Comment on Too bad we can't have good public transportation
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I wonder if the early proliferation of rural cars / mega expressways kinda fucked us. When your transportation network grows around trains, upgrading the trains/rails makes good economic sense. We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.
No, because cross-country trains and heavy use of them to move goods and people predates cars by quite a bit. Trains were a key component of the North winning the Civil War, for example.
Lots of existing train infrastructure needed to be torn out to make room for car infrastructure.
I definitely think this is the case. Something akin to tragedy of the commons (or maybe Braese’s paradox?) where small investments for short term gain trumps bigger investments for, comparatively, bigger gains.
Sweden, where I live, is in this situation too where the rail network is 50 years in reparation debt but it’s easier for politicians to budget for small road repairs and say that they make meaningful infrastructure work
If anything, shouldn’t that make it easier? The US has quite open and wide streets/roads. You have more space to build stations and rail tracks than for example Europe with much narrower streets/roads.
We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.
Do you know any US history
I know enough that it wasn’t so much lobbying as it was advertising to the to the US citizens that made cars more popular. Ford figured out how to make it affordable then a bunch of companies that stood to make money on cars bought up streetcars and shut them down in favor of busses, but that doesn’t actually answer the demise of long distance rail.
The US was built on steam trains going literally everywhere
That’s kind of the problem though. They’re not everywhere now. There’s a whole lot of places that are nowhere near a train line.
Its so naive to think that this was the cause lmao
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No the auto industry has lobbied against trains and similar projects. It’s not about the science but more about how our politicians have been selling their souls for centuries.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 1 week ago
Pretty much part of the plot from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
PetteriSkaffari@lemmy.world 1 week ago
People choose those politicians, too sensitive for fear of even slightly bigger government. Paired with racism, nowadays.