3 ms·

This is true. The USA has over 10x the population and 238x the land area. A national train system = dollar amounts that the human mind can't really grasp.

• jeffbee 6y ago
  That is not the reason because if it were, there would be Switzerland-sized bits of the US with Swiss-esque rail service, and there are not. For example, LA County is more populous and five times as dense as Switzerland, but has essentially no rail service of which to boast. It's just a land use choice we are making: we can either have compact urban forms easily served by rail, or distributed forms that are impossible to serve.
  • _-___________-_ 6y ago
    I’m not sure that it’s the sprawl either. Many European cities with large suburban areas around them and nearby smaller towns that have effectively become part of them (e.g. Milano) have frequent local/regional rail service out to all the suburbs and associated towns.
    • ajmurmann 6y ago
      I wonder if US sprawl is still structurally different from European sprawl. In Europe even suburban areas seem more likely to have a small mixed-user core on which residents can easily walk to a train stop. The US seems to frequently deter that with zoning dividing residential and commercial areas
      • jeffbee 6y ago
        You either arrange your town so everyone can walk to the rail station, or you end up with Los Angeles. My favorite example is the Swiss city Chur. This negligibly-populated, irrelevant little town, which is 4% the size of San Francisco, has a 12-track rail station that is much better than the one that San Francisco plans to have by 2050. And, of course, the trains come constantly. In the next hour Bahnhof Chur will enjoy the arrival of 13 trains, and that's their pre-dawn service!