In this case, car > rail.
Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? But then became false as the growth rate of cars outscaled roads.
What does “true and progressive” mean? The freeway expansions of the mid 20th century cutting through city centers were disastrous all over the USA, right from the start. Horrible for urban society, economy, equity, ...
Thankfully San Francisco was never turned into https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2...
Great for the automobile, tire, and petroleum industries though.
Also from the article: "A widespread misconception exists that well-functioning streetcar systems were intentionally put out of business by a conspiratorial alliance of tire and auto manufacturers in the 1940s and 1950s…In reality, many streetcar companies were never reliably profitable, and they suffered from overcapitalization, inadequate maintenance, and poor service". In comparison to that, all these cheap and reliable "rubber tires" vehicles probably seemed pretty progressive.
Of course, knowing what we know now, it's easy to see how incredibly short sighted this was. I sure wish we hadn't ripped out all those rail lines.
The entertainment industry would be far different if not for automobiles. Look at woodstock. Such iconic american activities and mass gatherings would not have been possible without widespread cheap personal transportation.
In a lot of urban areas now the population/demand is such that people have expanded well pass the initial sets of suburbs and now those suburbs are in dire need of urbanization. That’s due to general growth over time. While it looks terrible now, that’s more because people are greatly resisting converting suburban areas to urban, and doesn’t invalidate the initial decisions to create suburban areas.
An alternate reality would have seen the US purchase rights of way between traditional urban cores and new suburb centers, then run rail (and upzone density around that rail) once that suburb attained sufficient population to merit. Then build sufficient park-and-ride capacity to handle the suburb's population's last mile needs.
So basically, what China does. Except with less upfront heavy construction (because the US doesn't need to drive a demand-based economy) and more emphasis on right of way purchase (because the US has stronger property rights).
Instead, we largely grew the first generation of suburbs and then... just didn't invest or plan non-road transit. And so began growing suburbs outside of suburbs, and none of them connected with a high-throughput transit network.
Sprawl particularly exasperated inequality by basically requiring everyone who wanted to succeed to own a very expensive (both upfront and overtime) thing.
I'm definately not one for more highways, but this map doesn't look _that_ different from SF today?
"For whom" may be the more pertinent question. It's impossible to untangle mass the politics of transit in that era from the politics of segregation. Hence the famous bus incident.
- Automobile manufacturers: they can sell more cars.
- Fuel industry: Petroleum exploration, extraction, refining, transportation, distribution, and retail sales.
- Independent automobile dealers and repair facilities: sales & services.
- Auto suppliers: Support industry based around the manufacturing and repair.
- Construction companies: Road and highway construction and maintenance.
- Travel and tourism: Auto travel and auto-based tourism ("road trip", car rentals associated with other transport, etc.) emerge.
- Real estate. Automobiles promote suburban sprawl real estate and development. This brings in construction, development, finance, brokers, title insurance, and more.
- Media: Auto advertising becomes a major component of print, broadcast, and cable media.
- Training and instruction: Drivers' training and related services.
- Licencing: Government infrastructure around vehicle and driver certification and registration.
- Sport: Auto racing creates its own fandom and dynamics.
- Popular culture: Various fandoms, tribes, and allegiances based around specific brands, concepts, and activities.
It would be difficult to intentionally devise a more effective self-sustaining, self-perpetuating market-political consortium. I don't believe that the automobile-support-industrial-complex was intentionally conceived --- it is an emergent concept. But once emerged it's phenomenally resilient.
We've seen a few related sectors. The military-industrial complex identified by Eisenhower is one. I'd argue that the healthcare-industrial complex is another. The food and ag sector likely a third.
That's underselling it a bit. The growth rate of roads was deliberately stalled in the 70s. We just elected not to build new infrastructure in most places, and coast with what we had. There are some exceptions, but they are just that -- exceptions.
Meanwhile, it seems that the same people who didn't want to build any more road infrastructure also didn't want to build mass transit rail infrastructure either. And so here we are.
Now, it's probably too late without a major cultural shift and realignment of priorities and sensitivities. We give everyone a seat at the table and every last one of them has veto power. So ... nothing happens. Without unanimous consensus.
Hell, Oregon & Washington spent $175 million just to plan out a new bridge, and over $100 million of that was just pretty pictures. In the end, too many vetoes, too much fighting, we gave up. Eventually we will try again but maybe it will take the existing I-5 bridge dropping into the river from old age before agreement can be reached.
There are two many people sticking their hands out in American projects.
Not always true, but by and large they don't dominate the city core nearly as much as in most of the US. Comparing Detroit's interchanges vs Tokyo's is stark: Tokyo is an order of magnitude larger city, but has fewer of those large cloverleaf interchanges that take up a ton of space and ruin the walkability of the area. Detroit has multiple in the city center.
If you're talking about facilitating more automobiles, I am not sure what you are going to be able to do in the Bay Area, L.A., etc.
I don't think it's for lack of trying or resources, roads simply don't scale. Bad weather, one bad accident on the freeway, rush "hour" (ha ha).
If you spend 10+ years as a proponent of something, become famous and well-compensated for your expertise in it, and are surrounded by colleagues and employees who also believe in it... it's very hard to say "We've become wrong. Let's do things differently."
It's the personal version of successful companies failing to adapt to innovation in their market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist)
https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a32257789/vehicular-cyclin...