4 ms·
It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about
by hyperbovine 7y ago
It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about ten million people clustered in 4 or 5 major cities within a few hours drive distance from each other. Of course it will be easier to provide superior rail service there. This is not so say that Ohio has its act together as far as public transit is concerned (ha), but getting that level of service to the US as a whole would be a totally different beast.
- mhb 7y agoIs there any Ohio-sized area in the US that has a system comparable to the Swedish one?
- 0xB31B1B 7y agoThe Acela corridor in the north east US connects DC, Philly, NYC, and Boston. Many trains run per day and most of them are full capacity. The Acela corridor revenues support the entire other ~Amtrak routes. Most cities along the Acela have sufficient public transit and density to not require car rentals on arrival.
- bobthepanda 7y agoFunnily enough, the Midwest is pretty much a spoke and hub of medium sized metro areas focused around Chicago. There’s the Northeast corridor (and its cousin the Southeast corridor going down to Atlanta). The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography. California and the Central Valley with the Bay and LA also meet this criteria, but CAHSR is run by a mix of incompetents and constrained by the wording of the ballot initiative that got it approved.
- craftyguy 7y ago> The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography. Not really. It's pretty flat here in the Willamette valley, where the majority of Oregon's population lives, and relatively flat going north into Washington to Seattle... But the best we've got for long distance trains is Amtrak which shares the tracks with commercial traffic, where Amtrak gets basically the lowest priority on the tracks.
- wbl 7y agoWe're talking about one of the richest parts of the US.
- BurningFrog 7y agoWe're also talking about Ground Zero of the BANANA movement. BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone
- khuey 7y agoThe Bay Area is one of the richest parts of the US on paper sure but much of that wealth comes from absurdly inflated land valuations that are taxed at very low rates.
- craftyguy 7y agoI think their point is that one city (SF, not the entire US) took 20 years to get trains that Sweden had throughout their country 20 years ago. Their comparison is actually worse for the US than comparing the entire US train system (ha) to Sweden. That's really sad.
- BurningFrog 7y agoMy impression is that OP is comparing the Stockholm subway to Bart. Comparing long distance train service to Bart would be weird.
- mktmkr 7y agoCan we just start with Ohio? Ohio has the population density of Spain and twice the GDP per capita, but it lacks passenger rail service almost entirely.
- closeparen 7y agoColumbus has an average commute time of 21.8 minutes [0], among the best in America. Would public transit do better? Is it a good use of funds to replace what’s working well? https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax-media/2018/03/average-commute-to-work-by-state-city-9_compressed.jpg https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax-media/2018/03/averag...
- mktmkr 7y agoI thought we were talking about inter-city rather than commuter service. Columbus to Cincinnati for example.