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From your source: > This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including

From your source: > This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including raising the minimum population threshold for qualification from 2,500 to 5,000. So even a small town of 5,000 people is considered "urban". Again, population density is far more important than "urban" population because a big city of 5 million people produces way more demand for travel than a town of 5,000 even if they're both categorized as "urban". Fast passenger rail has high overhead costs in terms of building high speed rial track, and is mostly viable between large population centers. But even the fastest high speed rail is usually 3-5 times slower than air travel. And in America, rail is powered by fossil fuels anyway so it's not like there's a huge climate win in terms of using passenger rail over Greyhound buses or planes.

acdha 3y ago
First, even many small towns had rail service before the focus switched to rail. Second, it’s rare that your 5k town is hundreds of miles from the next one. If you look at the map circa WWII, there were tons of interurban rail connections between towns like that. What changed was the massive subsidies directed towards private vehicle usage. Those rail connections disappeared because they couldn’t compete with the heavily subsidized highway system on all but the busiest routes. This also means that things can change if we start taxing carbon or require vehicle users to pay for their infrastructure.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  In WWII there was no interstate highway nor widespread air travel. And yes, most 5K towns are not too far from other 5k towns. But a town of 5k residents doesn't have enough people to justify investing in passenger rail. Hence why countries with lower population density (like the US, Canada, Australia, etc.) don't have much passenger rail demand. If it were due to politics, why is train travel ubiquitous in densely population countries, but not sparsely populated ones? We should expect to see a relatively random smattering of train-dominant and car and plane dominant transportation irrespective of geography. Instead, we see that sparsely populated countries don't have widespread passenger rail regardless of politics. I guess it's a coincidence that the fossil fuel conspiracy [1], just happened to take hold in sparsely populated countries like America, Canada, Australia, etc. and not densely populated ones. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424

acdha 3y ago

First, even many small towns had rail service before the focus switched to rail. Second, it’s rare that your 5k town is hundreds of miles from the next one. If you look at the map circa WWII, there were tons of interurban rail connections between towns like that. What changed was the massive subsidies directed towards private vehicle usage. Those rail connections disappeared because they couldn’t compete with the heavily subsidized highway system on all but the busiest routes. This also means that things can change if we start taxing carbon or require vehicle users to pay for their infrastructure.

Manuel_D 3y ago
In WWII there was no interstate highway nor widespread air travel. And yes, most 5K towns are not too far from other 5k towns. But a town of 5k residents doesn't have enough people to justify investing in passenger rail. Hence why countries with lower population density (like the US, Canada, Australia, etc.) don't have much passenger rail demand. If it were due to politics, why is train travel ubiquitous in densely population countries, but not sparsely populated ones? We should expect to see a relatively random smattering of train-dominant and car and plane dominant transportation irrespective of geography. Instead, we see that sparsely populated countries don't have widespread passenger rail regardless of politics. I guess it's a coincidence that the fossil fuel conspiracy [1], just happened to take hold in sparsely populated countries like America, Canada, Australia, etc. and not densely populated ones. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424