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No assuming you have a transportation system that actually makes sense. Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out dependi

No assuming you have a transportation system that actually makes sense. Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out depending on what journy they are on. The train stations should be connected by walking, biking, trams (basically trains), subways (also trains) and buses. And car dropoff too. Maybe some parking. Hirarchy, that how you create an efficent system from anywhere to anywhere. Fast intercity trains, regional trains, S-Bahn, Trams and so on. It works great an I assure you not everybody works in the same place, and somehow trains are still very well used. Today on my day off into the mountains Im gone take an trolly bus, then an electric regional train and then a disel bus into the mointains. With lots of stuff I have to carry. Its perfectly fine. At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min. So maybe instead of snark, you could actually learn something about tansportation engineering. If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. And then do the math on how large a highway would have to be.

Lanolderen 2y ago
I'm also in Germany and public transport is obviously good but you still get weird cases. I live in the south of a city the size of Karlsruhe, work in the north. With public transport it's 1 hour excluding the way to the bus stop and the waiting. With a car it's 16 minutes, with a bicycle it's 35 minutes. Comically enough the shortest path is with a car and not a bicycle. Tomorrow I have a flight at 12:00. If I want to get there (~200km) with a car it's 2-3 hours depending on traffic. If I want to get there with train+bus it's 5h11m minimum, if I go right now it's 8h26m, if I want to catch my flight tomorrow it's 9h10m (and I'll be there at 8:40 instead of 11:00). It's also more expensive than driving there and leaving my car at one of the airport's parking lots for a week. I'll save ~50 euros by driving and set off at 8 tomorrow instead of 23:30 today.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  I didnt make the argument that trains were better for every possible situation on the planet. I was refuting the claim that it only works if everybody has to go to one place. Its of course also the case that the Western world after WW2 fully embraced the car and made sure its the most efficent while basically making sure street space was cleared of anything else. Before that street space was full of different uses. Its only more expensive if you assume you already have a car, and a garage and so on. And for a society, every single study shows that overall for society, private car travel is the most costly and the worst for the envoirment. You arent actually paying for all those costs. From where I live airport is 1h by car and 1h 10min by train. Combined with parking and everything you will likely be faster with the train.
philwelch 2y ago
> Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out depending on what journy they are on. Yes, I’m aware of this. And if you have enough population density, which most of Europe does, you can have frequent train service because enough people will have overlapping trips at the same time that they can share a rail line. The advantage of a highway network is that a single vehicle can simply take the fastest route from point to point all by itself even if relatively few people are traveling that route. Germany is about the same land area as Montana or New Mexico. Those states have populations of about 1 and 2 million, respectively. Germany has 84 million. Texas has twice the land area of Germany and a population of 30 million. So yeah, if you’re going just about anywhere in Germany there are probably enough people going the same way at about the same time to make a train a reasonable solution. That’s not going to be true in the United States. And even Germany has the Autobahn, which was decades ahead of the American highway network in sophistication. > At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min. I live within a 15 minute drive of just about everywhere I need to go on a regular basis. Why would I wait that long for the train when I could just be there already? > If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. I’ve ridden the Munich S-Bahn, it was great!
- kiba 2y ago
  Highway networks are expensive and relatively low capacity, which lead to traffic congestion in urban area, which is where the majority of Americans live. High speed roads should be limited to rural area and no more than two lane, one for each direction.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    > High speed roads should be limited to rural area and no more than two lane, one for each direction. Because no freight moves by road, only people. And even those people mostly shouldn't. That is, your "should" doesn't actually work in the actual world. Trucks carry something like 60% of the freight in the US. You could say that rail should carry more of it, and that works for longer distance, but regional traffic is usually more efficiently handled by truck. So unless your vision of the future is people living in their cities, with nothing in their apartments, and not eating, you need better roads than that. And then, you run into human nature. Some of us like going places, and more of us want to do so than you seem to like. Your "should" becomes "you should live your life the way I want you to, not the way you want to". You should expect a rather hostile response for that...

Lanolderen 2y ago

I'm also in Germany and public transport is obviously good but you still get weird cases. I live in the south of a city the size of Karlsruhe, work in the north. With public transport it's 1 hour excluding the way to the bus stop and the waiting. With a car it's 16 minutes, with a bicycle it's 35 minutes. Comically enough the shortest path is with a car and not a bicycle. Tomorrow I have a flight at 12:00. If I want to get there (~200km) with a car it's 2-3 hours depending on traffic. If I want to get there with train+bus it's 5h11m minimum, if I go right now it's 8h26m, if I want to catch my flight tomorrow it's 9h10m (and I'll be there at 8:40 instead of 11:00). It's also more expensive than driving there and leaving my car at one of the airport's parking lots for a week. I'll save ~50 euros by driving and set off at 8 tomorrow instead of 23:30 today.

panick21_ 2y ago
I didnt make the argument that trains were better for every possible situation on the planet. I was refuting the claim that it only works if everybody has to go to one place. Its of course also the case that the Western world after WW2 fully embraced the car and made sure its the most efficent while basically making sure street space was cleared of anything else. Before that street space was full of different uses. Its only more expensive if you assume you already have a car, and a garage and so on. And for a society, every single study shows that overall for society, private car travel is the most costly and the worst for the envoirment. You arent actually paying for all those costs. From where I live airport is 1h by car and 1h 10min by train. Combined with parking and everything you will likely be faster with the train.

philwelch 2y ago

> Trains have these things, called 'stops' and then different people get in or out depending on what journy they are on. Yes, I’m aware of this. And if you have enough population density, which most of Europe does, you can have frequent train service because enough people will have overlapping trips at the same time that they can share a rail line. The advantage of a highway network is that a single vehicle can simply take the fastest route from point to point all by itself even if relatively few people are traveling that route. Germany is about the same land area as Montana or New Mexico. Those states have populations of about 1 and 2 million, respectively. Germany has 84 million. Texas has twice the land area of Germany and a population of 30 million. So yeah, if you’re going just about anywhere in Germany there are probably enough people going the same way at about the same time to make a train a reasonable solution. That’s not going to be true in the United States. And even Germany has the Autobahn, which was decades ahead of the American highway network in sophistication. > At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min. I live within a 15 minute drive of just about everywhere I need to go on a regular basis. Why would I wait that long for the train when I could just be there already? > If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. I’ve ridden the Munich S-Bahn, it was great!

kiba 2y ago
Highway networks are expensive and relatively low capacity, which lead to traffic congestion in urban area, which is where the majority of Americans live. High speed roads should be limited to rural area and no more than two lane, one for each direction.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  > High speed roads should be limited to rural area and no more than two lane, one for each direction. Because no freight moves by road, only people. And even those people mostly shouldn't. That is, your "should" doesn't actually work in the actual world. Trucks carry something like 60% of the freight in the US. You could say that rail should carry more of it, and that works for longer distance, but regional traffic is usually more efficiently handled by truck. So unless your vision of the future is people living in their cities, with nothing in their apartments, and not eating, you need better roads than that. And then, you run into human nature. Some of us like going places, and more of us want to do so than you seem to like. Your "should" becomes "you should live your life the way I want you to, not the way you want to". You should expect a rather hostile response for that...