning sun, hoping the bus shows up in time or at all. Then stressing, because it being 15 minutes late probably means your connecting train will be gone. Oh yes, there it goes. Half an hour wait with no place to sit. And then repeat this two more times for more connecting trains and buses.

And I haven't even talked about not being able to sit during train rides, or having to sit on back wrecking seats. Unfortunately I have back issues and after having enjoyed the 'comfort' of our public transport I often end up just not being able to stand or sit anymore at the end of the day because my back hurts so bad.

That is my average commute, and as a bonus there ultimately isn't a difference in price here between taking the car or public transport. To top it off my average travel time is 60 minutes by car, 1.5 - 2 hours by public transport, often depending whether or not the first bus shows up in time.

It would be able to overlook a lot of this if it was feasible to do some work in the train, but with all the fragmentation on my route I never really get anything done.

I really would like to use public transport, as it is more sustainable than my gas guzzler, but each time I try it the experience just sucks so bad.

Agree, it's so much nicer.

No stress about searching parking spots, no cursing people driving too fast or slow... and reliable, fast, affordable and comfortable.

Political will is not even the problem; corruption, ie. corporatism and oligarchs are. They stand in the way of a truly public transit friendly society. None of the oligarchs are part of 'us'.

And even if we consider cars,good driving experiences necessitate public transit, bicycle lanes, and walkability!

I'm with you entirely except for comfort. I think the only comfort advantage is that trains can have comparable leg room and you can standup.

I have never been on any type of mass transit where the seats were as comfortable as even a crappy car.
That's ignoring system dependent stuff like cleanliness or the discomforts of being close to strangers.

You can certainly clean more, put in better seats, and suck it up when it comes to strangers, but as it is right now, I struggle to see how you could say it's more comfortable based purely on the amenities.

If you're actually serious, you could replace many of them with something like this: https://www.freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/