this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Fast trains so that you can be restricted in exactly when you can visit and still pay for it. And then have to walk the rest of the distance from the train station to her house. There is so many flaws people just ~~fail~~ refuse to see.
Good? For people without mobility restrictions having a short walk as part of traveling or commuting is a good thing. And for everything longer than a few minutes there should be bus, tram and light rail access.
And how long of a walk? I'm not walking 15 miles to go see Grandma I'm just gonna drive.
15 miles is solidly within train territory, I'm talking a 5 minute walk. Everything past that should ideally be connected via bus or tram
New York City tried that and we ended up with a subway full of crack addicts, homelessness, public nudity, etc. Trains should either be for a long trip but only once in a while or a last resort in a large city.
what do you suggest we do in large cities then?
Cars. I mean it works well enough right now and there isn't any good solution other than them.
Cars in big cities are horrible. Terribly inefficient, requiring orders of magnitude more infrastructure, killing air quality and pedestrians alike, and leading to even more suburban sprawl. Cars are not compatible with high population density.
How are they inefficient or at least less inefficient than other solutions? That infrastructure is already there, unlike others. And air quality is more affected by other things than cars.
I visited NYC a while back. The subway impressed me. People call it dirty and say it is full of crackheads. Despite this, it was clean and orderly during my visit.
How often do you ride the subway? Thousands of people take the subway in NYC everyday of all income levels, it's a pretty big success.
Is that a public transport problem or a US culture problem?
Either way doesn't work
Oh no, I can only take the train to Grandma once or twice per hour* during the daytime! The calamity!
*Yes, those are absolutely realistic time tables for train connections, Europe has those.
Not in us, because cities are more spread out, even with better infrastructure it would still be every 6-7 hours or more.
There are many places in the US with the density of Europe or Asia. And those are all the places trains are being built.
Walking! 😟 The horror!!! 😭
As I said in the other one, I'm not walking 15 miles to see Grandma.
But just think you could spend that time on your phone making even more absurd comments
Cars are even more restricted in travel time. Unlike trains, which typically come multiple times an hour, car travel has to be planned around rush hour and gridlock.
Honestly, I don’t even know how we can be debating this. Car dependence is a dead end. Cars don’t scale because a linear increase in drivers requires a non-linear increase in surface area. Car dependence makes it impossible to meet our climate goals. These catastrophic failures are so much worse than needing to walk a few blocks. There are so many flaws that car people just ~~fail~~ refuse to see.
Trains go from nowhere near where I live, to nowhere near anywhere I want to go, then cost just as much as a car (Yes I did the sums).
To use trains not only do I have to use my car I also have to pay for parking. May as well drive wherever I want to go.
Of course traffic jams are real. That's why wherever possible I either go on the motorbike or shop on Amazon instead.
That's a problem with the infrastructure and transit policy, not the technology. I can't afford a car, where I'm at I'm able to take a train to cities nearby, I can take a free shuttle to the train station or bike because it's not very far. In the past in the US at least there were more train and tram routes, when cars because more prevalent cities stopped developing the infrastructure, but if done properly it can be superior to driving.
Even the Netherlands or Japan have many places where only travel by car makes sense. We will always need some cars. Maybe your situation is like that. But your personal situation doesn’t dictate whether or not it makes sense for society to build a lot more trains, which is what we’re talking about.
Also, describing how much less convenient trains are for you presently than driving is kind of missing the point. Everyone already agrees that train lines don’t exist to service many places. We’re not talking about what exists now, but how things should change.
I see them it's just I don't really care since they are so very minor as opposed to any other type of large-scale transportation, especially trains.
The fact that cars mathematically cannot scale with population is “so very minor”? Or that cars are the most expensive form of transportation? Or that cars require tons of parking and wide roads that lead to inefficient use of land, contributing to a housing crisis and ugly sprawl?
So what is a “major” problem? Ah right, walking a few blocks.
Cars scale with the population very well. Rural and small cities have smaller roads and better infrastructure for traveling short distances while still being able to be used for long distance. The housing crisis goes a lot deeper than people think, if cars are contributing, then not much.
Ah right because America is a few blocks long. And here I thought the American would be bad at geography (I don't know a single thing about geography).
No urban designer or transportation expert thinks that cars scale with population. Talking about rural and small cities is the opposite of scaling with population. Car dependent big cities like LA or Houston have hellish traffic.
At least have a cursory look at the link I posted in my last comment. Cars play a huge role in bad land use. This is why they have an enormous effect on housing supply.
You seem to be lost. You made the point that walking from a train station to your final destination was some major problem. I’m not even sure what point you think your last paragraph is responding to. Yes America is bigger than a few blocks. So is Europe and China. So what?
So I'm not walking that far...
I know right, a plane ride will take me exactly to her house! What kind of logic is this? Can you recommend a method to travel across the US to visit my grandma that wouldn't require me paying or being restricted in where I could go? That is how modern travel works in every form.
Also anyway when I take the train I could take a bike with me and bike the rest of the way, or in my city there is a free shuttle from the train station to the center of downtown, with buses every direction from there, any many bigger cities have light-rails or subways that connect from train stations. And it's healthy to walk, people have walked for thousands of years.
Plane rides aren't for frequent and shorter trips. Cars are a cheap way to get there and you aren't restricted at all.
I mentioned in another comment, I'm talking about visiting my grandma who lives on the opposite coast, like once a year or less, it's not cheap to drive that far. And for a trip that would be better to drive than fly I'd rather take a train, it's more pleasant and comfortable, they usually have bars and food served, I don't have to worry about parking or traffic and I could rent a car there if I need one.
How do you get to the train?