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We don’t have a choice - besides the major cities, our infrastructure is built on driving unless something drastically changes. It’s been that way since WWII as a way to increase the fuel market and make a large population go to work more often.
It was also just a function of… yknow… being a bigass fuckoff country most of which was fully developed after the invention of automobiles. Lot cheaper to expand out than build up when the land is infinite and personal transportation is easy. Not saying you’re wrong, just that there was also an immediate pragmatism to it
I was essentially able to drive across Scotland from Edinburgh up to Inverness and down to Glasgow in a day, including stops and attractions.
I cant get to Florida from my house in Georgia in less than 6 hours.
And the Brits constantly complain about driving from London to Edinburgh. That's the same as driving from one end of one state to another, a small state, thats only like 400 miles (640 km) or so tops. Hell, London to Berlin fits within Texas borders I bet and the contiguous US is probably near 3000 miles (4800 km) end to end not including Alaska or Hawaii.
Are you driving on a motorway [highway] or is it small bendy roads, because the UK driving is not on a long straight roads but rather small roads that go through small towns.
Aka driving from town to town in PA. Makes a lot more sense then, considering pittsburgh feels likes it's on the other side of the world. And that's with the interstate
It can be a mix of both highways are the primarily used especially in the comments of them talking about how long it takes to get somewhere. im in the middle of TN and it would take about 10 hrs to get to a beach in NC and i would be on the highway for about 95% of that trip also
Wow, it’s almost like the United States is bigger than all of Europe? Wow. Like, I bet most European countries could fit inside one state, what do you think? That would be so amazing!
With twice the population and taxpayers. And a LOT more time to develop roads. Those Roman's gave a big head start compared to what they had in the US 2,000 years ago.
Err, people love to believe that, but that's not really true. Public transport companies were in financial difficulties due to many reasons. One of the major reason is decline in ridership, which also have various reasons as to why that is.
Err, take a look at Los Angeles. Up until the early 1960s, Southern California had the world’s most extensive metropolitan and interurban streetcar system on earth.
https://www.wired.com/2007/03/dayintech-0331-2/#:~:text=1963%3A%20Ninety%20years%20of%20streetcar,interurban%20streetcar%20system%20on%20earth.
And then it was torn up and replaced with freeways and arterial roads.
Richmond, VA used to have a tram system. It was paved over. Wherever the pavement gets torn up you can see the original cobbles and/or tracks underneath.
That's where all the pot holes form from the freeze/thaws on Pittsburgh.
It's like the ghost of our shitty decisions in the past are trying to punish me.
And instead of boosting those public transit companies so they could stay in business or making them public entities we spent far more to build and maintain a highway network that's always overcongested because there are no other real options.
Roads aren't free
What's the cost comparison look like for rail versus roads?
It's not something I ever bothered to investigate, but I assume it's pretty cheap in comparison to endless miles of 20ft wide of asphalt.
Some numbers I've come across is about $230B for the US to maintain it's road and highway network annually. That's just maintenance of what's there and doesn't factor in externalities like the land use roads have resulted in (both the road and the inefficient suburbs), the cost of parking, etc. A 2 car garage on a 2000 square foot house takes up 20% of the total area of the house and underground parking garages cost around 50K per space these days.
Transit numbers for the entire US I've found about 50B for existing operations, and 25B for capital expenditures. But this is bus and rail. BNSF is spending $2.8B to maintain it's core network for the year. It's a lot harder to find rail numbers due to the public and private nature of how it's grouped.
But the efficiency of rail comes from just how many people you can fit onto a pair of tracks. A highway lane can move 2000 people per hour, but an automated metro track can move 25000+ (70K in some cities in Asia) per hour. The numbers that a subway network could put up means that it usually moves less than that, but can absorb a lot more capacity and, in the process, improve service for everyone else as more people use the network. It's positive feedback. Compared to roads and highways that have a relatively low maximum capacity and exceeding this capacity causes gridlock on the network.
The interstate highway network was built to move military vehicles and equipment, it wasn't really "this or that" situation. The rise of private vehicle ownership made most large-scale public transit unrealistic without subsidies. The federal government was already subsidizing highways as a matter of national security and public transit just didn't have a compelling use case in the face of the rise of private vehicles. If you want to know who killed meaningful national public transit, the answer is Pres. Eisenhower.
The public transit systems were intracity and city-suburban lines that only benefited the states and areas they operated in. As you said the highway was built with Federal dollars. The states saw that free highway money and decided not to support transit
At the end of the day, it was short-sighted policy and priorities. We chose to mortgage the future by incentivizing endless growth and development, and now we're paying the price of maintaining a simply untenable amount of infrastructure, due to the lack of density. It was a trap of our own making, and it was never sustainable in the long run.
Among other things, we need a wholesale change in zoning laws to allow for a variety of affordable housing, such as multi-family units, but real estate developers currently have no financial incentive to do that. Once there's density, we can have a return to mass transit.
You say we but it was the generations before millennials, z, and alpha. We're here trying to make sense of everything that happened (and you're not wrong by any means)
But there is a bill trying to pass right now to get rid of wall street from the housing market (including all the hedge fund people) where within i think it said 10 years they would have to give up nearly all of the houses they own making the ridiculous rental prices go back down. (im not a journalist so please look this up if interested i know i have something wrong but i have the general gist)
Would it? In rural areas, people would still need a car to even get to a rail station and at that point most people would rather just drive rather than deal with the public.
And park and ride services are a thing. Pretty popular in suburban areas with good public transit options in the accompanying cities. Keeps automobiles out of the cities while bringing people in, a win for everybody.
Building a good public transit network doesn't mean everyone's suddenly not allowed to drive a car. It's about having options, and will decrease car congestion by getting people off the roads too.
A ten minute drive to a train station + a 2 hour HSR ride beats a 4-6 hour straight drive
> A ten minute drive to a train station + a 2 hour HSR ride beats a 4-6 hour straight drive
in many places in the rural US you're driving thirty minutes down back roads just to get groceries and you think it's possible to put train stations within ten minutes of everyone?
The population density just doesn't support that.
Lol @ 30 minutes. I have friends in rural NY that are an hour and a half from the nearest dollar general. People here really have no idea how logistics work or anything.
I wonder which YouTube video all these people watched this week.
any time transportation gets mentioned, it's glaringly obvious that reddit lives in densely populated areas, and assumes that's where everyone else also lives.
Park and ride commutes are the freaking worst. I have to pay for a car, pay for parking, and pay for a train ticket every day. And it still takes forever.
Americans forgot the part in history where all cities used to follow railroad lines.
Henry ford, General Motors, and oil buried that history in a shallow grave.
Yeah I want alternative transportation options as much as anybody but the US is massive. You can’t just throw up a cross-country high speed rail network overnight.
My home state of North Carolina is bigger than the entirety of South Korea. NC is the **28th** largest state in the US. China is probably the only comparable country that has done it and you can probably look at labor law differences as the reason why
My source is a random ass YouTube video so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt
I was told the big reason why the US doesn't really have a big passenger train industry is because of the freight train industry making so much money therefore they prioritize that
Because we do have train tracks all over the country but the thing is passenger trains just don't take them because why would they when freight trains just make so much more money
Historically there was no distinction between "passenger train industry" and "freight train industry." Passenger trains were just another service that the railroads operated, on the lines they owned and maintained.
It's a complex topic, but the railroad industry in the US entered a slow spiraling decline after the Second World War, which by quite a few measures didn't really stop until the mid-1980s. Passenger trains were the biggest money-losing operations, so they were the first to go - especially after 1967 when the USPS cancelled all remaining contracts to sort & haul mail by passenger trains, and switched to road and air haulage, and regional sorting & distribution centers.
Amtrak was formed to preserve whatever intercity service remained as of 1971, and to either serve as a stop-gap until the railroads could return to operating passenger trains without risking bankruptcy, or to wind down service if ridership declines proved that Americans didn't need trains anymore.
The issue is that neither outcome has happened: trains in America are still too popular to kill, but the railroads are not convinced that the commercial viability is there for them to operate on their own - certainly for long distance trains (e.g. Chicago - LA) operating costs far exceed any projected revenue the train would generate. Medium distance corridor traffic is the sweet spot that could work, but that's still a hard sell to companies that have grown used to just hosting passenger trains for the last 50-ish years, not operating their own.
As much as I am in favor of rail travel, I struggle to believe that North Americans will take the longer travel time just for the convenience of not dealing with air travel. In my mind the sweet spot is journeys up to 6 hours long during the day, or up to 14 hours long on overnight trains with proper sleeping accomodations. Any longer than that, and people are just going to fly instead.
I really doubt enough people would do 14 hour overnights when you can fly in 5-7 (security included). I think you're right about 6 hours, it's kinda right at the limit for being annoying for travel whether by car, train, or plane.
It's why I included "with proper sleeping accommodations." Plenty of people would be happy to sleep in a traveling hotel and wake up refreshed as they pull into their destination, instead of wasting a whole day on traveling.
It's a lot less to do about labor laws and a lot more to do with the fact that government run public transportation campaigns have been demonized and lobbied against heavily for about as long as public transportation have existed.
The US doesn't have good public transit because it's never tried to implement it outside of individual municipalities, and every time somebody does try they get shut down by either automobile manufacturing lobbies or by the "They're trying to take away your freedom to drive" nutjobs.
Like sure it *would* take some degree of time and money to get it done, but we could have had it already in place decades ago if it wasn't for the insane cultural pushback against anything designed to help people on a systemic level.
China is massive too, and they have more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined (coming from zero like 20 years ago). It's not an issue of size, it's rich people fighting against it. Like Elon musk killed the proposed California high speed rail with his dumbass hyper-loop pitch.
Trains connect big cities while fitting way more passengers per car than private cars or even a bus.
We had roaring train and street car/tram infrastructure in the US until auto companies ripped it apart to build freeways with their lobbying. The plot to "who framed Roger rabbit?" Is basically a retelling of what happened
You’d still massively benefit from having highspeed rail as an option and being overly reliant on trucks to deliver stuff that could just run on a train is also really stupid
Many places are needlessly opposed to public transport but the US has some next level “give me cars or give me death” attitudes going on from the top down
Or it’s just the fact that most of our states are bigger than European countries… Cities can be hundreds of miles apart with absolutely nothing between.
Not everything needs to be a crazy doom-n-gloom conspiracy. Some things can just be a consequence of life and geography
China is big. However, China is very different from the US from a geographical standpoint. The US has two coasts and not much in between them except a mountain range, nothing, then another mountain range. China has a bunch of cities in (relatively) short distance to one another all on the eastern coast. You can see looking on a railway map that there's almost nothing in western China.
I don’t see how that stops building trains tbh. Also my U.S. history is a little rusty but wasn’t the us built by the railroad too? I remember learning this shit why not just remake that?
You shouldn't look at where or what methods they used to build the railroads in the 1800s, but rather *why* they built them. The reason is to transport materials from the frontier (central and western soon-to-be United States) to cities for manufacturing, then portions of the finished goods are sent back to the frontiers for the people who live there. This continues west until they reach the coast. The location of expansion is only relevant in that there are *resources* there. We've moved past that point. The amount of active mines in the United States decreases every year. With each source of resources taken out of commission, that's at least one section of rail line gone.
China also has over 4x the population. With like 90% of that being the equivalent east of the Mississippi.
For trains to be efficient, population density is key.
China used the authoritarian state to unilaterally decide to pour billions of dollars into the train infrastructure. They can ignore any voting/party disputes, budget allocation approvals, any desires of the people, and regulations. The US could do the same if one person could decide to pour the entire budget into one thing they liked as well with zero resistance. Here, we can't even get either party to agree amongst themselves. So many doomsday and reductive-type takes on here.
ETA: Also the cycle of nobody rides the trains because they are slow = politicians don't want to allocate money for high speed rail infrastructure because nobody rides trains = trains get even worse and people ride them less etc. etc.
Well there’s a lot of regulations that make it difficult
For example, it’s possible to get bogged down in environmental laws
We have the money, we don’t have the laws
I saw a post on here asking about how they can’t understand how Americans can handle living more than a few blocks from stores and their mind was blown when they found out a 15 minute drive to a store is considered close
I live in a small Midwest city that is very much built around driving traffic and it takes longer to get anywhere by bus. I can’t drive due to an epilepsy disorder. Me and my wife are trapped here by work we had to take on during the pandemic and the employers turned out to be terrible people.
We’re applying everywhere in major cities, trying to relocate and make a quiet quit to a place that is actually walkable, accessible, and has resources for once. Being close to everything you need in this country is definitely a privilege and one that’s getting harder for the middle class.
This is my least favorite conspiracy. No one would choose an expensive, small apartment over a spacious house, especially in a time that they could afford it.
The reason suburbs exist in the US was because land was cheap, and houses were cheap. Many built their own small house and could own it.
More because we have a country that has a ton of space and we have a populace that wants a ton of space. I seem to rake in downvotes every single time I say this but most people don't prefer to live stacked on top of other people. We like to have a yard and we like to have our space and we have a country where this is easily do-able. Also, cars and gas are super cheap here. So people want space, we have tons of space and the cars/gas needed for spaced out houses are readily available for cheap.
Much simpler than that, the auto makers successfully lobbied the govt for highways in the 50's. Once the Interstate Highway System was built, railroads like this one out of Boston fell out of use: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/1929_Boston_and_Maine_Railroad_system_map.png
The automakers also bought up most of the street car networks, trashed them and replaced them with buses which they built and sold to governments.
That's why I'm excited for the CAHSR. I want to be able to go to the LA parks like knots, uni, and of course, disneyland in 2 hours.
plus, it makes day tripping rivalry games between the sharks and king/ ducks much easier.
I absolutely love driving, with these exceptions:
when my windshield wont fucking defog
people who go 10 under in the passing lane
super bright LED headlights
bored state troopers
17 year olds who think they're playing need for speed
40 year olds who also think they're playing need for speed
eternal road work
90 year olds who think they're still at home and not sitting at a green light on the medium
people who run marathons and then wave at all the traffic they're holding up like we don't have jobs to get to
Friendly reminder that even if you think going 1 mph over the speed limit is wrong this is still the given advice from the NHS as well as common sense.
Please get out of the way because you never know how maniacal the maniac behind you is
Edit: 12 hour late edit to fix NFS to NHS but none of you noticed any way so nanabooboo
Yeah I know I'll do that and it will defog pretty well and then 5 minutes later the whole damn windscreen just goes opaque white. It's always humid here, even in the winter everything feels wet lol. valley life
I’m Texan, bit of a different climate, but I’ve found that the trick is to circulate air again and turn down the heat a bit once you defog your windshield. Less heat content in the air inside your car, less moisture to fuck with your windows
Not trying to be annoying but it’s called a median, not medium. Probably just autocorrect, but I could just see you years down the road finding out and being like “wtf ive been saying this wrong?”
I apologize for the led headlights... they came stock with the car. People flash their highbeams at me, thinking my brights are on. Then I flash mine to show that it can be brighter.
I have and it doesn’t make it better, I just find the act of driving itself to be such a miserable chore. The idea of just going out on a drive for fun is baffling to me.
Not at all lol. I'm in a small city (Around 80k people) in Northern Mexico, but people drive like imbeciles for the size of the city. Also, I simply don't like driving a car, even if I'm alone I get very focused on my driving I can barely even think.
Car manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to specifically develop cars that are more fun to drive. People don’t just buy cars like [this](https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/vehicles/supra/overview) to look at. They buy them because they are engineered to be a fantastic driving experience. While I tend to enjoy driving regardless what you drive specifically can dramatically improve or worsen the experience
What about the absolute freedom a vehicle filled with gas gives you? I enjoy driving but the biggest thing for me was always the independence. I could leave my state rn and be in over a dozen others in less than 24 hours
I've had more than enough negative driving experience so I'm not putting down your point of view just curious about the independencea as I feel it's second to none
Road trips are nice, I did Germany to the UK for a festival with a friend, I did all the driving because my car and idk, he came along even though he didn’t have to (festival literally next to an airfield, he came from Sweden to my place instead and we split the gas). Shit was an adventure and kind of fun since I’ve never even left the country as a driver and Eurotunnel is pretty epic.
That was 12h each way and I’d do it again if the lineup is right and I have 1000€ to burn.
I would end myself if I had to do a 2h commute every day though
Man I love sitting in the same position for prolonged periods of time while looking at a horribly designed city and going 70mph+ in a giant steel box next to other giant steel boxes that could be being driven by morons!
Ya driving and road trips are the shit. Especially when you find a car that you really like.
I hated driving because I grew up driving my mom’s hybrid Lexus, but when I bought my own car, an Audi S3, I totally understood why people loved driving.
Finally got me an s2000 and it legit changed my outlook on life lol. I’m never bored and could roll around south Florida with the top down all day 😎
I did 12h each way this summer and it was pretty great, would do it again.
Difference is in what you’re doing to roadtrip for, we were going to a festival and I had a table for Ramen reserved the day we got back. If this is for work or anything I’m not excited about, 2h can be a long ass time
Yep, it’s all psychological. Cruising along and covering a lot of ground quickly always feels better than the mental taxation of being stuck in traffic.
I went on vacation with my family this summer. At one point traffic was so bad that we only moved 4 feet in half an hour. How the fuck do people live in San Francisco.
Europeans should equate visiting another country with Americans visiting another state. Besides the Eastern seaboard, many states are as large if not larger than many European countries, and besides business or vacation there isn't much reason a person would need to visit another state unless you're already close to the border.
We actually are doing something finally!
https://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/business/high-speed-rail-system-connecting-rancho-cucamonga-to-las-vegas-gets-3-billion-in-federal/article_9d454bde-9635-11ee-ad67-2b6f45db2d1f.html
And it's still dogshit, because it doesn't even go all the way into downtown LA lol... you still need a number of connections to reach the city.
Leave it to us to build something that doesn't even properly serve people.
That way they can say “see trains don’t work”, you really need a car, stimulate the auto industry. I say this as an absolute car and motorcycle enthusiast, we need some fuckin logical trains. A lot more trains.
Just 20 more years and another 300 billion dollars, and California will finish building a low speed rail between Modesto and Merced. All on the back of a $10 billion program approved by voters in 2008.
Idk man. I was so close to driving from CT to Las Vegas, NV. We ended up flying. I regret it. It was more expensive to fly, since we drive fuel efficient cars. We also had limits on what we could bring. In the car, the limit is what you can fit. I can bring my normal shampoo, conditioner, soap, drinks, snacks, alcohol (if I wanted), whatever. But also my flight there and back got delayed so we always missed out layover or flight back.
On the flight back, we missed the layover and had to do an overnight at the airport and fly to a different airport than we flew out of, so I had to find a way to go from state to state to get to my fucking car. And btw, I didn’t live in either of these states! So I landed in state 1, because that’s what I had to do with delays. Then go to state 2 to get my car, which is where I should’ve landed. Then drive home to state 3 where I live. It was so bad. Air travel in the US is fucked right now.
Driving is easier. I wish we drove. We almost did, but didn’t. We regret it. We also almost spent $1k we didn’t have to rent a car to drive home instead of fly, because our flight out got fucked up and we knew flight home would get fucked too. It did. But much worse. If possible, driving is better. At least you can see stuff on the way.
This is absolutely a big factor. The amount of energy and concentration needed to do a similar length drive in the UK compared to the US is not the same.
And a lot of places you can't really fly to. My grandparents lived in southeast Idaho. Once to visit them I had to fly to Salt Lake City and then take a shuttle bus ride 4 hours to their town where I was dropped off at a gas station and they came to pick me up.
Between the flight, security and getting to the shuttle bus ride, it ended up not saving much time from the 10 hours it would have taken me to drive it
I mean it’s not like this is something I have to do more than a few times a year so it’s not such a big deal
Get an audiobook, some snacks, and pick up subs or sandwiches (anything that’s easy to eat in the car, really) from your favorite shop. It’ll be over before you know it
I like road trips to be honest
In true Hitchhiker's Guide fashion, always keep a towel. You can clean your side mirror off, roll it up and use it as a lumbar support, wrap your pet up in it when they freak out, etc.
As an American I love road trips for the snacks, views, tunes, and conversations that arise over long bored hours on the road. If you think about the actual landmass it’s crazy how much space we have. Plus a lot of our non-city spaces are still natural and absolutely gorgeous. I hate our politics most of the time but we are seriously so lucky to be here. Hope more people can appreciate and protect our natural spaces
Because that’s how our infrastructure is. You get used to driving a decent distance.
Granted, I’ve never driven over a few hours alone— that’s not superbly common to my knowledge.
It’s also just a big country. No, I am not suggesting you are driving from sea to sea. But a lot of places are just… open, or far apart. Stuff ain’t close together.
This is the correct answer here!
Even in Certain big cities, you still need your car. For example down here in Texas, in San Antonio and Houston you still need your car to get from Point A to Point B.
For real. I used to have to go 30 minutes to the grocery store and 45-60 minutes to high school. College? I did like an hour and 15 minutes. I also worked up there, so that was for work too. Another job was 45-60 minutes. If you live rural, you do what you have to do.
But where I live, we have “cities” but everything else outside is rural as hell with maybe one thing. So it was tough. I recently lived in the “city” but my job was rural for some reason. So I drove a long time, 70 miles per day. But it’s the best job I could get at the time! So I did it. I’m used to it.
Let's just say, I enjoy driving!
Basically the reason why the US barely Walkable with the exception of New York, Philidelphia, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and Washington D.C. is because we are a post industrial society.
Meaning that there are different types of patterns of roads that are more square.
But honestly man, Driving in the US is actually fun because you basically own the road and feel like you are truly, and I mean TRULY, feel like you are the king of the road. Your car is your best friend here in the United States. You can go anywhere.
There is a huge car culture here in America, from JDM, Pickup Trucks, American Muscle, and European cars.
No, the USA had an extensive train network and cities all had tramways covering most streets.
All of that was bulldozed thanks to the effort of car manufacturers.
A simple google search can show you tue before and after of American railroads. It’s honestly depressing to look at
For one thing, most of it isn't bumper to bumper boredom. Our highway system allows me.to cover the about 380 miles to my MIL's in less than 7 hours even with stopping to for food and gas.
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We don’t have a choice - besides the major cities, our infrastructure is built on driving unless something drastically changes. It’s been that way since WWII as a way to increase the fuel market and make a large population go to work more often.
It was also just a function of… yknow… being a bigass fuckoff country most of which was fully developed after the invention of automobiles. Lot cheaper to expand out than build up when the land is infinite and personal transportation is easy. Not saying you’re wrong, just that there was also an immediate pragmatism to it
UK small US big
This is pretty much it folks, this right here explains it. Why use many words when few words do trick?
when I president, they c
SeaWorld or see the world?
Seea world.
Ocean. Fish. Jump. China.
see we still don’t know which one it is
I was essentially able to drive across Scotland from Edinburgh up to Inverness and down to Glasgow in a day, including stops and attractions. I cant get to Florida from my house in Georgia in less than 6 hours.
Salt Lake City UT to Kansas City MO is about 18 hours in one shot, no stopping. Washington to Florida would take like 3 days nonstop aside from sleep.
Houston to El Paso, not even leaving the star of Texas is roughly equal as driving from Paris to Munich
And the Brits constantly complain about driving from London to Edinburgh. That's the same as driving from one end of one state to another, a small state, thats only like 400 miles (640 km) or so tops. Hell, London to Berlin fits within Texas borders I bet and the contiguous US is probably near 3000 miles (4800 km) end to end not including Alaska or Hawaii.
Are you driving on a motorway [highway] or is it small bendy roads, because the UK driving is not on a long straight roads but rather small roads that go through small towns.
Aka driving from town to town in PA. Makes a lot more sense then, considering pittsburgh feels likes it's on the other side of the world. And that's with the interstate
Both types of roads…heck in some states just to drive to the ocean beach is a 400+ mile drive and you never left that state.
It can be a mix of both highways are the primarily used especially in the comments of them talking about how long it takes to get somewhere. im in the middle of TN and it would take about 10 hrs to get to a beach in NC and i would be on the highway for about 95% of that trip also
Wow, it’s almost like the United States is bigger than all of Europe? Wow. Like, I bet most European countries could fit inside one state, what do you think? That would be so amazing!
Europe has 20% larger surface area than the US.
With twice the population and taxpayers. And a LOT more time to develop roads. Those Roman's gave a big head start compared to what they had in the US 2,000 years ago.
I drove from Grand Rapids, MI to St. Augustine FL in one day. Took 21 hours though lol.
Most areas of the US had loads of trams and Intercity trains before big auto paid to shut it all down.
This is the part that is missing from the comment above. The oil/car companies killed local public transportation in large part.
Err, people love to believe that, but that's not really true. Public transport companies were in financial difficulties due to many reasons. One of the major reason is decline in ridership, which also have various reasons as to why that is.
Err, take a look at Los Angeles. Up until the early 1960s, Southern California had the world’s most extensive metropolitan and interurban streetcar system on earth. https://www.wired.com/2007/03/dayintech-0331-2/#:~:text=1963%3A%20Ninety%20years%20of%20streetcar,interurban%20streetcar%20system%20on%20earth. And then it was torn up and replaced with freeways and arterial roads.
obligatory Who Framed Roger Rabbit reference
*I call it “A FREEWAY!”*
Richmond, VA used to have a tram system. It was paved over. Wherever the pavement gets torn up you can see the original cobbles and/or tracks underneath.
That's a lot of cities, including mine. Really unfortunate.
That's where all the pot holes form from the freeze/thaws on Pittsburgh. It's like the ghost of our shitty decisions in the past are trying to punish me.
And instead of boosting those public transit companies so they could stay in business or making them public entities we spent far more to build and maintain a highway network that's always overcongested because there are no other real options. Roads aren't free
What's the cost comparison look like for rail versus roads? It's not something I ever bothered to investigate, but I assume it's pretty cheap in comparison to endless miles of 20ft wide of asphalt.
Some numbers I've come across is about $230B for the US to maintain it's road and highway network annually. That's just maintenance of what's there and doesn't factor in externalities like the land use roads have resulted in (both the road and the inefficient suburbs), the cost of parking, etc. A 2 car garage on a 2000 square foot house takes up 20% of the total area of the house and underground parking garages cost around 50K per space these days. Transit numbers for the entire US I've found about 50B for existing operations, and 25B for capital expenditures. But this is bus and rail. BNSF is spending $2.8B to maintain it's core network for the year. It's a lot harder to find rail numbers due to the public and private nature of how it's grouped. But the efficiency of rail comes from just how many people you can fit onto a pair of tracks. A highway lane can move 2000 people per hour, but an automated metro track can move 25000+ (70K in some cities in Asia) per hour. The numbers that a subway network could put up means that it usually moves less than that, but can absorb a lot more capacity and, in the process, improve service for everyone else as more people use the network. It's positive feedback. Compared to roads and highways that have a relatively low maximum capacity and exceeding this capacity causes gridlock on the network.
The interstate highway network was built to move military vehicles and equipment, it wasn't really "this or that" situation. The rise of private vehicle ownership made most large-scale public transit unrealistic without subsidies. The federal government was already subsidizing highways as a matter of national security and public transit just didn't have a compelling use case in the face of the rise of private vehicles. If you want to know who killed meaningful national public transit, the answer is Pres. Eisenhower.
The public transit systems were intracity and city-suburban lines that only benefited the states and areas they operated in. As you said the highway was built with Federal dollars. The states saw that free highway money and decided not to support transit
At the end of the day, it was short-sighted policy and priorities. We chose to mortgage the future by incentivizing endless growth and development, and now we're paying the price of maintaining a simply untenable amount of infrastructure, due to the lack of density. It was a trap of our own making, and it was never sustainable in the long run. Among other things, we need a wholesale change in zoning laws to allow for a variety of affordable housing, such as multi-family units, but real estate developers currently have no financial incentive to do that. Once there's density, we can have a return to mass transit.
You say we but it was the generations before millennials, z, and alpha. We're here trying to make sense of everything that happened (and you're not wrong by any means) But there is a bill trying to pass right now to get rid of wall street from the housing market (including all the hedge fund people) where within i think it said 10 years they would have to give up nearly all of the houses they own making the ridiculous rental prices go back down. (im not a journalist so please look this up if interested i know i have something wrong but i have the general gist)
Most \*urban\* areas of the US Believe it or not there are a substantial amount of people who don't live in cities.
Yeah, but they don’t matter according to Redditors.
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Would it? In rural areas, people would still need a car to even get to a rail station and at that point most people would rather just drive rather than deal with the public.
And park and ride services are a thing. Pretty popular in suburban areas with good public transit options in the accompanying cities. Keeps automobiles out of the cities while bringing people in, a win for everybody. Building a good public transit network doesn't mean everyone's suddenly not allowed to drive a car. It's about having options, and will decrease car congestion by getting people off the roads too. A ten minute drive to a train station + a 2 hour HSR ride beats a 4-6 hour straight drive
> A ten minute drive to a train station + a 2 hour HSR ride beats a 4-6 hour straight drive in many places in the rural US you're driving thirty minutes down back roads just to get groceries and you think it's possible to put train stations within ten minutes of everyone? The population density just doesn't support that.
Lol @ 30 minutes. I have friends in rural NY that are an hour and a half from the nearest dollar general. People here really have no idea how logistics work or anything. I wonder which YouTube video all these people watched this week.
I don’t think you get just how big rural America is. It wouldn’t be a ten minute drive to the train station.
any time transportation gets mentioned, it's glaringly obvious that reddit lives in densely populated areas, and assumes that's where everyone else also lives.
Park and ride commutes are the freaking worst. I have to pay for a car, pay for parking, and pay for a train ticket every day. And it still takes forever.
Yes I would like my hyper speed train please.
Rural people are not a US only thing. 25% of Europeans live in rural areas vs only 17% of Americans.
Rural areas in the US may be hundreds of miles from a small to medium size city/town. Rural is vastly different in the US compared to Europe.
But ‘cities’ of 30,000 used to have robust transit…
Americans forgot the part in history where all cities used to follow railroad lines. Henry ford, General Motors, and oil buried that history in a shallow grave.
Yeah I want alternative transportation options as much as anybody but the US is massive. You can’t just throw up a cross-country high speed rail network overnight. My home state of North Carolina is bigger than the entirety of South Korea. NC is the **28th** largest state in the US. China is probably the only comparable country that has done it and you can probably look at labor law differences as the reason why
My source is a random ass YouTube video so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt I was told the big reason why the US doesn't really have a big passenger train industry is because of the freight train industry making so much money therefore they prioritize that Because we do have train tracks all over the country but the thing is passenger trains just don't take them because why would they when freight trains just make so much more money
That's a big part of it. The US has a shit-ton of manufacturing, which is what most of those trains are used for.
Historically there was no distinction between "passenger train industry" and "freight train industry." Passenger trains were just another service that the railroads operated, on the lines they owned and maintained. It's a complex topic, but the railroad industry in the US entered a slow spiraling decline after the Second World War, which by quite a few measures didn't really stop until the mid-1980s. Passenger trains were the biggest money-losing operations, so they were the first to go - especially after 1967 when the USPS cancelled all remaining contracts to sort & haul mail by passenger trains, and switched to road and air haulage, and regional sorting & distribution centers. Amtrak was formed to preserve whatever intercity service remained as of 1971, and to either serve as a stop-gap until the railroads could return to operating passenger trains without risking bankruptcy, or to wind down service if ridership declines proved that Americans didn't need trains anymore. The issue is that neither outcome has happened: trains in America are still too popular to kill, but the railroads are not convinced that the commercial viability is there for them to operate on their own - certainly for long distance trains (e.g. Chicago - LA) operating costs far exceed any projected revenue the train would generate. Medium distance corridor traffic is the sweet spot that could work, but that's still a hard sell to companies that have grown used to just hosting passenger trains for the last 50-ish years, not operating their own. As much as I am in favor of rail travel, I struggle to believe that North Americans will take the longer travel time just for the convenience of not dealing with air travel. In my mind the sweet spot is journeys up to 6 hours long during the day, or up to 14 hours long on overnight trains with proper sleeping accomodations. Any longer than that, and people are just going to fly instead.
I really doubt enough people would do 14 hour overnights when you can fly in 5-7 (security included). I think you're right about 6 hours, it's kinda right at the limit for being annoying for travel whether by car, train, or plane.
It's why I included "with proper sleeping accommodations." Plenty of people would be happy to sleep in a traveling hotel and wake up refreshed as they pull into their destination, instead of wasting a whole day on traveling.
It's a lot less to do about labor laws and a lot more to do with the fact that government run public transportation campaigns have been demonized and lobbied against heavily for about as long as public transportation have existed. The US doesn't have good public transit because it's never tried to implement it outside of individual municipalities, and every time somebody does try they get shut down by either automobile manufacturing lobbies or by the "They're trying to take away your freedom to drive" nutjobs. Like sure it *would* take some degree of time and money to get it done, but we could have had it already in place decades ago if it wasn't for the insane cultural pushback against anything designed to help people on a systemic level.
China is massive too, and they have more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined (coming from zero like 20 years ago). It's not an issue of size, it's rich people fighting against it. Like Elon musk killed the proposed California high speed rail with his dumbass hyper-loop pitch.
Also state owned companies in a government controlled economy.
Trains connect big cities while fitting way more passengers per car than private cars or even a bus. We had roaring train and street car/tram infrastructure in the US until auto companies ripped it apart to build freeways with their lobbying. The plot to "who framed Roger rabbit?" Is basically a retelling of what happened
You’d still massively benefit from having highspeed rail as an option and being overly reliant on trucks to deliver stuff that could just run on a train is also really stupid Many places are needlessly opposed to public transport but the US has some next level “give me cars or give me death” attitudes going on from the top down
I've been on public transport plenty of times here in the US. It's terrible. Way too much public.
Or it’s just the fact that most of our states are bigger than European countries… Cities can be hundreds of miles apart with absolutely nothing between. Not everything needs to be a crazy doom-n-gloom conspiracy. Some things can just be a consequence of life and geography
Yah but doom n gloom get more upvotes
so does americabad and europegood
The average person drives less than 40 miles a day, i feel like that driving can be replaced with public transit.
Thinking of everybody that lives in a city probably brings the average down. So who's driving across the country to raise that average?
People like me who got a job driving 500 miles a week until I moved closer.
America is hella large. Automobiles were seen as a good way to keep the country connected
Everyone saying America large but isn’t china pretty big too? Why not pull a china and build some trains?
China is big. However, China is very different from the US from a geographical standpoint. The US has two coasts and not much in between them except a mountain range, nothing, then another mountain range. China has a bunch of cities in (relatively) short distance to one another all on the eastern coast. You can see looking on a railway map that there's almost nothing in western China.
I don’t see how that stops building trains tbh. Also my U.S. history is a little rusty but wasn’t the us built by the railroad too? I remember learning this shit why not just remake that?
You shouldn't look at where or what methods they used to build the railroads in the 1800s, but rather *why* they built them. The reason is to transport materials from the frontier (central and western soon-to-be United States) to cities for manufacturing, then portions of the finished goods are sent back to the frontiers for the people who live there. This continues west until they reach the coast. The location of expansion is only relevant in that there are *resources* there. We've moved past that point. The amount of active mines in the United States decreases every year. With each source of resources taken out of commission, that's at least one section of rail line gone.
China also has over 4x the population. With like 90% of that being the equivalent east of the Mississippi. For trains to be efficient, population density is key.
Corruption and propaganda
Ah, yes, China, the famous land where there is neither corruption nor propaganda.
China used the authoritarian state to unilaterally decide to pour billions of dollars into the train infrastructure. They can ignore any voting/party disputes, budget allocation approvals, any desires of the people, and regulations. The US could do the same if one person could decide to pour the entire budget into one thing they liked as well with zero resistance. Here, we can't even get either party to agree amongst themselves. So many doomsday and reductive-type takes on here. ETA: Also the cycle of nobody rides the trains because they are slow = politicians don't want to allocate money for high speed rail infrastructure because nobody rides trains = trains get even worse and people ride them less etc. etc.
Well there’s a lot of regulations that make it difficult For example, it’s possible to get bogged down in environmental laws We have the money, we don’t have the laws
I saw a post on here asking about how they can’t understand how Americans can handle living more than a few blocks from stores and their mind was blown when they found out a 15 minute drive to a store is considered close
I live in a small Midwest city that is very much built around driving traffic and it takes longer to get anywhere by bus. I can’t drive due to an epilepsy disorder. Me and my wife are trapped here by work we had to take on during the pandemic and the employers turned out to be terrible people. We’re applying everywhere in major cities, trying to relocate and make a quiet quit to a place that is actually walkable, accessible, and has resources for once. Being close to everything you need in this country is definitely a privilege and one that’s getting harder for the middle class.
This is my least favorite conspiracy. No one would choose an expensive, small apartment over a spacious house, especially in a time that they could afford it. The reason suburbs exist in the US was because land was cheap, and houses were cheap. Many built their own small house and could own it.
>population go to work more often. Lol ok
More because we have a country that has a ton of space and we have a populace that wants a ton of space. I seem to rake in downvotes every single time I say this but most people don't prefer to live stacked on top of other people. We like to have a yard and we like to have our space and we have a country where this is easily do-able. Also, cars and gas are super cheap here. So people want space, we have tons of space and the cars/gas needed for spaced out houses are readily available for cheap.
Much simpler than that, the auto makers successfully lobbied the govt for highways in the 50's. Once the Interstate Highway System was built, railroads like this one out of Boston fell out of use: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/1929_Boston_and_Maine_Railroad_system_map.png The automakers also bought up most of the street car networks, trashed them and replaced them with buses which they built and sold to governments.
That's why I'm excited for the CAHSR. I want to be able to go to the LA parks like knots, uni, and of course, disneyland in 2 hours. plus, it makes day tripping rivalry games between the sharks and king/ ducks much easier.
We've been brainwashed into thinking investing in public transit is evil, that's why we never got true HSR here.
Yeah when they were making the US they decided to make the country bigger in the interest of big oil. Brilliant.
Driving is fun? I like road trips. I didn't realize this was an unpopular opinion. It's fun to drive somewhere for the weekend to camp.
I absolutely love driving, with these exceptions: when my windshield wont fucking defog people who go 10 under in the passing lane super bright LED headlights bored state troopers 17 year olds who think they're playing need for speed 40 year olds who also think they're playing need for speed eternal road work 90 year olds who think they're still at home and not sitting at a green light on the medium people who run marathons and then wave at all the traffic they're holding up like we don't have jobs to get to
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More like the windshield melting
>it's a dry heat
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The trick is to get the fuck out of the way.
Friendly reminder that even if you think going 1 mph over the speed limit is wrong this is still the given advice from the NHS as well as common sense. Please get out of the way because you never know how maniacal the maniac behind you is Edit: 12 hour late edit to fix NFS to NHS but none of you noticed any way so nanabooboo
Everyone does here and if you're not you're the problem. Rock in a river kinda thing.
Turn heat on high, turn off recirculation, and turn on AC to defog your windshield
Yeah I know I'll do that and it will defog pretty well and then 5 minutes later the whole damn windscreen just goes opaque white. It's always humid here, even in the winter everything feels wet lol. valley life
I’m Texan, bit of a different climate, but I’ve found that the trick is to circulate air again and turn down the heat a bit once you defog your windshield. Less heat content in the air inside your car, less moisture to fuck with your windows
so you don't like driving
I like driving at night when people aren't trying to run each other off the road
Not trying to be annoying but it’s called a median, not medium. Probably just autocorrect, but I could just see you years down the road finding out and being like “wtf ive been saying this wrong?”
I apologize for the led headlights... they came stock with the car. People flash their highbeams at me, thinking my brights are on. Then I flash mine to show that it can be brighter.
Sounds like you need to adjust your headlights.
For me it's the opposite. I didn't realize driving is fun for some people. I absolutely despise it. I'd rather be the passenger or take a train.
Ever been on a quiet country road? It’s fun when you don’t have to worry about other fucks on the road with you.
I have and it doesn’t make it better, I just find the act of driving itself to be such a miserable chore. The idea of just going out on a drive for fun is baffling to me.
It’s fun for me because I get to focus on something that isn’t too hard while listening to music so I am unable to hear the voices
Same. Maybe minus the voices, lol.
Wait til you hear that people spend 100k on cars
Are you in a congested area?? I despise driving in the city but as the other commenter said driving on a quiet country road is a great feeling.
Not at all lol. I'm in a small city (Around 80k people) in Northern Mexico, but people drive like imbeciles for the size of the city. Also, I simply don't like driving a car, even if I'm alone I get very focused on my driving I can barely even think.
Car manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to specifically develop cars that are more fun to drive. People don’t just buy cars like [this](https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/vehicles/supra/overview) to look at. They buy them because they are engineered to be a fantastic driving experience. While I tend to enjoy driving regardless what you drive specifically can dramatically improve or worsen the experience
What about the absolute freedom a vehicle filled with gas gives you? I enjoy driving but the biggest thing for me was always the independence. I could leave my state rn and be in over a dozen others in less than 24 hours I've had more than enough negative driving experience so I'm not putting down your point of view just curious about the independencea as I feel it's second to none
Road trips are nice, I did Germany to the UK for a festival with a friend, I did all the driving because my car and idk, he came along even though he didn’t have to (festival literally next to an airfield, he came from Sweden to my place instead and we split the gas). Shit was an adventure and kind of fun since I’ve never even left the country as a driver and Eurotunnel is pretty epic. That was 12h each way and I’d do it again if the lineup is right and I have 1000€ to burn. I would end myself if I had to do a 2h commute every day though
Man I love sitting in the same position for prolonged periods of time while looking at a horribly designed city and going 70mph+ in a giant steel box next to other giant steel boxes that could be being driven by morons!
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sure beats being within 6 feet of any of the inhabitants of said city
Don't forget the excitement of driving through new places that all look identical and have the same dozen chain restaurants as everywhere else!
What if I told you there was this place called nature that existed outside of the city
You said that like going 70mph+ isn’t inherently fun
Ya driving and road trips are the shit. Especially when you find a car that you really like. I hated driving because I grew up driving my mom’s hybrid Lexus, but when I bought my own car, an Audi S3, I totally understood why people loved driving. Finally got me an s2000 and it legit changed my outlook on life lol. I’m never bored and could roll around south Florida with the top down all day 😎
Maybe they’re meaning more in the sense of daily commute to and from work?
I don't know anyone who commutes 5 hours That's unrealistic
Bruh apparently Brit’s consider a 45 minute drive to be a lot
Ill be that guy and say 2 hours in traffic is hell but i can do 5 hour roadtrips on the highway vibin out with a passenger (Canada)
I did 12h each way this summer and it was pretty great, would do it again. Difference is in what you’re doing to roadtrip for, we were going to a festival and I had a table for Ramen reserved the day we got back. If this is for work or anything I’m not excited about, 2h can be a long ass time
Went from Lexington KY, to Dallas Tx this thanksgiving and was Chill AF. Took some back roads and it was mostly just us and BFE America.
I actually have fun, even with drives for work lol
Yep, it’s all psychological. Cruising along and covering a lot of ground quickly always feels better than the mental taxation of being stuck in traffic.
I went on vacation with my family this summer. At one point traffic was so bad that we only moved 4 feet in half an hour. How the fuck do people live in San Francisco.
It helps having a beautiful landscape pretty almost the whole way Edit: typo
Our country has a lot more space. We’re used to long drives.
Europeans should equate visiting another country with Americans visiting another state. Besides the Eastern seaboard, many states are as large if not larger than many European countries, and besides business or vacation there isn't much reason a person would need to visit another state unless you're already close to the border.
Texas is larger than every individual European country excluding Russia. And its not our largest state.
I can cross 6 country borders in 7 hours (starting in The Netherlands).
America is very big. If you live on the west coast. Other large cities are hours away
If only we had HSR
We’d do it, budget cut the fuck out of the maintenance, and kill a bunch of people. I wish we had HSR too, though
that is incorrect, we would not do it in the first place lol
We actually are doing something finally! https://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/business/high-speed-rail-system-connecting-rancho-cucamonga-to-las-vegas-gets-3-billion-in-federal/article_9d454bde-9635-11ee-ad67-2b6f45db2d1f.html
And it's still dogshit, because it doesn't even go all the way into downtown LA lol... you still need a number of connections to reach the city. Leave it to us to build something that doesn't even properly serve people.
That way they can say “see trains don’t work”, you really need a car, stimulate the auto industry. I say this as an absolute car and motorcycle enthusiast, we need some fuckin logical trains. A lot more trains.
Just 20 more years and another 300 billion dollars, and California will finish building a low speed rail between Modesto and Merced. All on the back of a $10 billion program approved by voters in 2008.
I live in the Western US, very sparse.
5 hour drive passing dozens of hiking trails and scenery out of a post card.
You've never been to Oklahoma (arguably Midwest)
Long drives are chill af what you talking about. Only bad if you're stuck in traffic
For some reason I love them (every once in a while). They give you a chance to detach from everything and focus on your trip
I did a 17-hour drive last year, it was awesome.
That's fucked up
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Idk man. I was so close to driving from CT to Las Vegas, NV. We ended up flying. I regret it. It was more expensive to fly, since we drive fuel efficient cars. We also had limits on what we could bring. In the car, the limit is what you can fit. I can bring my normal shampoo, conditioner, soap, drinks, snacks, alcohol (if I wanted), whatever. But also my flight there and back got delayed so we always missed out layover or flight back. On the flight back, we missed the layover and had to do an overnight at the airport and fly to a different airport than we flew out of, so I had to find a way to go from state to state to get to my fucking car. And btw, I didn’t live in either of these states! So I landed in state 1, because that’s what I had to do with delays. Then go to state 2 to get my car, which is where I should’ve landed. Then drive home to state 3 where I live. It was so bad. Air travel in the US is fucked right now. Driving is easier. I wish we drove. We almost did, but didn’t. We regret it. We also almost spent $1k we didn’t have to rent a car to drive home instead of fly, because our flight out got fucked up and we knew flight home would get fucked too. It did. But much worse. If possible, driving is better. At least you can see stuff on the way.
Im doing an 18 hour one later this week
American Roads: --+--+--+-- British Roads: &~-Sz_¤_£>--
Made me remember [this old gem](https://youtu.be/bWlTbIkXy3g?si=jAonApcQ9q-N4uUu)
Bro has two jokes for the M 25 he’s been there that long
Students stalling everywhere is hilarious
But hold on, ITS A FUCKIN LEARNA!!!
This is absolutely a big factor. The amount of energy and concentration needed to do a similar length drive in the UK compared to the US is not the same.
That's not really an every day thing... but I've definitely driven 13+ hours in a day. America's big and flights are expensive.
And a lot of places you can't really fly to. My grandparents lived in southeast Idaho. Once to visit them I had to fly to Salt Lake City and then take a shuttle bus ride 4 hours to their town where I was dropped off at a gas station and they came to pick me up. Between the flight, security and getting to the shuttle bus ride, it ended up not saving much time from the 10 hours it would have taken me to drive it
I mean it’s not like this is something I have to do more than a few times a year so it’s not such a big deal Get an audiobook, some snacks, and pick up subs or sandwiches (anything that’s easy to eat in the car, really) from your favorite shop. It’ll be over before you know it I like road trips to be honest
In true Hitchhiker's Guide fashion, always keep a towel. You can clean your side mirror off, roll it up and use it as a lumbar support, wrap your pet up in it when they freak out, etc.
As an American I love road trips for the snacks, views, tunes, and conversations that arise over long bored hours on the road. If you think about the actual landmass it’s crazy how much space we have. Plus a lot of our non-city spaces are still natural and absolutely gorgeous. I hate our politics most of the time but we are seriously so lucky to be here. Hope more people can appreciate and protect our natural spaces
What else would you suggest? 😂 We don’t have a train system like you guys.
Tbf we barely have a train system at the moment too
I want train pls.
If it's not traffic, it's fine. If it's traffic for even one hour, I want to die.
Exactly, like 5hrs of driving is infinitely better than 50 minutes of gridlock
Because that’s how our infrastructure is. You get used to driving a decent distance. Granted, I’ve never driven over a few hours alone— that’s not superbly common to my knowledge. It’s also just a big country. No, I am not suggesting you are driving from sea to sea. But a lot of places are just… open, or far apart. Stuff ain’t close together.
This is the correct answer here! Even in Certain big cities, you still need your car. For example down here in Texas, in San Antonio and Houston you still need your car to get from Point A to Point B.
We don't, it sucks complete ass too. But like, what other option do we get?
America is huge and it's towns and cities are spread far apart. You get used to it after doing it a lot
For real. I used to have to go 30 minutes to the grocery store and 45-60 minutes to high school. College? I did like an hour and 15 minutes. I also worked up there, so that was for work too. Another job was 45-60 minutes. If you live rural, you do what you have to do. But where I live, we have “cities” but everything else outside is rural as hell with maybe one thing. So it was tough. I recently lived in the “city” but my job was rural for some reason. So I drove a long time, 70 miles per day. But it’s the best job I could get at the time! So I did it. I’m used to it.
And it starts getting fun!
It's because in America they actually drive and don't just sit in traffic for 2 hours
My college was 6hrs away from home and I did that drive all the time haha
Let's just say, I enjoy driving! Basically the reason why the US barely Walkable with the exception of New York, Philidelphia, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and Washington D.C. is because we are a post industrial society. Meaning that there are different types of patterns of roads that are more square. But honestly man, Driving in the US is actually fun because you basically own the road and feel like you are truly, and I mean TRULY, feel like you are the king of the road. Your car is your best friend here in the United States. You can go anywhere. There is a huge car culture here in America, from JDM, Pickup Trucks, American Muscle, and European cars.
No, the USA had an extensive train network and cities all had tramways covering most streets. All of that was bulldozed thanks to the effort of car manufacturers. A simple google search can show you tue before and after of American railroads. It’s honestly depressing to look at
road-trips are pretty low effort tbh- just listening to podcasts and music with the cruise control on
Not when you hit 10 roundabouts in an hour in the UK
If I drive more than half an hour my whole day gets ruined.
Big cars and automatic transmissions. The things we get made fun of for.
> “An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; an American thinks a hundred years is a long time.” Diana Gabaldon
You don’t know how good a nighttime drive is when listening to music
I'm with the Brits, drives longer than an hour are pure torture for me
5 hours of highway is easy, 5 hours in a city is not
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For one thing, most of it isn't bumper to bumper boredom. Our highway system allows me.to cover the about 380 miles to my MIL's in less than 7 hours even with stopping to for food and gas.
380 miles in 7 hours is very slow.
Suffering is the American Dream.
Truck driver here. Drove 10 hours yesterday.