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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

Yes, that's a very good summary of what happened.

I'm aware of those factors, but I still think we took a wrong turn. Maybe not in the US due to the population sparsity and sprawl, but in Spain and many other European countries, if we could connect every town or city of more than 10K people by either rail, light rail or tram (instead of having spent billions on highways), that would cover 80% of the population. A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile. Pollution and emissions would be much less of a problem, and quality of life in cities much better.

But that's what happens with gradient descent, it can lead you to a local minimum...

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If it can make you feel better, I know a lot of Italian cities are going back to trams in dedicated lanes. This is on the back of the clear advantages enjoyed by those cities (Rome, Milan) who didn't actually rip out all tracks after the last war.

There is an element of busywork too: local officials are always elected by promising change, they have to be seen doing something. So on odd years they put in something, and in even years they take it out...

Welcome to the Netherlands then. Most people ride trains between the cities. It does help, however, that most of the population lives in cities that are 30-40 minutes away on a train.

The Netherlands is approximately the same land area and population density as the NYC metropolitan area[1], so it is (as you say) a very different environment from the entire US or even Spain.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/NY...

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Here are the areas overlaid: https://imgur.com/a/s9pq7

It's more like the area from New York to Boston

Well, since smitherfield used the CSA (combined statistical area) it's actually rather close. 34,493 km^2 for the New York CSA, while Netherlands is 41,543 km^2. So about 83% of the size of the Netherlands.

> that would cover 80% of the population. A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile

I'm sensing a bit of a Catch-22 in this hypothetical: How would the success of Uber-like services been impacted if 80% of the population no longer needed cars?

I still have the urge to put an asterisk by success for Uber because they're just burning piles of money still.

> A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile.

They wouldn't need it, but I bet that majority would still want it.

In Europe? I doubt it. The car doesn't quite have the same cultural significance as a symbol of adulthood/independence here, at least not to the younger generation.

That's what they pretend. However, the reality is this:

* car sales do not drop, they oscillate depending on various governments subventions;

* vehicle fleet keeps rising (albeit slowly because the market is saturated);

* car owning per household has always been and is still on the rise (despite household size constantly decreasing);

* the distance travelled with cars keeps rising as well.

And visually, the amount of cars parked in the streets and along roadsides becomes insane. You already thought it was full 30 years ago, but now it is fuller.

Oh, and the cars become bigger every year. Not American-big, but still, on the way to it. For example, pickup trucks never took off in the French countryside in the last 50 years, not a single bit; but for a couple of years, it has started :-/

Three elements:

1) "suburbia" is now a thing in Europe too. Regular people cannot afford to live in city centres, they are the preserve of the wealthy. As population grows, more and more people are pushed further out, and they adopt suburbanization: big malls that cannot be reached if not by car, semi-detached houses in gated communities, etc etc. That's a lifestyle built for cars.

2) People will buy what manufacturers will sell. In a global market, car models are increasingly built with more than one country in mind. Inevitably, US tastes loom large.

3) The Hollywood influence cannot be underestimated.

> Uber-like services

That's a convoluted, backwards and very funny way of saying "taxi". :-D

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