this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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It is too distributed in too many places for mass transit. The religious fervor over the fuck cars movement is not going to get people in highly populated, low density areas to walk a mile to catch a bus to catch a train full of homeless people to catch another bus to walk a half mile to their destination, when they could have completed that same journey in the comfort of their own car in 1/4 of the time.
Take Dallas for instance. I’m not going to do the work for you, but feel free to plan a trip from a random house in Allen, TX to a business 5-10+ miles away using both the public transit system and then a car. No one sane with limited time in their day is opting for the public transit option. And this is in a city with a decent passenger rail system.
All of those issues could be fixed by building around transit being the prioirty instead of the car. Some cities actually have transit that is faster than a car because transit gets priority at intersections and can take a more direct route.
I’m open to ideas. Show me an example of it.
The new york city subway is often faster than driving. Many cities in the Netherlands have faster transit or cycling times than driving due to careful planning and priority. Japan has high speed rail connecting many of its cities, most trains going faste than highway speeds, some doubling or even tripling highway speeds.
Also north america was founded on trains. If we could build trains 100 years ago we can build better ones now.
All of those are very densely populated places.
Which is a big part of the problem. But not all Netherlands cities are super dense, many have suburbs serviced by transit and with cycling paths. When they were built they considered transit and cycling access when they built them.
There is also the issue of land use. Many of those cities have looser zoning laws than the states which makes it easier for stores to open near peoples homes and scattered throughout the city rather than having to go to a massive commercial district with walmart and 5 other big box stores in a wasteland of parking.
No one is saying a tiny farming town of 500 people needs high speed rail but cities into the 100s of thousands of people can certainly support a transit network, and many did before their trams were ripped out and their right of way given to cars.