4 ms·

In the Netherlands were I live we use trains for this

by robner 23d ago

SEJeff 23d ago
The US is ~263x larger than the Netherlands landmass wise. It would require a loooot more trains than we have or you have.
- uv-depression 23d ago
  You put the trains where the people are, not in the middle of vast unpopulated stretches. Comparing land area is misleading and unhelpful.
  - win311fwg 23d ago
    Trouble is, when you need to get to the middle of nowhere is when you need transportation. If you stay within the densely populated areas where the people live you can walk. That's why people stopped living in rural areas after all; so that one didn't have to rely on transportation. Don't forget that rural areas had trains back before the urbanization movement! Passenger rail in the US died out because people moved closer together so that they didn't need mechanized travel. The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able to support a comprehensive, nation-wide passenger rail system.
    - laurencerowe 23d ago
      > The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able to support a comprehensive, nation-wide passenger rail system. Looking at population density if you draw a 50km radius in the Netherlands you get about 8m people. This covers lots of small cities etc. In the US you get maybe 5m in a contiguous city like Phoenix (which fills the circle) or the Bay Area. (LA is more dense and you might get 10m.) Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. S the effective density experienced is much higher.
      - win311fwg 23d ago
        > Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. Much more the opposite. European settlements were largely established before the train existed, emerging from outward rural growth rather than seeing an active urbanization movement. Trains have been woven into that after the fact to best support the rural-esq population shape. Whereas America was built by the train. Established originally to support the same rural-esq shape idea, but, with little in the way of existing settlements, the train ended up enabling the people to purposefully congregate rather than simply expand outward, which allowed those congregations to be designed such that transportation was unnecessary; being the whole appeal of leaving friends and family behind to move into those settlements. The passenger train eventually started dying out at the height of the urbanization movement because there was no longer a mass benefit from it like the was, and continues to be, in Europe and other places that grew up in those earlier times.
        brnt 22d ago
        > Much more the opposite. European settlements were largely established before the train existed, The vast majority of housing has been built since laying most railtrack and in many places around (new) train stations.
        win311fwg 22d ago
        Exactly.
    - ninalanyon 22d ago
      If it's a rare enough event you can just rent a car.
      - win311fwg 21d ago
        Or even own a car, which is what most people do. The problem is already solved. But with any solution comes those who think they can do it better (who, when given the chance to try their alternative, in most cases only end up learning why the existing solution was the way it was, but that is another topic for another day).
- Zambyte 23d ago
  Now do China.
  - win311fwg 23d ago
    Technically a large landmass, but essentially nothing happens in the western half. For the sake of travel it is a relatively small country. Whereas NY->LA is the route the USA would need to most service if it were to get serious about such a thing. The short-run corridors are already reasonably well serviced. Trouble is most people doing the NY->LA run are going to choose flight instead.
    - Zambyte 23d ago
      People would absolutely choose trains over flying if we actually had modern train infrastructure. NY to LA would be about 11 hours at 250 MPH. That's 100 MPH slower than the fastest passenger train, but seems like a reasonable estimate for an average speed including stops. The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people. Driving is essentially not an option for most people for this trip too.
      - win311fwg 23d ago
        > NY to LA would be about 11 hours at 250 MPH. There are no trains in regular service that operate at anywhere close to those speeds. There are trains technically capable of doing it (and much more), sure, but the economics quickly stop making sense when you start pushing that much air. And flight still gets you there meaningfully faster, door-to-door, even if there were people theoretically willing to pay excessively to reach 250 mph, so there is still no reason for those who need to prioritize time to take the train. > The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people. Of course, most people have no reason to travel from NY->LA in the first place. Especially not on a regular basis. The primary users will be business customers and they tend to be quite time sensitive. Furthermore, even if there was that 250 mph train, it is unlikely that it would beat air on price, so those who don't care about time are still apt to choose the cheapest option. At best there is a small segment of people who are both willing to give up their time and spend more just to avoid flying, but you can't realistically make trains work with a small number of riders.
- wpm 23d ago
  Yeah thats a useful factor for all those "visiting mom in Portland" trips from Washington DC that a train is obviously meant to replace, not any of those "100 mi or less visits to mom" that de facto MUST be taken in a car regardless of the population density of the surrounding 100mi radius. Also we should ignore the fact that the US already had a national rail network and STILL DOES for freight and had frequent regional rail service to even incredibly small podunk nowhere towns for decades. It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!
  - tmerc 23d ago
    Where I live now to where my mom lives would take 24 to 30 hours by train and cost 400 to 500 usd. At 30mpg and $5/gal, the cost of driving is $200 and takes 12h. So I can take a train for double the time and cost or I can drive. Now consider round trip and passenger. It's 40 miles either side to get to a train. Neither side has a walkable city so being without a car sucks. Summer in one is hot as hell, winter in the other is frozen hell. Tell me again how trains are a viable option?
    - wpm 22d ago
      They aren't for you, apparently. Too bad. I guess no one gets one since it doesn't work for your use case and life in particular. And nothing says the train must take 30 hours. 12H of highway driving is what, 600 miles? 1000? The slowest high speed rail lines in China have a design speed of 120mph. Some go 240mph. So that 600 mile trip could take 5 hours. The 1000 mile trip could take 8 and some change. Add in an hour or so to account for stops. Like, I struggle to imagine how every goddamn conversation I have about rail in the US ends up like this, with someone mistaking my "heres what COULD be" with a comparison to "here's what IS". Do you not think that someone advocating for trains doesn't understand how crappy they are right now? That I'm advocating you take the train despite all of the reasons you mentioned its awful? Do you think the fact that tickets can command that price despite taking 30 hours indicates a latent demand?
      - tmerc 22d ago
        If every GD conversation you have about rail in the US ends badly, it's either an actual problem, you, or both. "It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!"
- InsideOutSanta 23d ago
  The vast size of the country sounds like an argument for trains, rather than against it? Trains are a comparatively cheap way to provide fast transportation between places where people actually live.
  - win311fwg 23d ago
    Not really. Over short-to-medium distances rail and air have similar door-to-door times, but as a country grows vast and travel is much more likely to happen over long distances then rail is much less compelling. Which means smaller ridership, which makes it difficult to support operations. The US already had the nation-wide passenger rail system. At one time it was the envy of the world. It'd still be here if the riders were. But they moved on to newer technologies better suited to the landscape.
uv-depression 23d ago
Yeah, most places other than the US do. Good public transit is a far, far better solution than better cars. Elsewhere in the thread people are talking about ways of convincing drunk people to get their cars to drive them, and don't seem to realize the fact that people drive to go drink is terrifying! At this point it's deeply set in US "common sense" (to the point where in many places, bars have mandatory parking minimums!) and will take a lot of work to unwind. Fortunately there's progress, like in NYC and Seattle.
- fnordpiglet 23d ago
  When you say most places, I assume you leave out most of the world in this? The number of countries with broad complete train networks is small compared to the land mass of the earth inhabited by humans. Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound. Most urban US cities have some attempt at an urban train network, and most significantly more useful than Seattle. The issue is typically more of funding and willpower - major infrastructure in an established city is expensive and disruptive to the point most don’t want to deal with it. Additionally the feeder transit infrastructure tends to be weak enough that the daily practicality is low because you have to live right on the line and your destination must also be. Otherwise you’re driving in. Finally the urban planning for surface roads has been well enough structured that the trade off for time saved in public transit doesn’t make sense. You spend time walking and doing transfers in excess of double a driving time. Is that a flaw? If you electrify the cars to minimize pollution, automate their driving to reduce risk, ensure they collaborate to improve efficiency, I’m not sure I buy the argument any more.
  - estebank 23d ago
    > Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound. By raw population numbers, most people worldwide does live in large cities with a lot of coverage by some type of public transport, not necessarily trains or subways. Buses exist.
int0x29 23d ago
This is great until your city was built by a 50s urban planner. Past a certain amount of sprawl building functioning public transit becomes nearly impossible. LA and Santa Clara County come to mind here. LA can sort of work if you are on the metro and don't need transfers. I kinda wish some day some dark wizard curses those two areas to lose 75% of their roads and parking lots and make everything a lot closer.
- aqme28 23d ago
  A lot of the Netherlands was rebuilt postwar in the 50s with exactly the kind of car-centric design you're talking about. But then in the 70s they realized their mistake and started to reverse it. What I'm saying is-- don't be defeatist about this. In places where density is high enough (maybe not LA sprawl), you can fix this.
- madaxe_again 23d ago
  I dunno. Brasilia is the epitome of a city built by 50s urban planners, was highly structured around the car - and yet they managed to build a metro.
TulliusCicero 23d ago
Trains or bikes, really (plenty of Waymo/Uber/Lyft trips aren't super far).
himinlomax 23d ago
A 2h train ride is not a problem, but what is is the trip to and from the stations. A 2h autonomous car ride removes that entirely.
- dkdbejwi383 23d ago
  In most places where train travel is an option, you'll probably be a 10-15 min walk from a station, or a 5 minute cycle, or a short connecting trip on a bus or tram. Multi-modal trips and short walks are normal in a lot of places - I know this isn't the case in America because of how American owned mapping apps like Google Maps go out of their way to hide routes with more than a 5 minute walk involved.
  - andy12_ 23d ago
    Meanwhile, my job commute is a 30 minute walk to the train station or... a 30 minute bus trip to the station (yeah, taking a bus literally saves no time at all). Plus a 50 minute train ride plus another 30 minute walk. Honestly, I would 100% use a car for this if it weren't for the fact that doing so is literally 10 times more expensive. I'm sure this is the case for the vast majority of people that use public transport. And I just can't wait for a world of cheap electric autonomous cars where I don't need to waste my time and I can sleep comfortably on my commute.
  - himinlomax 22d ago
    Just by what you're describing, that 2h train ride is in fact close to a 3h walking+waiting for the tram+climbing stairs+waiting for the train+finding a seat+climbing more stairs+finding another seat+climbing more stairs+finding another seat+walking+waiting for the bus etc.
Zigurd 23d ago
I used to commute on the redeye from Boston or New York to a Philips office on the opposite side of Amsterdam from the airport. The impressive rail network of course had a big station right at the airport. The first time I hopped in a taxi at the train station in Hilversum, not realizing it was a two block walk from the station.
lo_zamoyski 22d ago
The American situation is a real quagmire. The American auto lobby has spent nearly a century manipulating Americans and American culture by insinuating car ownership and transportation into what it means to be "American". The automobile is a symbol of freedom and independence and plays into the myth of rugged American individualism ("I can drive whenever I want, wherever I want") and masculinity ("I am a real man, because I am independent and because ownership demonstrates I have means"). Certainly, cars do afford a certain practical freedom and comfort for certain use cases—in part because public infrastructure and transport can be hostile to normal human activities instead of supporting them—but in the American mind, these aren't just weighed against a backdrop of practical concerns and superior goods. The car has a quasi-religious quality for many Americans. Getting your license and owning your first car is a practically institutionalized rite of passage into adulthood. Gov't policy—some gladly endorsed by the auto lobby—also played a role. Zoning (like Euclidean zoning) and urban planning (or lack thereof), coupled with a lack of surviving and robust public transportation infrastructure (like public passenger rail), forced and continues to force Americans into car ownership even if they would prefer other means. The rise of postwar suburb, sprawl, and the death of walkable towns and cities has entrenched the need for car ownership. And we shouldn't forget the financial incentives. Mortgages underwritten by the FHA and VA rewarded sprawl with mortgages while penalizing denser development. Taxpayer revenue also funded roads while regulations capped what privately-owned "public" transportation could charge riders, forcing them into bankruptcy and opening transport up to the predation of companies like GM who snapped up their assets and ripped out rail in favor of their own buses. However, we're seeing some pushback in Gen Z. American cities and certainly towns are no longer the polluted industrial centers they used to be. We also don't have the post-WWII pressure to divert wartime industry toward other ends to maintain employment, or Cold War fears of having too many people concentrated in large, easy-to-nuke urban centers.
socalgal2 22d ago
Yea, too bad the USA doesn't have good private trains like Japan

In the Netherlands were I live we use trains for this

by robner 23d ago

In the Netherlands were I live we use trains for this

The US is ~263x larger than the Netherlands landmass wise. It would require a loooot more trains than we have or you have.

uv-depression 23d ago
You put the trains where the people are, not in the middle of vast unpopulated stretches. Comparing land area is misleading and unhelpful.
- win311fwg 23d ago
  Trouble is, when you need to get to the middle of nowhere is when you need transportation. If you stay within the densely populated areas where the people live you can walk. That's why people stopped living in rural areas after all; so that one didn't have to rely on transportation. Don't forget that rural areas had trains back before the urbanization movement! Passenger rail in the US died out because people moved closer together so that they didn't need mechanized travel. The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able to support a comprehensive, nation-wide passenger rail system.
  - laurencerowe 23d ago
    > The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able to support a comprehensive, nation-wide passenger rail system. Looking at population density if you draw a 50km radius in the Netherlands you get about 8m people. This covers lots of small cities etc. In the US you get maybe 5m in a contiguous city like Phoenix (which fills the circle) or the Bay Area. (LA is more dense and you might get 10m.) Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. S the effective density experienced is much higher.
    - win311fwg 23d ago
      > Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. Much more the opposite. European settlements were largely established before the train existed, emerging from outward rural growth rather than seeing an active urbanization movement. Trains have been woven into that after the fact to best support the rural-esq population shape. Whereas America was built by the train. Established originally to support the same rural-esq shape idea, but, with little in the way of existing settlements, the train ended up enabling the people to purposefully congregate rather than simply expand outward, which allowed those congregations to be designed such that transportation was unnecessary; being the whole appeal of leaving friends and family behind to move into those settlements. The passenger train eventually started dying out at the height of the urbanization movement because there was no longer a mass benefit from it like the was, and continues to be, in Europe and other places that grew up in those earlier times.
      - brnt 22d ago
        > Much more the opposite. European settlements were largely established before the train existed, The vast majority of housing has been built since laying most railtrack and in many places around (new) train stations.
        win311fwg 22d ago
        Exactly.
  - ninalanyon 22d ago
    If it's a rare enough event you can just rent a car.
    - win311fwg 21d ago
      Or even own a car, which is what most people do. The problem is already solved. But with any solution comes those who think they can do it better (who, when given the chance to try their alternative, in most cases only end up learning why the existing solution was the way it was, but that is another topic for another day).
Zambyte 23d ago
Now do China.
- win311fwg 23d ago
  Technically a large landmass, but essentially nothing happens in the western half. For the sake of travel it is a relatively small country. Whereas NY->LA is the route the USA would need to most service if it were to get serious about such a thing. The short-run corridors are already reasonably well serviced. Trouble is most people doing the NY->LA run are going to choose flight instead.
  - Zambyte 23d ago
    People would absolutely choose trains over flying if we actually had modern train infrastructure. NY to LA would be about 11 hours at 250 MPH. That's 100 MPH slower than the fastest passenger train, but seems like a reasonable estimate for an average speed including stops. The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people. Driving is essentially not an option for most people for this trip too.
    - win311fwg 23d ago
      > NY to LA would be about 11 hours at 250 MPH. There are no trains in regular service that operate at anywhere close to those speeds. There are trains technically capable of doing it (and much more), sure, but the economics quickly stop making sense when you start pushing that much air. And flight still gets you there meaningfully faster, door-to-door, even if there were people theoretically willing to pay excessively to reach 250 mph, so there is still no reason for those who need to prioritize time to take the train. > The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people. Of course, most people have no reason to travel from NY->LA in the first place. Especially not on a regular basis. The primary users will be business customers and they tend to be quite time sensitive. Furthermore, even if there was that 250 mph train, it is unlikely that it would beat air on price, so those who don't care about time are still apt to choose the cheapest option. At best there is a small segment of people who are both willing to give up their time and spend more just to avoid flying, but you can't realistically make trains work with a small number of riders.
wpm 23d ago
Yeah thats a useful factor for all those "visiting mom in Portland" trips from Washington DC that a train is obviously meant to replace, not any of those "100 mi or less visits to mom" that de facto MUST be taken in a car regardless of the population density of the surrounding 100mi radius. Also we should ignore the fact that the US already had a national rail network and STILL DOES for freight and had frequent regional rail service to even incredibly small podunk nowhere towns for decades. It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!
- tmerc 23d ago
  Where I live now to where my mom lives would take 24 to 30 hours by train and cost 400 to 500 usd. At 30mpg and $5/gal, the cost of driving is $200 and takes 12h. So I can take a train for double the time and cost or I can drive. Now consider round trip and passenger. It's 40 miles either side to get to a train. Neither side has a walkable city so being without a car sucks. Summer in one is hot as hell, winter in the other is frozen hell. Tell me again how trains are a viable option?
  - wpm 22d ago
    They aren't for you, apparently. Too bad. I guess no one gets one since it doesn't work for your use case and life in particular. And nothing says the train must take 30 hours. 12H of highway driving is what, 600 miles? 1000? The slowest high speed rail lines in China have a design speed of 120mph. Some go 240mph. So that 600 mile trip could take 5 hours. The 1000 mile trip could take 8 and some change. Add in an hour or so to account for stops. Like, I struggle to imagine how every goddamn conversation I have about rail in the US ends up like this, with someone mistaking my "heres what COULD be" with a comparison to "here's what IS". Do you not think that someone advocating for trains doesn't understand how crappy they are right now? That I'm advocating you take the train despite all of the reasons you mentioned its awful? Do you think the fact that tickets can command that price despite taking 30 hours indicates a latent demand?
    - tmerc 22d ago
      If every GD conversation you have about rail in the US ends badly, it's either an actual problem, you, or both. "It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!"
InsideOutSanta 23d ago
The vast size of the country sounds like an argument for trains, rather than against it? Trains are a comparatively cheap way to provide fast transportation between places where people actually live.
- win311fwg 23d ago
  Not really. Over short-to-medium distances rail and air have similar door-to-door times, but as a country grows vast and travel is much more likely to happen over long distances then rail is much less compelling. Which means smaller ridership, which makes it difficult to support operations. The US already had the nation-wide passenger rail system. At one time it was the envy of the world. It'd still be here if the riders were. But they moved on to newer technologies better suited to the landscape.

uv-depression 23d ago

Yeah, most places other than the US do. Good public transit is a far, far better solution than better cars. Elsewhere in the thread people are talking about ways of convincing drunk people to get their cars to drive them, and don't seem to realize the fact that people drive to go drink is terrifying! At this point it's deeply set in US "common sense" (to the point where in many places, bars have mandatory parking minimums!) and will take a lot of work to unwind. Fortunately there's progress, like in NYC and Seattle.

fnordpiglet 23d ago
When you say most places, I assume you leave out most of the world in this? The number of countries with broad complete train networks is small compared to the land mass of the earth inhabited by humans. Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound. Most urban US cities have some attempt at an urban train network, and most significantly more useful than Seattle. The issue is typically more of funding and willpower - major infrastructure in an established city is expensive and disruptive to the point most don’t want to deal with it. Additionally the feeder transit infrastructure tends to be weak enough that the daily practicality is low because you have to live right on the line and your destination must also be. Otherwise you’re driving in. Finally the urban planning for surface roads has been well enough structured that the trade off for time saved in public transit doesn’t make sense. You spend time walking and doing transfers in excess of double a driving time. Is that a flaw? If you electrify the cars to minimize pollution, automate their driving to reduce risk, ensure they collaborate to improve efficiency, I’m not sure I buy the argument any more.
- estebank 23d ago
  > Even considering urban areas, most people don’t live in London or New York or Tokyo. They live in a city like Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City or Lagos. Even Bangkok which has the MRT and Skytrain only services the relatively affluent areas with service, everyone else is car bound. By raw population numbers, most people worldwide does live in large cities with a lot of coverage by some type of public transport, not necessarily trains or subways. Buses exist.

int0x29 23d ago

This is great until your city was built by a 50s urban planner. Past a certain amount of sprawl building functioning public transit becomes nearly impossible. LA and Santa Clara County come to mind here. LA can sort of work if you are on the metro and don't need transfers. I kinda wish some day some dark wizard curses those two areas to lose 75% of their roads and parking lots and make everything a lot closer.

aqme28 23d ago
A lot of the Netherlands was rebuilt postwar in the 50s with exactly the kind of car-centric design you're talking about. But then in the 70s they realized their mistake and started to reverse it. What I'm saying is-- don't be defeatist about this. In places where density is high enough (maybe not LA sprawl), you can fix this.
madaxe_again 23d ago
I dunno. Brasilia is the epitome of a city built by 50s urban planners, was highly structured around the car - and yet they managed to build a metro.

TulliusCicero 23d ago

Trains or bikes, really (plenty of Waymo/Uber/Lyft trips aren't super far).

himinlomax 23d ago

A 2h train ride is not a problem, but what is is the trip to and from the stations. A 2h autonomous car ride removes that entirely.

dkdbejwi383 23d ago
In most places where train travel is an option, you'll probably be a 10-15 min walk from a station, or a 5 minute cycle, or a short connecting trip on a bus or tram. Multi-modal trips and short walks are normal in a lot of places - I know this isn't the case in America because of how American owned mapping apps like Google Maps go out of their way to hide routes with more than a 5 minute walk involved.
- andy12_ 23d ago
  Meanwhile, my job commute is a 30 minute walk to the train station or... a 30 minute bus trip to the station (yeah, taking a bus literally saves no time at all). Plus a 50 minute train ride plus another 30 minute walk. Honestly, I would 100% use a car for this if it weren't for the fact that doing so is literally 10 times more expensive. I'm sure this is the case for the vast majority of people that use public transport. And I just can't wait for a world of cheap electric autonomous cars where I don't need to waste my time and I can sleep comfortably on my commute.
- himinlomax 22d ago
  Just by what you're describing, that 2h train ride is in fact close to a 3h walking+waiting for the tram+climbing stairs+waiting for the train+finding a seat+climbing more stairs+finding another seat+climbing more stairs+finding another seat+walking+waiting for the bus etc.

Zigurd 23d ago

I used to commute on the redeye from Boston or New York to a Philips office on the opposite side of Amsterdam from the airport. The impressive rail network of course had a big station right at the airport. The first time I hopped in a taxi at the train station in Hilversum, not realizing it was a two block walk from the station.

lo_zamoyski 22d ago

The American situation is a real quagmire. The American auto lobby has spent nearly a century manipulating Americans and American culture by insinuating car ownership and transportation into what it means to be "American". The automobile is a symbol of freedom and independence and plays into the myth of rugged American individualism ("I can drive whenever I want, wherever I want") and masculinity ("I am a real man, because I am independent and because ownership demonstrates I have means"). Certainly, cars do afford a certain practical freedom and comfort for certain use cases—in part because public infrastructure and transport can be hostile to normal human activities instead of supporting them—but in the American mind, these aren't just weighed against a backdrop of practical concerns and superior goods. The car has a quasi-religious quality for many Americans. Getting your license and owning your first car is a practically institutionalized rite of passage into adulthood. Gov't policy—some gladly endorsed by the auto lobby—also played a role. Zoning (like Euclidean zoning) and urban planning (or lack thereof), coupled with a lack of surviving and robust public transportation infrastructure (like public passenger rail), forced and continues to force Americans into car ownership even if they would prefer other means. The rise of postwar suburb, sprawl, and the death of walkable towns and cities has entrenched the need for car ownership. And we shouldn't forget the financial incentives. Mortgages underwritten by the FHA and VA rewarded sprawl with mortgages while penalizing denser development. Taxpayer revenue also funded roads while regulations capped what privately-owned "public" transportation could charge riders, forcing them into bankruptcy and opening transport up to the predation of companies like GM who snapped up their assets and ripped out rail in favor of their own buses. However, we're seeing some pushback in Gen Z. American cities and certainly towns are no longer the polluted industrial centers they used to be. We also don't have the post-WWII pressure to divert wartime industry toward other ends to maintain employment, or Cold War fears of having too many people concentrated in large, easy-to-nuke urban centers.

socalgal2 22d ago

Yea, too bad the USA doesn't have good private trains like Japan