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It’s hard not to choose a car based lifestyle when outside of cities there is basically little or no public transit in many places. On top of that, when many pe

It’s hard not to choose a car based lifestyle when outside of cities there is basically little or no public transit in many places. On top of that, when many people’s experience with travel by train is the outdated and slow infrastructure that already exists, why would they support more of that experience? I’m not anti- these things, just adding to the context.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Well they could just look at how many other countries do it... I know, Americans hate to look outside their own borders for examples on anything. There's no public transit in many places because Americans don't want it and don't support it, and refuse to build densely enough to make public transit economically viable in the first place. You can't have a good transit system when everyone lives far apart from each other in spread-out subdivisions.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > There's no public transit in many places because Americans don't want it and don't support it Yes, exactly. This is not a bug, it's a feature.
  - Gud 2y ago
    It's not a feature. Come live in a country where the public transport is excellent. Typing this while traveling on the ICE between Zürich and Basel.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Americans don't want to live in one of those countries. They don't want to risk having to sit next to one of "those people". It's why they like driving everywhere, and living in gated communities where they can keep out the undesirables.
      - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
        The vast majority of Americans have no idea what those countries are like, and have never visited a city with good public transit. It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else.
        pdonis 2y ago
        > It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else. You have no basis for any such presumption. Plenty of Americans, myself among them, have lived in large, dense cities with good public transit--and we have then chosen to not live in such places because we prefer not to. You might believe that living in a large, dense city with good public transit is the best way to live, but that doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you or be ignorant. Other people simply have different preferences from you. In a free country, which the United States of America is, people with difference preferences for what kind of place to live in can simply live in different places without making presumptuous claims about ignorance.
        DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
        Being generous, there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation. NYC has the best system in the US, but it's old and decrepit. You have to travel outside of the US to see really good systems. Many European cities have decent systems, but the best systems - by far - are in East Asia. The Shanghai metro is as dense as the NYC subway, but it's clean, safe and modern. Most Americans have not traveled to these places, so they've never seen what an actually good system looks like. At best, they've seen the NYC subway, which they might view as convenient but disgusting. More commonly, they've only ever been to cities with little to no public transit. You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true, unless they move to one particular city or leave the country. The infrastructure that exists determines what choices people have and what's convenient.
        pdonis 2y ago
        > there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation. NYC's is, as you say, old and decrepit, but its coverage is pretty good. I don't think it's the best system in the US, however. I lived in Boston for some time; the T was better than NYC's system. I have visited Portland, and at least when I visited, its system was better than NYC's. > Many European cities have decent systems I have visited both London and Paris, and both of their systems were comparable to the T in Boston when I lived there in terms of coverage and usability. I have not visited any cities in East Asia, but I can easily see their systems being better since those countries have made huge investments in that kind of infrastructure. > You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true By your logic nobody has the ability to choose. Nobody has access to all of the possibilities. So using that as the standard for "ability to choose", which is what you are doing, is pointless. I could just as well say you don't have the ability to choose anything but a city with public transportation, because that's all that even appears to be on your radar. > The infrastructure that exists Is, at least in America, determined by the choices of ordinary people in the past. And choices ordinary people make now will end up causing changes in the infrastructure that exists. Sure, maybe nowhere in America meets your personal standard for "good public transportation", but why should I care? I have a reasonable spectrum of alternatives open to me and I choose the one that suits me best. I don't waste time agonizing over alternatives that might exist elsewhere but are not accessible to me. Most Americans are the same way. So, I suspect, are most people everywhere, even if what alternatives are reasonably available can vary widely in different parts of the world. Maybe that's a problem for you, but it's not a problem for me, and I suspect it's not a problem for most people everywhere, and I don't see why it should be.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      I've lived in a large, dense city where the public transport was excellent. Having had that experience, and having also had the experience of living in a less dense area where I used a car to get around, I prefer the latter. Have you lived anywhere except where the public transport was excellent? Do you realize that people, like me, who prefer to live in other areas see benefits to doing so that outweigh the costs of having to have a car?
      - Gud 2y ago
        I have. I lived in Dubai for two years. I drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I suspect they have modelled after a (rich) American city traffic, except they have had a green slate. I travel routinely for work(300+ days/year) and I’ve had many different living conditions. I also spend a lot of time in the UK and BENELUX, both regions that are predominantly car first but with mediocre public transport. Switzerland is the only country I’ve seen who does it right. I’ve heard Japan does it well, I wouldn’t know. What city was that?
        pdonis 2y ago
        > What city was that? Boston, some decades ago. As I noted elsewhere upthread, I understand that the T has deteriorated quite a bit since then. But at the time I lived there, I never felt any need whatsoever for a car and I never had any problems getting where I needed to go safely and in a timely manner.
        Gud 2y ago
        Ok, so you consider your experience decades ago riding public transport in Boston to be comparable to modern day Swiss?
        pdonis 2y ago
        I have said no such thing. SInce I have never been in Switzerland I obviously can't compare the two. Can you?
  - thusky 2y ago
    I don't think the idea that the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation holds water. What was the mechanism of that choice on an individual level, free of influence from car companies, between a future with car infrastructure with all the impacts understood (including the land space costs preventing density and efficiency) and other solutions? It is demonstrably the correct answer, regardless what the largely un- or just as often mis-informed think, not that they were really "asked" in the first place.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation This is a fantasy in any society, not just America. No piece of social infrastructure on the scale of "cars vs. public transportation" in any country gets decided by "the general, informed will" of all the people. The "mechanism of choice on an individual level" in a free country is simple, and I've already described it: people look at the alternatives reasonably available to them and choose the one that suits them best. And the aggregation of all those individual choices shapes the infrastructure, which in turn of course affects what alternatives are reasonably available to the next generation. That's how free markets and free societies work. But of course such a process does not involve any "general, informed will" of the people as a whole. It just involves a huge number of individuals interacting. The other possibility, in a country that's not a free country (such as one large East Asian country one city of which has been mentioned, not by me, in this overall discussion), is for some small group at the top to decide how they think things should be arranged, and then just impose that on everybody. In such a country there is no "mechanism of choice on an individual level" regarding large scale infrastructure at all; it is imposed by those in charge. People do of course still make individual choices in such countries, but their choices don't really affect the social infrastructure the way they can in a free country. The US today is not fully a free country in the sense I described above, since there is quite a bit of top-down imposition of things (and not just by governments--there were of course a number of large corporations pushing car-centric infrastructure in the late 19th and 20th centuries), so it's really a mix of the two possibilities I gave. But neither possibility involves "the general, informed will of Americans" deciding anything.
- deafpolygon 2y ago
  > because Americans don't want it and don't support it Exactly - most Americans want the car lifestyle. They don't really wake up dreaming of being packed like sardines into public transportation: busses, metro, rail. I live in the Netherlands, and many people here are increasingly opting for the car lifestyle because of all of the issues associated with public transportation. Sure, it's more cost-effective. But it's not faster. It's smelly, loud, chaotic. And no one wants to stand around waiting for the next bus to be canceled. Or the next protest shutting all transportation down.

shiroiushi 2y ago

Well they could just look at how many other countries do it... I know, Americans hate to look outside their own borders for examples on anything. There's no public transit in many places because Americans don't want it and don't support it, and refuse to build densely enough to make public transit economically viable in the first place. You can't have a good transit system when everyone lives far apart from each other in spread-out subdivisions.

pdonis 2y ago
> There's no public transit in many places because Americans don't want it and don't support it Yes, exactly. This is not a bug, it's a feature.
- Gud 2y ago
  It's not a feature. Come live in a country where the public transport is excellent. Typing this while traveling on the ICE between Zürich and Basel.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Americans don't want to live in one of those countries. They don't want to risk having to sit next to one of "those people". It's why they like driving everywhere, and living in gated communities where they can keep out the undesirables.
    - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
      The vast majority of Americans have no idea what those countries are like, and have never visited a city with good public transit. It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else. You have no basis for any such presumption. Plenty of Americans, myself among them, have lived in large, dense cities with good public transit--and we have then chosen to not live in such places because we prefer not to. You might believe that living in a large, dense city with good public transit is the best way to live, but that doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you or be ignorant. Other people simply have different preferences from you. In a free country, which the United States of America is, people with difference preferences for what kind of place to live in can simply live in different places without making presumptuous claims about ignorance.
        DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
        Being generous, there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation. NYC has the best system in the US, but it's old and decrepit. You have to travel outside of the US to see really good systems. Many European cities have decent systems, but the best systems - by far - are in East Asia. The Shanghai metro is as dense as the NYC subway, but it's clean, safe and modern. Most Americans have not traveled to these places, so they've never seen what an actually good system looks like. At best, they've seen the NYC subway, which they might view as convenient but disgusting. More commonly, they've only ever been to cities with little to no public transit. You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true, unless they move to one particular city or leave the country. The infrastructure that exists determines what choices people have and what's convenient.
        pdonis 2y ago
        > there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation. NYC's is, as you say, old and decrepit, but its coverage is pretty good. I don't think it's the best system in the US, however. I lived in Boston for some time; the T was better than NYC's system. I have visited Portland, and at least when I visited, its system was better than NYC's. > Many European cities have decent systems I have visited both London and Paris, and both of their systems were comparable to the T in Boston when I lived there in terms of coverage and usability. I have not visited any cities in East Asia, but I can easily see their systems being better since those countries have made huge investments in that kind of infrastructure. > You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true By your logic nobody has the ability to choose. Nobody has access to all of the possibilities. So using that as the standard for "ability to choose", which is what you are doing, is pointless. I could just as well say you don't have the ability to choose anything but a city with public transportation, because that's all that even appears to be on your radar. > The infrastructure that exists Is, at least in America, determined by the choices of ordinary people in the past. And choices ordinary people make now will end up causing changes in the infrastructure that exists. Sure, maybe nowhere in America meets your personal standard for "good public transportation", but why should I care? I have a reasonable spectrum of alternatives open to me and I choose the one that suits me best. I don't waste time agonizing over alternatives that might exist elsewhere but are not accessible to me. Most Americans are the same way. So, I suspect, are most people everywhere, even if what alternatives are reasonably available can vary widely in different parts of the world. Maybe that's a problem for you, but it's not a problem for me, and I suspect it's not a problem for most people everywhere, and I don't see why it should be.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    I've lived in a large, dense city where the public transport was excellent. Having had that experience, and having also had the experience of living in a less dense area where I used a car to get around, I prefer the latter. Have you lived anywhere except where the public transport was excellent? Do you realize that people, like me, who prefer to live in other areas see benefits to doing so that outweigh the costs of having to have a car?
    - Gud 2y ago
      I have. I lived in Dubai for two years. I drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I suspect they have modelled after a (rich) American city traffic, except they have had a green slate. I travel routinely for work(300+ days/year) and I’ve had many different living conditions. I also spend a lot of time in the UK and BENELUX, both regions that are predominantly car first but with mediocre public transport. Switzerland is the only country I’ve seen who does it right. I’ve heard Japan does it well, I wouldn’t know. What city was that?
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > What city was that? Boston, some decades ago. As I noted elsewhere upthread, I understand that the T has deteriorated quite a bit since then. But at the time I lived there, I never felt any need whatsoever for a car and I never had any problems getting where I needed to go safely and in a timely manner.
        Gud 2y ago
        Ok, so you consider your experience decades ago riding public transport in Boston to be comparable to modern day Swiss?
        pdonis 2y ago
        I have said no such thing. SInce I have never been in Switzerland I obviously can't compare the two. Can you?
- thusky 2y ago
  I don't think the idea that the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation holds water. What was the mechanism of that choice on an individual level, free of influence from car companies, between a future with car infrastructure with all the impacts understood (including the land space costs preventing density and efficiency) and other solutions? It is demonstrably the correct answer, regardless what the largely un- or just as often mis-informed think, not that they were really "asked" in the first place.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation This is a fantasy in any society, not just America. No piece of social infrastructure on the scale of "cars vs. public transportation" in any country gets decided by "the general, informed will" of all the people. The "mechanism of choice on an individual level" in a free country is simple, and I've already described it: people look at the alternatives reasonably available to them and choose the one that suits them best. And the aggregation of all those individual choices shapes the infrastructure, which in turn of course affects what alternatives are reasonably available to the next generation. That's how free markets and free societies work. But of course such a process does not involve any "general, informed will" of the people as a whole. It just involves a huge number of individuals interacting. The other possibility, in a country that's not a free country (such as one large East Asian country one city of which has been mentioned, not by me, in this overall discussion), is for some small group at the top to decide how they think things should be arranged, and then just impose that on everybody. In such a country there is no "mechanism of choice on an individual level" regarding large scale infrastructure at all; it is imposed by those in charge. People do of course still make individual choices in such countries, but their choices don't really affect the social infrastructure the way they can in a free country. The US today is not fully a free country in the sense I described above, since there is quite a bit of top-down imposition of things (and not just by governments--there were of course a number of large corporations pushing car-centric infrastructure in the late 19th and 20th centuries), so it's really a mix of the two possibilities I gave. But neither possibility involves "the general, informed will of Americans" deciding anything.
deafpolygon 2y ago
> because Americans don't want it and don't support it Exactly - most Americans want the car lifestyle. They don't really wake up dreaming of being packed like sardines into public transportation: busses, metro, rail. I live in the Netherlands, and many people here are increasingly opting for the car lifestyle because of all of the issues associated with public transportation. Sure, it's more cost-effective. But it's not faster. It's smelly, loud, chaotic. And no one wants to stand around waiting for the next bus to be canceled. Or the next protest shutting all transportation down.