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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

I've used intercity buses and trains extensively where I grew up. It was okay, but I would much, MUCH rather use a car instead. There was no car culture in place where I grew up, cars are simply more convenient despite the higher personal cost.

It is hard to see that most people would prefer to use a train than a car to travel between cities unless they were going from a place close to a station to another place close to a station. So maybe the population might be simply democratically making choices to not invest in this because it goes against their preferences - instead of them being "deluded".

A different thing is intracity public transportation, like subway and bus systems. In many cases, I'd rather take the subway than use a car. But I lived in a very high density city, and it would take decades, if not over a century, to turn Dallas and Houston into high density so intracity systems would be convenient.

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| It is hard to see that most people would prefer to use a train than a car to travel between cities unless they were going from a place close to a station to another place close to a station. So maybe the population might be simply democratically making choices to not invest in this because it goes against their preferences - instead of them being "deluded".

You were never given a choice. Read up on the history of how mass transit in the US was systematically underfunded, and continues to be attacked by parties who stand to benefit.

The opposition to HSR or mass transit in the US is no different than the opposition to single payer and/or universal healthcare, which somehow all other developed countries have managed to implement with far superior outcomes.

> The opposition to HSR or mass transit in the US is no different than the opposition to single payer and/or universal healthcare, which somehow all other developed countries have managed to implement with far superior outcomes.

The US is not Northern Europe, and it may surprise you to learn that there are severe externalities to account for as soon as you actually have to deal with significant, highly dispersed, poor rural populations.

I can’t speak to them with regards to high speed rail, but the vast majority of single-payer advocates don’t understand our healthcare system, it’s issues, or, frankly, the simple fact that some Americans don’t actually live in major cities. I can only imagine HSR advocates share similar issues.

Canada has better health outcomes than the US. Same with Scandinavian countries, Au/NZ all of which have dispersed populations and spend less.

Also, all the proposed HSR corridors are in populated areas. The population density of the north east is similar to Japan but with twice the Japanese per capita gdp.

None of what you said explains why US cities which are similar to size and population as EU ones have such poor public transport.

People in the US have become proficient at justifying their delusions.

The US spent 2-3 trillion in Iraq and Afghan to achieve nothing. But no complaints are offered, no one is punished. Imagine if that money had gone to health care or HSR/transit with even 10% goals met.

None of those countries have similarly dispersed populations. What specific effect do you think drastically lowered payments would have on the already dwindling ability for rural Americans to access primary care and Ob/Gyns? What specific effect do you think reimbursement rates which do not pay actual cost of care would have on dialysis clinics in rural areas?

When the answer is “I don’t know”, I would expect some reflection on what you’re actually advocating for: even fewer doctors treating some of the poorest people in this country.

> None of what you said explains why US cities which are similar to size and population as EU ones have such poor public transport.

None of what I said addressed it at all, but I’d note that most US cities didn’t have an opportunity to rebuild themselves in the 1950s, and most of them had the benefit of nearly unlimited land to grow into, unlike, say, London or Paris. The NE corridor, being more constrained, does generally have widespread transit.

> But no complaints are offered, no one is punished

I have a hard time believing that you actually think no one complained about the Iraq War (either of them) or whatever you’d call what we did in Afghanistan. I’m also unclear what that has to do with literally anything.

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