3 ms·

Yet another fantasy article that tries to suggest roads were built for "the car loving 1%ers of the 20s" and not for public transport and all kinds of other inf

• icebraining 7y ago
  What public transport used roads (not streets) in the early twentieth century of the US, when much if them were built? According to [1], by 1929 the private car was doing 175 billion passenger miles, while the bus was doing just 7. As they write, "Although intercity bus travel climbed from nothing to over seven billion passenger miles in 1929, it was always the choice of a relatively small number of people." And of course, trains don't use roads. What other public transport is there? [1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the-united-states/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the-united-s...
• bluGill 7y ago
  Roads before the car were mostly dirt. Humans can walk just fine on them. If they were paved it was probably cobblestones where are again fine for walkers but too rough for cars. It isn't clear if bicycles or cars drove paved roads in the early days though: both need smooth surfaces to be useful. Bicycles started it first, but it isn't clear how much success they had. The army's needs of roads came last. The Civil War was fought around railroads (and boats) for long distance travel, and horses for the rest. Only after WWII did the army really realize the advantages of cars and switch to that mode in their plans.