This is why I feel the height was the seventies. Was it a great time necessarily but we were still making progress. I mean yeah technology progressed after but little else. Some political wins here and there but so much regression.
On the other hand, everyone was inhaling lead fumes at the time. And buildings were full of asbestos.
I get things like this when I mention the seventies. The fact is was regulated out in the 70's is what made it the height. the problem is things like that no longer happening in the 80's onward much with the villianification of regulation.
Lead and asbestos weren't banned until long after the 70s. Asbestos was (sort of) banned in 1989, and leaded gasoline wasn't banned until 1996.
This is a bit misleading. We still have lead water pipes but the start of getting rid of lead from paint and gasoline in the 70's and its crazy we still have not gotten rid of it in pipes with just recently during our more sane times of the last few decades some more regulation (if it stands in the next four years.) Asbestos is a bit of a special case as it did prevent fire deaths significantly and there was issues with replacing it with something as effective and issues with disturbing it possibly being more dangerous by requiring it to be replaced. but regulation again did start in the seventies with exposure to workers in manufacturer. Still much like lead pipes it is only in the past year during our brief blip of enlightened times that its been banned mostly. Again if it stays in place.
The blue diagonal names makes this really hard to compare.
And it doesn't really show how fast/reliable service is. With freight having priority on all the rails, passenger gets fucked over, becoming slow, unpredictable, and spotty.
Without an "after" pic showing the map as it is now, this isn't informative for most people
I'll edit and put it in the body too. Good call.
This map doesn't show all the stations.
Here is the actual current map
From
Important to note the key in the bottom left. The green lines aren't trains, they're generally bus routes that Amtrak coordinates with.
So the grid is basically the same but most of the stations are gone.
The “after” pic isn’t showing all the stations.
The other difference is some routes get 2 trains a day and it probably cost $5k to go cross country
2 trains a day would be an improvement for many routes, a lot are 1 train a day or 3 trains a week.
All the proof you need that north america is not "too big" to build a railway. There are already several railways from coast to coast.
Did they purposely avoid South Dakota?
what... I know that you don't have much in the way of public transit but... you remove what little you have now?
Oh this is nothing. Read up on the streetcars. The country basically removed most of its mass transit light rail because the car companies weren't selling enough cars.
They didn't even do it in smart ways. This town just paved over the tracks. Now, 80 years later or whatever it is, the streets are caving in and they have to do all these expensive repairs.
Not only that, but most cities will claim they aren't big enough to support a tram, despite nearly every city having trams 100 years ago
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