216
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
216 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
59169 readers
2917 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities. The problem comes when you take into consideration how spread out the US is. You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable.
EVs are not a perfect solution, by a long shot. And ideally we would move away from cars being ubiquitous in America, but that is many, many years off. It’s better to work towards that slowly than it is to say “well it’s not perfect so let’s just not.”
You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable. That’s because it’s designed for cars. We have huge parking lots designed for cars but nothing for public transport. Whenever I travel to NYC or Chicago, I can go anywhere in trains and buses. In my city, I can’t even get milk without driving to a store.
Because your store probably doesn't serve thousands of people to validate the cost of the infrastructure. My city has busses, but it also has corn fields and open lots and a lot of spread. It's just not viable to walk all your groceries a mile to and from the bus stop both ways for a bus that comes every hour. It's different when every train and bus is full and the need is well met.
Ask for more taxes and more spending on this infrastructure, or use your car.
The infrastructure is developed around cars so obviously using cars makes sense. We could have smaller grocery stores and have it closer to neighborhoods so people can walk to it but we have buses which only come once an hour which takes 30 minutes to drive 2 miles and your grocery trip will take 3 hours so you are better off just buying a car!
I don’t think you understand how spread out rural America is. A lot of areas have tiny grocery stores to support a small population spread over a wide area.
The town I grew up in had no grocery stores, there was one small store a 20-min drive away that served all the surrounding towns. There was no work from home and if you had a job you had to have a car to get there.
The population was too small and too spread out to support any public transit. They now have a bus that goes from the center of town to the previously-mentioned grocery store, once a week on Sunday at 7am and then back at noon.
Still, getting to the center of town is quite the hike for many residents so I imagine for most a car is still essential.
And before anyone mentions the "infrastructure" being built for cars: this town was founded before cars were a thing. It was built for horses.
Rural areas can keep their cars. 80% of America's population is urban, not rural. We do not need to hold back fixing things in cities just because rural America needs cars.
But still that's not the point.
It has been decided to build infrastructure for cars into the smallest furthest villages and not to build infrastructure for trains into the smallest same villages.
That's why it is like it is.
Some other countries have made better decisions.