Question - Whats your Opinion on paid forms of travel? | Squat the Planet

Question Whats your Opinion on paid forms of travel?

Pate123

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I Recently hitched and then took a greyhound bus and an amtrak. I wasn't ever able to do this when I was younger and more committed to being a dirty kid. When you guys take busses or commuter trains from place to place, how do you feel about it? Do you feel like it was a cop out or a nice rest from having to do some dirty bum stuff? Interested to hear from you.
 

ali

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I pretty much only take paid forms of transport, because I feel stressed out when I take unpaid forms. For my personal travel I always choose the cheapest paid route, even if it takes me way longer, but I prefer to hand over the money and then know that I don't owe the operator anything else. No conversation, no favors, no bullshit, just here's the money to take me there. Personally reducing the risk of being busted or the emotional cost of having to interact with other people is worth the money I earned in however I chose to earn it. Everything gets to be on my own terms.

Anyone who looks down on people who pay money to travel - or on the other hand people who pay in other ways to travel - is a jackass, imo. Everyone will choose the transport medium that is right for them. Any long-term traveler will have more in common with you than anyone who spends the majority of their life in one place, doesn't matter how they choose to get around.

What I think is more important is to promote diversity of transport media. In destinations where the only way to get there is private vehicle (or hitching a ride on a private vehicle) that location is immediately traveler-unfriendly. It reduces people's options to get there, which imo is anti-freedom. So yeah, I'm happy any time a bus company introduces a new route, or a new train line gets built. Now they opened the door to opening that place up to more travelers. We can't have true freedom of movement until anyone can go anywhere.
 

sevedemanos

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no opinion honestly. i mean, owning a vehicle costs money, right? and is probably the most practical option if you like to travel.

personally never considered myself a traveler / tramp.. vagabond, etc. one day i just got bored of seattle. needed a change of pace. new faces. new streets. yadda yadda

needed a new challenge, and more importantly, people to talk to that were remotely relatable. my life up till then had been fairly traumatic, difficult.. wanted to go vibe with other misfits.

trains are free. and when you have no support network and all of your expenses go solely to basics every pay period.. free seems pretty much ideal to me.

no opinion on commuter services. but im always glad theyre available when/where they are bc hitching blows. its the least reliable, and more often than not im on a tight schedule. to the next veggie farm, next festival, beating the whether there etc etc.
 
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The Toecutter

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I've only used paid forms of travel as necessity dictated. If I needed to be at a specific place by a specific deadline and my time was sufficiently limited, they had their place. Greyhound bus was my go-to, out of convenience and relatively low cost. I never liked this method of transportation, mind you, but it was a lot better than the available alternatives for paid travel(I will not even step foot in an airport with all of the TSA lunacy).

However, I find myself using paid forms of transportation very rarely now that I have since designed and built a sports car pretending to be a "bicycle". It can carry me and some stuff, and with the motor disabled, is perfectly functional as a bicycle(faster than a bicycle too, thanks to aerodynamic drag reduction). With the motor enabled, I can operate it unrestricted in states where this does not run afoul of the law(there's no throttle and the vehicle is set up to where the motor doesn't add thrust unless I'm pedaling) and it can accelerate faster than some cars, or I can operate it with a 28 mph/750W assist limit while pedaling to make it a "Class 3 Ebike" in jurisdictions that have defined such where otherwise operating it unrestricted could catch the attention of law enforcement.

A 150 mile ride costs me about $0.15 worth of electricity. It gets the equivalent of about 3,000-4,000 miles per gallon in terms of efficiency. While it isn't as free as hopping a train, it is greatly cheaper per mile than taking the bus or light rail in a city, and greatly cheaper per mile than taking the Greyhound. And it is every bit as convenient and useful as a car, without all of the expense and bureaucratic bullshit that comes with using a car.

There is a major downside. Nearly every cop I pass by pulls me over, not knowing what it is. I explain that it's a "bicycle", and most of the time, they let me leave without further issue after taking a few minutes to show it to them. I have no drivers license(or even a valid ID), insurance, title, tags, or registration, and in much of the U.S., operating this vehicle unrestricted is perfectly legal, and in places where it isn't, I can operate it as a "class 3 ebike".

It is being upgraded to be able to top out at 100+ mph and accelerate like a sports car, at least when operated in unrestricted mode. If I ever get into a police chase with it, I'll be able to pick it up and carry it into a home or apartment for hiding. It is a culmination of my frustrations regarding government and various private entities inserting themselves as a barrier to individual transportation and extracting money and/or liberty every step of the way. You can't even get a drivers license in the US without being put into a facial recognition database. I'm sick of it. I engineered a solution to that and it works for me.
 
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Pate123

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It is being upgraded to be able to top out at 100+ mph and accelerate like a sports car, at least when operated in unrestricted mode. If I ever get into a police chase with it, I'll be able to pick it up and carry it into a home or apartment for hiding. It is a culmination of my frustrations regarding government and various private entities inserting themselves as a barrier to individual transportation and extracting money and/or liberty every step of the way. You can't even get a drivers license in the US without being put into a facial recognition database. I'm sick of it. I engineered a solution to that and it works for me.

have you ever biffed it on that thing?
 

The Toecutter

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have you ever biffed it on that thing?

I've been rear-ended by a truck while stopped at a light. I designed a rear bulkhead sufficiently sturdy that it saved me from injury. The tail section was all fucked up and I had to re-true the rear wheel, but I was able to source some used election signs and re-build the tail out of coroplast. The bike has 3 wheels, so it has static stability, and the center of gravity is sufficiently low and far enough forward that it won't tip over in hard cornering. I do donuts with it and hooning it about is a pleasure.

1KvhZN8.jpg


The above photo was taken before it was rear-ended.

There is another major downside I neglected to mention earlier. I cannot carry it on a bus or train. If it has a break down, I don't have AAA. There are a very limited number of vehicles that can transport it if something goes wrong. I carry my tools and spare parts with me for whenever I need to work on it. However, if something breaks that cannot be sourced at a local bikeshop, I'm screwed. Even if it means I'm in the middle of nowhere and 30 miles from the nearest town. There are parts in this vehicle that would have to be ordered from a catalogue, should they fail, and with supply lines being the way they are right now, it could be months before a replacement arrives. Fortunately, I've never been in that sort of situation while travelling. It's reliability is comparable to a decent car, with the caveat that I know how to do my own work and almost everything is relatively simple to fix.

I'm approaching 70,000 miles on it, and total operating cost including replacement parts(chain, tires, ect) and including the cost to build this vehicle has been under $0.06/mile, with the energy used for propulsion being a tiny fraction of the total. I have never been left stranded, even after an accident(although I would have been stranded multiple times if I didn't know how to fix it and didn't carry my tools). Tires/tubes are the most expensive component of its operating cost, at $0.01/mile, followed by chain at $0.004/mile. The more I use this vehicle, the cheaper per mile it gets. It's perhaps the cheapest form of transportation possible, aside from train hopping or hitch hiking, especially considering that the electric motor is much cheaper to use per mile than food calories making it cheaper than a normal bicycle(at least on a long enough timeline for the vehicle's use to pay for its build cost).

Seriously, every travelling anarchist should have something like this, even if it's just a normal 2-wheeled upright ebike. The cheapest way to get one is to build it yourself. The most expensive component of it will be the tricycle. I built mine off of a $600 KMX frame kit and added or designed everything around that frame kit. As it is right now, my build can be replicated for a bit under $3,000 if you do all the work yourself, but I used a lot of high-end components because I don't want anything failing at speed and I have suspension on all three wheels. If that is too expensive, you could find a normal delta-layout adult tricycle like they sell to disabled people and build something appropriate for slower speeds and put a solar roof on it(slower speeds because such a thing won't have a suspension and its center of gravity will be less than ideal, plus it will be quite tip-prone). I built mine to move like a car, but that added greatly to the expense. Something that cruises at 20 mph using an electric motor, and gets a 50 mile range per charge, could be done for around $500 if you get the tricycle used on craigslist or offerup and source your battery pack used(batteryhookup is a good place). The rest of the EV components are fairly inexpensive, especially if you get them used. Solar panels have gotten relatively cheap as of late. If you're patient and look around, you can find working solar panels for less than $0.50/watt, which are perfect for placing on a towable shelter, and which can be used to recharge the traction pack on an electric bike.
 
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Pate123

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I've been rear-ended by a truck while stopped at a light. I designed a rear bulkhead sufficiently sturdy that it saved me from injury. The tail section was all fucked up and I had to re-true the rear wheel, but I was able to source some used election signs and re-build the tail out of coroplast. The bike has 3 wheels, so it has static stability, and the center of gravity is sufficiently low and far enough forward that it won't tip over in hard cornering. I do donuts with it and hooning it about is a pleasure.


that's pretty cool. I'm glad it works for you and now that I see the design, I can see you can't lay it down. I've got something less fancy. sorry to hear about the rear ending.
 

beersalt

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I can't stand it, truthfully.
I don't mind commuter trains more short distance, but the long amounts of time on both bus, and train are fucking LONG. I can do a long ride on Freight, but it's so much more bareable because you're not surrounded by a bunch of normies, and your dog can't fit in the bathroom, and you can't drink your own booze in your seat. At least I can get my dog off a train at a siding, and she'll pee real quick, and can get back on. Amtrak does not have enough 10 minute stops to comfortably allow a dog to piss n shit. You always gotta exit the maze to find some grass, or foliage.

The last greyhound I was on, some asshole thought he was flirting with me or something, by flicking my knee? I told him to cut it out, and he continued, so I punched him in the shoulder, or something like that. He finally stopped. People will act like they don't have seats available while your walking down an isle with a dog. It all just fucking sucks.
 
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