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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

There are many towns in the USA where transit will never be viable because they are too low density - no one is going to walk 20 minutes to a bus stop a mile away to wait up to 20 minutes for a bus to take them on a 20 minute ride to town if the other option is a 10 minute drive in a car.

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> they are too low density

This is by choice and can be changed.

You're dismissing the scope of the problem, yes, given unlimited resources and people's willingness to change, anything can change. But we don't have unlimited resources, and many people don't want to change.

But the fact remains that America has many low-density areas that will never be affordably served by transit. That's not just in this country, Europe has areas that aren't well served by transit, even Japan has areas that aren't well served by transit.

I was jokingly asking a friend the other day if we might ever have to ride horses again. Probably not, but it's interesting to imagine the scenarios that would lead to that. Americans take personal vehicles for granted. Addressing climate change is going to require some uncomfortable changes.

Addressing climate change is going to require some uncomfortable changes

I really don't think we're up to the challenge of really stopping (or significantly slowing) climate change (if it's possible at all now) and will end up spending much more money (and discomfort) mitigating the more severe effects of climate change than if we'd just started making changes a decade or more ago.

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