LogFAQs > #974938579

sodium-chloride posted...

like why is this not a priority?

Because GM and the oil industry bought the country in the 60's and convinced the government to bulldoze half of it to make way for a road network that spaced everything too far apart to make any option other than driving work. Decades of propaganda, adjustment to cars as the status quo, and lobbying against other modes of transportation from billionaires dependent on the dominance of the oil and gas industry have kept it that way, such that many people can't even imagine how much better infrastructure that isn't designed for cars at the expense of everything else could be (the classic being "I need a car to be independent" because they grew up in a car-dependent suburb and therefore couldn't go anywhere without their parents until they got their own car).

Exhibit A:
Muscles posted...

No matter how good public transportation gets it'll still never be as good as cars.

It can be good enough, and that's all anyone really needs. It also very much can be as good as or better than cars if you're looking at high-speed rail options and not just limiting yourself to the gimped "occasional bus that gets stuck in the same traffic as cars" model that comprises the entirety of so many Americans' understanding of transit. Properly designed, transit does move faster than cars, especially when traffic is heavy.

Everyone's always fond of bringing up the "what if I need to travel many miles between remote locations?" angle as being a reason transit can't work for them, but the reality of the matter is that the vast, vast majority of car trips are short and/or have at least one end in a relatively high-traffic area. Buses showing up every half hour and sharing the road with car traffic aren't going to cut it for that, but a streetcar showing up every 15 minutes can be. A park-and-ride train station with a train showing up every ten minutes can be. And the handful of trips that do actually require travelling between remote locations? Nobody's saying you can't have a car for those if you find it worthwhile, or you can use a car sharing service (which thrive when enough other alternatives to cars exist that people only want cars for these occasional trips) if you don't want to pay thousands for a car you rarely use. This isn't about eliminating cars altogether. It's about designing cities without the expectation that everyone will drive as the default, which in turn is about giving people the freedom to choose how they get around.

Dikitain posted...

I would rather our current rail system not kill tons of people first before wanting that.

It's not like the roads are exactly safe.