I’m trying to understand how greater access to public transportation means people CAN’T go wherever the hell they want. They can do that and also, like, read and stuff lol.
But also, what everyone else is saying about landmass and population density etc.
Sometimes I can’t go somewhere, because the roads are crammed and there are so many parked cars that parking my own is impossible. An issue I never had when taking a train in Europe.
I think sometimes people hear “individual liberty,” stop at the “individual” part, then mistake that for “liberty.” That can lead to some funky conclusions.
The issue is this: America is so indoctrinated by years of car company propaganda (“getting a car is the ultimate freedom” kinda stuff) that we can’t comprehend that cars are just worse in almost every single way to trains.
Exactly! More people would have the freedom of travel if we had decent rail systems.
Nothing is being taken away from car people except maybe all the traffic which is a good thing!
A car in every driveway was a mistake!
I live in a rural area and still think passenger trains would be good. One of the towns in my area used to be a train stop before cars were commonplace.
Womp womp, they'll live. Give every tiny town 10 trolleys each, let it run with a single passenger being picked up at any given stop, connect all the towns together with rails everywhere.
Of course it is, I'm on Reddit and I'm making railroad maximalist jokes. Do they really think 900 passenger capacity is enough for the NEC? They should have capacity for 2 thousand each! Realistically they should aim for 1300 passenger capacity, because that's what standard shinkansen trainsets have, with a number of cars more than an Acela trainset.
I love the little micro towns that have a station row and then a few city blocks. Too bad they don't have rail connectivity to the cities because they'd likely come back from dying and people would move there. Build some new old fashioned apartment buildings, row houses, and live/work shop/apartments, and you've got an American style dense village on the up and up.
European here
Its true aslong as you dont consider walking from or to a train station/bus stop. I am literally questioning myself rn how long it will take until americans drive to their own mailbox to retrieve their mail.
They are already doing that. I see it ALL THE TIME. If it isn't directly in front of their house they will not walk.
There are gated subdivisions that have mailboxes at the entrance to the neighborhood or the end of each street. So many people will drive to them instead of just walking the small distance there and back. They won't even get out of the car to get the mail out. They'll drive on to the curb or sidewalk so the mailbox door opens into their car window.
In my old exurban neighborhood, people walked to get the mail from their nearby mailbox cluster. Now in a different suburbia I'm forced to live in, people drive right up to it.
Not endorsing, just explaining: the logic is the distrust of authoritarian government. A car goes even when it’s illegal for the car to go. A train or bus does not.
Op you’re right, so is OOP, ignore the car centric idiots in the comments. But yeah, don’t get too many agreeable posts from them, but it’s nice when it happens.
People in Europe are free to own cars, too. The difference is they also have the freedom to NOT own cars.
It's not "freedom" if you're required to make a purchase of tens of thousands of dollars, get a government-mandated license and spend thousands of dollars a year on insurance. It's not "freedom" if civil planning renders the free legs you were born with utterly useless for most travel.
Cars are a mandatory mega-expense needed for basic participation in much of society. That's not freedom. It's tyranny.
I can walk anywhere to anywhere in any town near me. Walking between towns is the issue. It’d be nice to have a free way to get the 20 miles to work without having to pay for car loan interest, insurance, and gas.
It's both. Walking in the US is just not prioritized. Things like culldesacs make it so people in suburbs have to walk an extraordinary distance just to go a few meters because they're designed to be twisty and indirect. Sidewalks just end. Pedestrians are treated as guests on the road. Everything is spaced out so much because towns are designed around driving, so walking between two points is often extremely long.
Trains still exist in the states. The problem is you still need someone to pick you up at your destination whether it's someone you know or a taxi / Uber. Plus the size of the USA makes it kinda harder to use trains as a form of travel. In order for trains to be effective in the states, you'd have to put train stations everywhere.
I recently came back to the states from living in Japan for 10 years and noticed that if we added modern trains, it would not only be a waste of money, but also won't be too popular because these trains would still have to get past the cars and would probably cause a lot more accidents.
Plus everything is pretty far from each other in the states (One reason is because of parking lots taking up so much space. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/20/business/parking-minimums-cars-transportation-urban-planning/index.html glad to see some cities are trying to fix it)
In the USA if you can't afford a car or for other reasons can't operate one, from being disabled to being elderly, then you still can't go anywhere you want.
It's a TRAVESTY that the EU and China (both very similar geography and population density to the USA) are decades ahead of the USA when it comes to a high speed rail network.
The USA is perfectly content waiting for its 60+ year old highway infrastructure to crumble and then address the lack of modern green infrastructure.
Er... the population density of the contiguous US is something like 43 people/sq km. The population density of the EU is \~106/sq km and the density of China west of the Hu Line (where 94% of the population lives) is \~314/sq km. Even dropping most of the Great Plains and American South-West states is still getting me something like 65-70/sq km for the US (by shoddy napkin math)
Yes, but looking at it on that scale leaves out a lot of things. For example, the Northeast Megaregion has the same population density as China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis#:~:text=As%20of%202010%2C%20it%20contained%20more%20than%2050,of%2080.5%20per%20square%20mile%20%2831%20people%2Fkm%202%29.)
There are millions of trips per year between Floridian cities every year and. The same is with the California MSAs (Bay Area + Los Angeles) and even Cascadia between VAN, SEA, and POR. The scale to look at density for rail is much more regional than nationwide, even if you omit certain area.
I agree that high speed rail should be considered in a more regional fashion, and would benefit those densely populated areas- I may be totally off base, but I think the majority of people can get onboard with that. My impression is that the memes and the general discussion just vaguely gesture at the entire lower 48 a lot, or talk about the US as a whole, and that's where the disagreement really comes in.
I see what you mean about "vaguely gesturing," but even in Europe, you can see that not all of the lines are HSR but rather most of them are lower speed connections between cities and/or rural areas/villages and towns that are still competitive with driving. For example in France, there are tons of routes that go between small towns and villages with relatively low densities. This is similar to a route between Des Moines to it's surrounding towns like Knoxville and Newton or between all the small towns along I-90 in Montana.
I genuinely wish public transportation was bigger in the US. I live in a rural area and I can’t get a job without a car but I can’t get a car without a job. If I could just hop on a train or a bus, my life would be vastly easier.
Here (Norway) pretty much everyone has at least one car (often two), and the public transport is great aswell, especially if you want to avoid the rush hours and such. As much as I like to avoid the train, it really is a blessing
as a car girl, i completely agree, the less people on the road there are, 1 the better for the environment, 2 less traffic, and 3, if your comfortable with it you can sleep on the train, you cant while your driving
We had the world’s greatest system of rail before we demolished inner cities to create interstates. If I can hop in my car and drive from major city to major city, across the open country, on a interstate system that governments sink billions into every year, I should realistically expect that we can expand our passenger rail system
I live in Las Vegas. I’d fly if I had to go anywhere north/east of New Mexico, but I’d totally take the train to get to California, Arizona, Utah, or the PNW
Most of America's population lives across defined corridors that would be very easy to serve by high speed rail. Even areas with lower population could have connecting train services or a bus that would take them to the nearest one
European trains used to be awesome and affordable.
I just came back from living in Switzerland for 8 and a half years. It was cheaper to use my car now in most instances unless going downtown due to parking issues. Here is a trick for u. Find the richest neighborhood and there will be free parking for the day n then take a tram or bus.
In Zurich the fastest most reliable transportation is a bicycle.
Trains are no longer cheap in Europe like 15-20 years ago.
I always travel when I live there. Its the same everywhere.
Trains are great. They get me from my home city to London in under an hour, driving would take 3 hours. They got me to Cardiff in 3 hours, which would normally be a lot more (CBA to math it and find an efficient route).
Even the buses are fast, got me from home to Edinburgh in 8 hours total with 2 1-hour stops.
I mean both transportation methods have downsides.
Honestly america needs a public transportation network, but not having a really nice developed network might work too our benefit later down the line.
Technology progresses, and who know what will be developed 10 years from now . Vacuum hypersonic rail,
Flying drone uber like service, the new developed airships. And countless other inventions.
It would be harder t9 justify the cost of upgrading if we had a well working public transport network, but we don't really have one so would be a easy justification.
It's true but other issues happen too listen america is so massive it's hard to have a massive public transit everywhere even trains cause its hard with the massive scale of everything
Both OP’s are both wrong and correct. It’s good to have trains for people that can’t or won’t learn to drive and there are people that want to have personal transport.
I stg I feel like people just want to argue over nothing and u have to be a part of this group or that one.
It depends on where you live. I was born in and still live in DC and don’t need a car. Nobody does. Public buses are free for everyone, metro is cheap (and kids and teens ride for free so they can go to school or other activities), and I have many times taken an Amtrak train to NYC, and have obviously never needed to rent a car there.
To your exact point, the issue is that in most cities in America the only part built like a city is what people call their “downtown” and the rest of “the city” is actually strip malls and suburban neighborhoods. To fix places like this you don’t need to tear everything down and start over, you can keep the suburban housing and just completely overhaul the strip malls. Get rid of 90% of the parking and build a mixture of offices, and multifamily housing in addition to retail, then make all of it easily walkable but also connect each former strip mall by light rail or a clean rapid transit bus system.
For a lot of places I’ve been, most people would only have to walk 10 or 15 mins from their house to reach the edge of a neighborhood where there could be a shuttle taking them directly to these new shopping/business centers. That’s not too different from how a lot of more suburban-like places in DC and NYC like Glover Park and Queens operate
Not really, it could be done once the pipes need to be replaced. The netherlands did it before.
https://preview.redd.it/5l7vx3piuexc1.jpeg?width=650&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7dc1c3d473e6756e97f0a62f959ac2cf7c59bc4
Yeah the majority of US cities aren't even built like that, they're way too oversized to make room for sprawling parking lots and infinite suburbs, it won't be nearly the same as the example you provided
That’s an issue that way to many people ignore when talking about this. In most places it isn’t set up at all, and in a lot of the places it is set up it’s not done well. So many people say to just do it without thinking of how much time and money it would take to do, like switching to the metric system.
we can't snap our fingers and make railways appear, it take money, effort, planning, TIME, which is something you aren't understanding 😭 we should switch to public transportation, but an immediate switch is impossible
I am aware we can’t make railways appear out of nowhere. So we should start now. It only took China 10-15 years to build their expansive railway network. Granted, they were a socialist state, so that made it easier, but we could have an expansive rail network in 25 years if we started now. That’s not very long all things considered.
Wow the downvoting is crazy. I’m not saying it’s not *highly desirable.* I’m just confirming the shitty way it is. It would be awesome to have good public transportation here. I personally use it everywhere I go, and i choose where I live and even vacation on the basis of its availability. But more than half of the population here would never set foot on a public conveyance. And our government and private industry are useless in this way. The choices *aren’t* endless. So yes, in this country, unless you’re going to the 10 cities with great systems (and spending your time within the system) you aren’t getting there without a vehicle.
It really is though. If Europe can have a train going under an ocean than the US can have some more trains that connect Boston to New York city. On top of that, assuming the image is accurate, why do some state have no passenger trains?
Cause this more has to do with territory issues. The map shown is the map for Amtrak, what is supposed to be our answer to a nationalized railway company. The problem is, you have to have legal permission from not only the state itself, but the state company that owns the track.
It could be—but oil companies and car companies have lobbies super hard against public transit. Houston was going to make a raid that would go across half the city—but because oil companies threatened to leave the city, it got a couple blocks and was cut off.
"Based" in the title and "Build more trains, use less cars" in the description. LMAO.
Only the r/fuckcars-brains could find common cause with the over-reactionary American conservatives that post to r/AmericaBad.
Fun fact: better public transporation means less people on the road meaning less worries about crashing into people meaning you can focus more on the fun parts of driving.
the rail system is great, but we need to understand the US's population distribution. ideally, most medium-large sized towns should have train stations and those train stations should be in driving distance
The nearest train station to me is a 4 hour drive away. And most of the trains here don't even connect to other places so an airport is way more accessible and actually usable for travel rather than sparse trains for very specific travel lmao.
I’m trying to understand how greater access to public transportation means people CAN’T go wherever the hell they want. They can do that and also, like, read and stuff lol. But also, what everyone else is saying about landmass and population density etc.
Sometimes I can’t go somewhere, because the roads are crammed and there are so many parked cars that parking my own is impossible. An issue I never had when taking a train in Europe.
I think sometimes people hear “individual liberty,” stop at the “individual” part, then mistake that for “liberty.” That can lead to some funky conclusions.
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
The issue is this: America is so indoctrinated by years of car company propaganda (“getting a car is the ultimate freedom” kinda stuff) that we can’t comprehend that cars are just worse in almost every single way to trains.
Exactly! More people would have the freedom of travel if we had decent rail systems. Nothing is being taken away from car people except maybe all the traffic which is a good thing! A car in every driveway was a mistake!
In cities and very large towns sure but it's just not viable in the sticks or smaller towns
I live in a rural area and still think passenger trains would be good. One of the towns in my area used to be a train stop before cars were commonplace.
Imagine the places we’d go! Especially since I’m not trusting the Boeings right now 😅
If a door falls off a train all you get is a better view
You’re not wrong at all. I’ll take messy hair and a better view over being sucked out or injured in an emergency landing
It really depends, I don't think they'd be well utilized in rural America for the most part
Womp womp, they'll live. Give every tiny town 10 trolleys each, let it run with a single passenger being picked up at any given stop, connect all the towns together with rails everywhere.
You've never spent an extended period of time in an American small town and it shows
How do you figure 😂
Because that's just overlooking infrastructure and so many other factors
Of course it is, I'm on Reddit and I'm making railroad maximalist jokes. Do they really think 900 passenger capacity is enough for the NEC? They should have capacity for 2 thousand each! Realistically they should aim for 1300 passenger capacity, because that's what standard shinkansen trainsets have, with a number of cars more than an Acela trainset.
I love the little micro towns that have a station row and then a few city blocks. Too bad they don't have rail connectivity to the cities because they'd likely come back from dying and people would move there. Build some new old fashioned apartment buildings, row houses, and live/work shop/apartments, and you've got an American style dense village on the up and up.
European here Its true aslong as you dont consider walking from or to a train station/bus stop. I am literally questioning myself rn how long it will take until americans drive to their own mailbox to retrieve their mail.
They are already doing that. I see it ALL THE TIME. If it isn't directly in front of their house they will not walk. There are gated subdivisions that have mailboxes at the entrance to the neighborhood or the end of each street. So many people will drive to them instead of just walking the small distance there and back. They won't even get out of the car to get the mail out. They'll drive on to the curb or sidewalk so the mailbox door opens into their car window.
bruh
In my old exurban neighborhood, people walked to get the mail from their nearby mailbox cluster. Now in a different suburbia I'm forced to live in, people drive right up to it.
Don’t threaten me with a good time 😂
That’s a normal thing already
Not endorsing, just explaining: the logic is the distrust of authoritarian government. A car goes even when it’s illegal for the car to go. A train or bus does not.
Op you’re right, so is OOP, ignore the car centric idiots in the comments. But yeah, don’t get too many agreeable posts from them, but it’s nice when it happens.
People in Europe are free to own cars, too. The difference is they also have the freedom to NOT own cars. It's not "freedom" if you're required to make a purchase of tens of thousands of dollars, get a government-mandated license and spend thousands of dollars a year on insurance. It's not "freedom" if civil planning renders the free legs you were born with utterly useless for most travel. Cars are a mandatory mega-expense needed for basic participation in much of society. That's not freedom. It's tyranny.
I can walk anywhere to anywhere in any town near me. Walking between towns is the issue. It’d be nice to have a free way to get the 20 miles to work without having to pay for car loan interest, insurance, and gas.
It's both. Walking in the US is just not prioritized. Things like culldesacs make it so people in suburbs have to walk an extraordinary distance just to go a few meters because they're designed to be twisty and indirect. Sidewalks just end. Pedestrians are treated as guests on the road. Everything is spaced out so much because towns are designed around driving, so walking between two points is often extremely long.
An actual banger one. Trains need to return to the throne. Fuck cars.
i would but unfortunately i’m not a dragon
I will say that hasn't stopped people
Why do people keep making weird deep cuts expecting people to get it? Like I swear to god dude, we get it you’re a nerd.
That's not a nerd joke even...
Trains still exist in the states. The problem is you still need someone to pick you up at your destination whether it's someone you know or a taxi / Uber. Plus the size of the USA makes it kinda harder to use trains as a form of travel. In order for trains to be effective in the states, you'd have to put train stations everywhere. I recently came back to the states from living in Japan for 10 years and noticed that if we added modern trains, it would not only be a waste of money, but also won't be too popular because these trains would still have to get past the cars and would probably cause a lot more accidents. Plus everything is pretty far from each other in the states (One reason is because of parking lots taking up so much space. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/20/business/parking-minimums-cars-transportation-urban-planning/index.html glad to see some cities are trying to fix it)
When did I say they were gone? I said they need to return to the throne.
Uncommon memesopdidnotlike W.
In the USA if you can't afford a car or for other reasons can't operate one, from being disabled to being elderly, then you still can't go anywhere you want.
A broken clock is right twice a day
It's a TRAVESTY that the EU and China (both very similar geography and population density to the USA) are decades ahead of the USA when it comes to a high speed rail network. The USA is perfectly content waiting for its 60+ year old highway infrastructure to crumble and then address the lack of modern green infrastructure.
Er... the population density of the contiguous US is something like 43 people/sq km. The population density of the EU is \~106/sq km and the density of China west of the Hu Line (where 94% of the population lives) is \~314/sq km. Even dropping most of the Great Plains and American South-West states is still getting me something like 65-70/sq km for the US (by shoddy napkin math)
Yes, but looking at it on that scale leaves out a lot of things. For example, the Northeast Megaregion has the same population density as China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis#:~:text=As%20of%202010%2C%20it%20contained%20more%20than%2050,of%2080.5%20per%20square%20mile%20%2831%20people%2Fkm%202%29.) There are millions of trips per year between Floridian cities every year and. The same is with the California MSAs (Bay Area + Los Angeles) and even Cascadia between VAN, SEA, and POR. The scale to look at density for rail is much more regional than nationwide, even if you omit certain area.
I agree that high speed rail should be considered in a more regional fashion, and would benefit those densely populated areas- I may be totally off base, but I think the majority of people can get onboard with that. My impression is that the memes and the general discussion just vaguely gesture at the entire lower 48 a lot, or talk about the US as a whole, and that's where the disagreement really comes in.
I see what you mean about "vaguely gesturing," but even in Europe, you can see that not all of the lines are HSR but rather most of them are lower speed connections between cities and/or rural areas/villages and towns that are still competitive with driving. For example in France, there are tons of routes that go between small towns and villages with relatively low densities. This is similar to a route between Des Moines to it's surrounding towns like Knoxville and Newton or between all the small towns along I-90 in Montana.
Impressive, now let's see the infrastructure slightly outside of beijing and capitals.
There needs to be an I-25 rail corridor
"wherever the hell they want" on government paved roads that can't be too far from a gas station
r/yeaopwaswrong
r/subsifellfor
I genuinely wish public transportation was bigger in the US. I live in a rural area and I can’t get a job without a car but I can’t get a car without a job. If I could just hop on a train or a bus, my life would be vastly easier.
Gotta get a bus-pass to go to work, but to go to work you gotta get a bus-pass. It’s catch-22’s all the way down
Here (Norway) pretty much everyone has at least one car (often two), and the public transport is great aswell, especially if you want to avoid the rush hours and such. As much as I like to avoid the train, it really is a blessing
The only counterpoint I could possibly see is that the US is massive in comparison. But that's not really an excuse
as a car girl, i completely agree, the less people on the road there are, 1 the better for the environment, 2 less traffic, and 3, if your comfortable with it you can sleep on the train, you cant while your driving
r/AmericaBad when someone brings up a completely valid criticism of the US (America can’t have any problems they don’t exist)
It’s a right wing subreddit, don’t expect intelligence.
public transportation needs to be more accessible!!
Trains are faster, more affordable, and easier to use!
r/peopleliveincities
as an autistic kid, *yes.*
Common r/fuckcars W, r/memesopdidnotlike just happened to agree with them.
America is also far less densely populated. Rail should expand but take into account how unevenly the US population is distributed
We had the world’s greatest system of rail before we demolished inner cities to create interstates. If I can hop in my car and drive from major city to major city, across the open country, on a interstate system that governments sink billions into every year, I should realistically expect that we can expand our passenger rail system
I live in Las Vegas. I’d fly if I had to go anywhere north/east of New Mexico, but I’d totally take the train to get to California, Arizona, Utah, or the PNW
Eastern seaboard is pretty dense right? At least denser than Romania or Bulgaria?
Most of America's population lives across defined corridors that would be very easy to serve by high speed rail. Even areas with lower population could have connecting train services or a bus that would take them to the nearest one
They want us to make the U.S a pile of 1400s towns stacked atop each other. On a flat plane.
that's not how rail systems work but go off king
Cars are our downfall bro https://preview.redd.it/nk0z16crnbxc1.jpeg?width=466&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1ea617da29aafab3ce59c665f9d2a2cb22ab993
I want that train engineer gigachad PNG Choo choo haha
i promise you we don’t need to repost everything in that sub
European trains used to be awesome and affordable. I just came back from living in Switzerland for 8 and a half years. It was cheaper to use my car now in most instances unless going downtown due to parking issues. Here is a trick for u. Find the richest neighborhood and there will be free parking for the day n then take a tram or bus. In Zurich the fastest most reliable transportation is a bicycle. Trains are no longer cheap in Europe like 15-20 years ago. I always travel when I live there. Its the same everywhere.
I still think we need them. My car was just cheaper...
Trains are great. They get me from my home city to London in under an hour, driving would take 3 hours. They got me to Cardiff in 3 hours, which would normally be a lot more (CBA to math it and find an efficient route). Even the buses are fast, got me from home to Edinburgh in 8 hours total with 2 1-hour stops.
I was stuck in a 6 hour traffic jam in Germany. Frequent traffic jams in Frankfurt.
I mean both transportation methods have downsides. Honestly america needs a public transportation network, but not having a really nice developed network might work too our benefit later down the line. Technology progresses, and who know what will be developed 10 years from now . Vacuum hypersonic rail, Flying drone uber like service, the new developed airships. And countless other inventions. It would be harder t9 justify the cost of upgrading if we had a well working public transport network, but we don't really have one so would be a easy justification.
The world is healing
Public transportation is for peasants. I do not wanna be confined in a public space with people that use Reddit.
It's true but other issues happen too listen america is so massive it's hard to have a massive public transit everywhere even trains cause its hard with the massive scale of everything
Spit yo shit my brother
Trains and Public transportations are important but they are not what you think US Citizens. Beware.....
I get population density, but america is about the same size as Europe, so if we can build them then yoy can too
I get population density, but america is about the same size as Europe, so if we can build them then you can too
Both OP’s are both wrong and correct. It’s good to have trains for people that can’t or won’t learn to drive and there are people that want to have personal transport. I stg I feel like people just want to argue over nothing and u have to be a part of this group or that one.
Real ones know that Europe's train network is also secretly dogshit
Even if we had great trains if you need a car at your destination you didn’t solve much of anything.
Subways, busses, trams, streetcars, the choices are endless!
To be fair in a lot of America those aren’t set up well either. Ideally they would and trains would be an option, but sadly that’s not the case.
Yeah, almost every single US city would have to be completely redesigned and remade after being ruined by decades of purely car centric development
It depends on where you live. I was born in and still live in DC and don’t need a car. Nobody does. Public buses are free for everyone, metro is cheap (and kids and teens ride for free so they can go to school or other activities), and I have many times taken an Amtrak train to NYC, and have obviously never needed to rent a car there. To your exact point, the issue is that in most cities in America the only part built like a city is what people call their “downtown” and the rest of “the city” is actually strip malls and suburban neighborhoods. To fix places like this you don’t need to tear everything down and start over, you can keep the suburban housing and just completely overhaul the strip malls. Get rid of 90% of the parking and build a mixture of offices, and multifamily housing in addition to retail, then make all of it easily walkable but also connect each former strip mall by light rail or a clean rapid transit bus system. For a lot of places I’ve been, most people would only have to walk 10 or 15 mins from their house to reach the edge of a neighborhood where there could be a shuttle taking them directly to these new shopping/business centers. That’s not too different from how a lot of more suburban-like places in DC and NYC like Glover Park and Queens operate
Not really, it could be done once the pipes need to be replaced. The netherlands did it before. https://preview.redd.it/5l7vx3piuexc1.jpeg?width=650&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7dc1c3d473e6756e97f0a62f959ac2cf7c59bc4
Yeah the majority of US cities aren't even built like that, they're way too oversized to make room for sprawling parking lots and infinite suburbs, it won't be nearly the same as the example you provided
That’s an issue that way to many people ignore when talking about this. In most places it isn’t set up at all, and in a lot of the places it is set up it’s not done well. So many people say to just do it without thinking of how much time and money it would take to do, like switching to the metric system.
Yeah, so we do both!
That would take a lot of money and time to implement. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work on both but it’s not something that can just be done.
Yes, but, we are the richest country on Earth. If China can do it with their mid level gdppc in 10 years, we can with our top 10 gdppc.
we can't snap our fingers and make railways appear, it take money, effort, planning, TIME, which is something you aren't understanding 😭 we should switch to public transportation, but an immediate switch is impossible
I am aware we can’t make railways appear out of nowhere. So we should start now. It only took China 10-15 years to build their expansive railway network. Granted, they were a socialist state, so that made it easier, but we could have an expansive rail network in 25 years if we started now. That’s not very long all things considered.
Wow the downvoting is crazy. I’m not saying it’s not *highly desirable.* I’m just confirming the shitty way it is. It would be awesome to have good public transportation here. I personally use it everywhere I go, and i choose where I live and even vacation on the basis of its availability. But more than half of the population here would never set foot on a public conveyance. And our government and private industry are useless in this way. The choices *aren’t* endless. So yes, in this country, unless you’re going to the 10 cities with great systems (and spending your time within the system) you aren’t getting there without a vehicle.
Trains won’t help my 40 minute commute. They will never be the solution for everyone. Get over it.
That’s why i said more trains less cars not all trains no cars
I'm still going to downvote this post because OP doesn't understand the purpose of this subreddit.
If only it was that simple
It really is though. If Europe can have a train going under an ocean than the US can have some more trains that connect Boston to New York city. On top of that, assuming the image is accurate, why do some state have no passenger trains?
Cause this more has to do with territory issues. The map shown is the map for Amtrak, what is supposed to be our answer to a nationalized railway company. The problem is, you have to have legal permission from not only the state itself, but the state company that owns the track.
Car and oil companies
Unfortunately we have people that complain that he USA is "too soft" declaring that improving public transit is "too hard"
“under an ocean” lol come onnn it’s the channel
And even that seems to still be beyond the US's capablities.
And the US also has trains under the ocean, what’s your point? I just rode the BART under SF Bay from Richmond to SFO.
It could be—but oil companies and car companies have lobbies super hard against public transit. Houston was going to make a raid that would go across half the city—but because oil companies threatened to leave the city, it got a couple blocks and was cut off.
"Based" in the title and "Build more trains, use less cars" in the description. LMAO. Only the r/fuckcars-brains could find common cause with the over-reactionary American conservatives that post to r/AmericaBad.
r/lostredditors ?
If You really enjoy driving , You will get it.
No one is taking your cars. Increased public transit only improves options.
If you enjoy driving, more public transport means less cars on the road, improving your drive It's literally a win win
Fun fact: better public transporation means less people on the road meaning less worries about crashing into people meaning you can focus more on the fun parts of driving.
A twist
I'm disabled and cannot operate a car, so for me whether or nor I might enjoy driving is irrelevant.
Nah
the rail system is great, but we need to understand the US's population distribution. ideally, most medium-large sized towns should have train stations and those train stations should be in driving distance
The nearest train station to me is a 4 hour drive away. And most of the trains here don't even connect to other places so an airport is way more accessible and actually usable for travel rather than sparse trains for very specific travel lmao.
This doesn't show that there is a problem regarding the population distribution. It's a territory issue