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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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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.”
There are places that would be wonderfully served by trains, but just aren't.
Cars are best in rural areas, but by far the majority of peoole live in cities where cars are the worst, yet we still build them for cars.
"Build them for cars" cities aren't built anymore. They were built a long time ago. Modifying existing cities for trains would be nearly impossible. Yes it's a 4:1 ratio of urban to rural areas. But remember the majority of the population lives in like 4-5 counties in the US. That's a lot of area that is empty.
It's a good point that cities aren't built anymore, and that's part of the problem. Our population has grown drastically, but we don't build hardly any new infrastructure for them outside of roads. So traffic is terrible despite enormous amounts of money from both government and people.
Cities aren't supposed to be static, they're supposed to grow and adapt to the needs of those that live there. There is a large need for non-car transport that is either ignored or sidelined for cars.
I'm not talking about 90% empty land, that's not where people are.
When the car was invented, governments had little issue buildozing entire neighborhoods for highways, but now that some places are realizing that's a bad decision, its really hard to undo.
I mean cool and all... Vote to raise taxes and cut military spending like america loves to do and that will be a reality. - An American in the burbs
The stupid thing is that fixing it isn't even that hard.
Step one Get rid stupid zoning laws like single family housing and reduce parking minimums.
Step 2 Modify existing roads piece by piece to include alternative transit methods. Add bike lanes, if you can't slow down roads and people will bike.
Actually run decent buses where peoole want to go, not oversized 50 person buses on 3 routes that nobody uses becasue it doesn't go anywhere, and has an hour between the next bus.
That's it, the market will build more housing in areas that need it if its profitable, then use that new tax money to drive transit infrastructure.
There's a lot of fine details, but we're bankrupting cities with cars right now.
A lot of the world had to rebuild after WW1and WW2 and that allowed for building around newer technologies. The US never had that. We're expanding and you can't just build in infrastructure like that.
The newer technology at that time was cars and roads, and many European countries did try the American system of roads and suburbs.
Its just that most of them realized it wad a bad idea around 20 years ago and started rethinking their cities.
Many city centers were even turned into parking lots like American ones.
Again cities arent supposed to be static, and normally they grow denser, rather than sprawling.
The problem with American cities is partly zoning, and partly nimbyism, where people don't want their places to change.
And sprawl sucks for pretty much everyone. Less arable land for farming, poorer anmeties, longer travel times, and finally huge transportation costs. Cars are by far the most costly method of travel, both personally and for governments.