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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.”
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.
Oh pish posh. China is exactly as big as the US and you can get pretty much everywhere for a few bucks in high speed trains.
Trains are fantastic and the US should definitely be investing in them, it's a huge disadvantage and a national embarrassment that we don't have affordable and effective mass transportation.
China does a lot of stupid things, but their train network is admirable.
Truth
“Everywhere” as long as you’re just trying to get to the south-east, sure.
Nope, everywhere.
That ain’t everywhere.
Certainly more than the US though.
That is everywhere that Chinese people live in that country. They consolidated their flyover zones to the left side of the country.
Most of that region is mountains, tundra, and desert. Nobody lives there for a reason.
Don't look at the left side of the map tho
More than 96 percent of the Chinese population lives in the eastern half of that country.
The trains go to the population centers of the 3 and 1/2% on the west side.
Trains service everyone everywhere people are in that country.
96 percent of Chinese people live on the east half of the country.
Yes, so the trains make sense in certain areas. The US has a similar problem, with the majority of the population in a few specific areas which are already served well by trains. But you then have extremely sparse population spread out through the rest of the country. Trains just don’t work there.
US cities are definitively not already served well by trains. Trains are prohibitively expensive, literally falling apart and very rare, even in larger population centers in the US.
Trains would work very well in this country as they work in literally every country that invests in transportation infrastructure.
You can't even get high speed rail between LA and San Fransisco (yet). US cities in dense areas are not well served by trains.
isn't that exactly what trains were designed for and are best at?
You are correct. I can only assume that person got trains and trams mixed up.
You have a train that takes you directly to your house? O.o
Are you implying other countries don't have train stations? They just stop at each individual houses because it's a small country?
Also, the biggest city in the US is set up on a giant train system (Im referring to New York's subways).
No, obviously not. But they also don’t have stations in rural areas where there are houses with many, many miles between them.
That's nice. It's a small percentage of the population, and getting smaller. They can keep using cars if they want. We don't need to hold back all other progress on their account.
... you've never heard of bikes, or legs, or car sharing if you need to transport stuff? you don't need to own a car, it's unnecessarily expensive and bad for literally everything
the only reason one would need to own a car is if it's tied to their job
even if you disagree with this assessment, the technology in this post would almost certainly only be applied in cities, it would likely be restricted to a portion of where trains would be except be far less useful, while taking up tax money that could be used for actually important things
also the US has a higher percentage of the population in urban areas than Europe (82% vs 74%) – the US has a lot less small & isolated villages/towns and historically immigrants to the US always came to large urban areas – and US states are comparable in size, population, economy, and arguably self-governing capacity to European countries (the EU can practically be treated as a soveirgn state itself, in most cases), it's reasonable to say that something that can be implemented in Europe can usually be implemented in the US with a similar level of success, in theory.
This is a completely unrealistic scenario for the overwhelming majority of Americans
Trains famously bad at traveling long distances.
No, trains famously bad at “last mile” travel, except that in America it can be “last dozen miles” between a city big enough to have a station, and the place the person is going.
This is again a problem of America not investing in its transportation infrastructure, not a fault of trains.
There are many benefits to trains, but when you have 100 people in a 1000 square mile area, is anyone, including government, going to be willing to run the rail, build the station, and send trains there multiple times a day? I highly doubt it.
Your doubt has no bearing on all of the stops in which that is a reality in every country that has proper transportation infrastructure.
Your example is also immaterial to the benefits of trains public services.
You're arguing that we shouldn't build any libraries because a couple people somewhere can't read.
Just north of the us is a mainly freight railway system that spans the width of the continent...
Then there is this image in an article about that on Wikipedia
The spread out reasoning just seems silly to me on the basis of that literally being what trains were even for in the first place, going distances not suitable for horses. If it connects cities, that is also a start that shouldn't be passed on for being imperfect.
The only reason a car would be needed at all in north America is because of all the poorly designed car centric infrastructure that ends up not even being good for cars as demonstrated by the absolutely heinous traffic that only seems to get worse with every road "upgrade" I have ever seen the before and after of.
I'm confused, are you trying to say cars are not needed because there's a railway every 100+ miles north or south of any point? Should people walk 100 miles to the rail station on their way to work?
The US/North America is huge, it's not like just providing public transit for all of Europe or something, covering all of America would be an orders of magnitude larger project
No I'm saying the us being too big for trains is a dumb statement because there already are trains all over north America.
Cars are only needed because the infrastructure is designed that way. It also features idiotic setups like 4-6 lanes on the main road and single lane when parked up side streets that are a bitch to make a left from because the lights never line up to give a break in the traffic. I hate these and they shouldn't exist because they are bad for literally everyone. There are so many road setups that aren't even good for cars, yet cause them to be necessary, which just worsens traffic guaranteed.
I don't understand your Europe comparison. It's not like a blanket needs to cover the entire country. You only need transportation where people live to where they work. Anything else can come later if it turns out to be needed. Do people daily commute across the whole country or something? If they do there is way more necessary work reform than I could have imagined.
Realistically though if the us can send money to Ukraine and Israel yet still not rebuild hawaii, the country is fucked.
There are tons of areas of the US that have the population density to support it, but still have horrible train service. We made deliberate decisions to favor highways over trains, and we can undo those decisions.
Why would highways be less susceptible to the "spread out" effect than trains?
Nationwide, sure. But localized I wish we would do better, given the population densities. California has a population density of ~100 people/km2. Not far off France at ~120/km2. Yet we still are mainly reliant on cars to get around.
California and France aren't that far off from total area from each other. Most of California's population is in a hand full of counties. As an example, LA has a population density 3 times that of Paris.
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.
I would love to have both. Especially trains! The trains here are so bad though. They cost more than flying and are such a hassle to deal with. The train stations are sometimes far away from the city in some cases too. So you need a ride from the station.
I would support building that out if it was offered.
The roads are there. They ain't moving skyscrapers in major cities! For better or worse, American travel is very road-based, and we'll never have as many diverse options as some other countries...
Or just build trains. Which move tons of people, every day, for cheaper, safer, faster and overall more efficient ways. Don't have space for a train track? Make it a tram. Problem solved by changing up a road for cars into a road for cars and trains.