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> Americans don't live evenly spread out of their country I mentioned that in my comment as well. The "different subcultures" part, and the "outside of the maj

> Americans don't live evenly spread out of their country I mentioned that in my comment as well. The "different subcultures" part, and the "outside of the major cities" bit. Of course large cities formed in areas all around the US. I'm talking about the majority of the land mass of the US, which is widely dispersed. > There's plenty of opportunity in the US to invest in other forms of transportation Inefficient transportation is necessitated by having 9 million square kilometers of land, where your friends, family, and jobs are spread across it. There's plenty of efficient public transportation inside the large cities. Admittedly outside of large cities, methods of efficient transportation are sparse. I used to take a train from my college in a small town in the midwest about a 4 hour ride up to Chicago, and then hop on another train to visit my family, which was another couple of hours on that train, and then the last 5-10 miles was usually via car or taxi, as busses outside of the major cities are few and far between. That 6+ hour journey, with an additional layover period between the two trains, was compared to a 2 hour drive via personal vehicle. So yeah, people out here buy cars. The idea that efficient transportation is completely stonewalled by politics strikes me as someone who hasn't themselves lived in a suburban or rural region of the US before. The kind of logistical problems that the US would have to face to make more efficient forms of transportation across the entire US are unlike the problems the Netherlands would have faced on a much, much smaller segment of the Earth.

mcv 3y ago
> There's plenty of efficient public transportation inside the large cities. Inside a few large cities. A lot of US cities are still designed around massive stroads, with barely any lip service to buses and bike paths. I still remember how surprised I was back in the 1990s when someone who lived there told me that there were no buses after 7pm in the largest city of New Mexico. Of course that's no LA or NY, which I'm sure have better public transport. > That 6+ hour journey, with an additional layover period between the two trains, was compared to a 2 hour drive via personal vehicle. So yeah, people out here buy cars. That's not exactly a sign of efficient public transportation, then. From what I understand, US trains go more slowly than trains elsewhere, and on top of that often have delays because freight trains have priority. Just changing that would already help a lot. Of course there will always be places that can't efficiently be services by public transport, and there's always tradeoffs to be made, but it's pretty clear that in much of the US, public transport has no priority. > across the entire US But you don't have to do it across the entire US at once. Focus on the cities first. And on densely populated regions like the north east. Although the US was originally also built around big transcontinental railroads, and that worked. A lot of infrastructure has been destroyed. Not just in the US; also in Europe. I love looking at train maps from the 1930s, and shake my head at everything that's been destroyed.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  > Of course that's no LA or NY, which I'm sure have better public transport. Yeah, if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list. New York, Los Angelos, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Boston, Washington DC would be a few real metros that you could refer to as a "large city" around here with decent public transit systems. And that public transit usually extends out to their suburbs fairly well. Trick comes with crossing from one large city to another, or through wide open rural ways. Efficient transport just doesn't spiderweb out across all that open prairie in the US. Touching on your point too, I believe trains in the US are typically of the slower variety when compared to trains from other developed countries. They also often make stops every few miles to pick up and drop off passengers that slow them down quite a lot. When you consider how far some of these train tracks go, a stop every 3-8 miles or so adds up to a lot of time.
  - mcv 3y ago
    That's why there's usually a distinction between local and express trains. In NL we've got local trains that stop everywhere, intercity trains that only stop in the larger cities (and maybe two or three times in the largest cities like Amsterdam), and then there are high-speed trains that only stop in 3 places in the country before heading towards France or Germany. That way long distance travelers don't have to wait for all the small stops. > if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list. According to Wikipedia, Albuquerque has a population of 562,599, which would make it the third largest city in Netherland. That's not a megapolis, but it's not small either. Dutch cities that are a fifth of that size still get regular trains and buses until late in the evening.

mcv 3y ago

> There's plenty of efficient public transportation inside the large cities. Inside a few large cities. A lot of US cities are still designed around massive stroads, with barely any lip service to buses and bike paths. I still remember how surprised I was back in the 1990s when someone who lived there told me that there were no buses after 7pm in the largest city of New Mexico. Of course that's no LA or NY, which I'm sure have better public transport. > That 6+ hour journey, with an additional layover period between the two trains, was compared to a 2 hour drive via personal vehicle. So yeah, people out here buy cars. That's not exactly a sign of efficient public transportation, then. From what I understand, US trains go more slowly than trains elsewhere, and on top of that often have delays because freight trains have priority. Just changing that would already help a lot. Of course there will always be places that can't efficiently be services by public transport, and there's always tradeoffs to be made, but it's pretty clear that in much of the US, public transport has no priority. > across the entire US But you don't have to do it across the entire US at once. Focus on the cities first. And on densely populated regions like the north east. Although the US was originally also built around big transcontinental railroads, and that worked. A lot of infrastructure has been destroyed. Not just in the US; also in Europe. I love looking at train maps from the 1930s, and shake my head at everything that's been destroyed.

starttoaster 3y ago
> Of course that's no LA or NY, which I'm sure have better public transport. Yeah, if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list. New York, Los Angelos, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Boston, Washington DC would be a few real metros that you could refer to as a "large city" around here with decent public transit systems. And that public transit usually extends out to their suburbs fairly well. Trick comes with crossing from one large city to another, or through wide open rural ways. Efficient transport just doesn't spiderweb out across all that open prairie in the US. Touching on your point too, I believe trains in the US are typically of the slower variety when compared to trains from other developed countries. They also often make stops every few miles to pick up and drop off passengers that slow them down quite a lot. When you consider how far some of these train tracks go, a stop every 3-8 miles or so adds up to a lot of time.
- mcv 3y ago
  That's why there's usually a distinction between local and express trains. In NL we've got local trains that stop everywhere, intercity trains that only stop in the larger cities (and maybe two or three times in the largest cities like Amsterdam), and then there are high-speed trains that only stop in 3 places in the country before heading towards France or Germany. That way long distance travelers don't have to wait for all the small stops. > if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list. According to Wikipedia, Albuquerque has a population of 562,599, which would make it the third largest city in Netherland. That's not a megapolis, but it's not small either. Dutch cities that are a fifth of that size still get regular trains and buses until late in the evening.