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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

At least in this case one of the destinations could theoretically be visited without a car (assuming these are just tourists to the Vegas Strip).

Whereas another certain California rail project literally transports you from [place you need car] to [place you need car]. Which I don’t think I need to explain why that is silly.

The root cause of this is blue states often get Euro public transport envy — yet they don’t understand Europe has 3X the population density (and subsequent urbanization) of the US. Obviously public transport would start to make a lot more sense if you 3X’d the population in the same land area.

IMO fetishizing the European way of life is a bit silly, given density comes with its own problems (ie nobody having kids). In fact, there was this German guy in the 1930s who led the killing of millions of people partly to get more “living space”, so European density does have its downsides for…shall we say…stability. In fact, Europe has roughly the same amount of people today as it had in 1939. Meanwhile the US has more than doubled.

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Spain has similar population, area and climate to California, and even though it has less GDP it has built some good high speed trains infrastructure. I can see your point if the alternative is travelling by car, but if you're going to take planes the train can be a viable option. There are plenty of big urban centres in California that can support public transit.

The US definitely could embrace some of those ideas. Its not "too big".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ

I think it's interesting that this is an emotional trigger topic for HN (along with anything having to do with right to repair, digital privacy, etc).

In most things, if you post a comment with points of discussion you get a thoughtful response here.

However on HN trigger topics, you get emotionally downvoted and nobody wants to engage in discussion.

Instead of linking to a youtube video from the r/fuckcars filter bubble, is there any succinct points to refute why a 3X greater population density would not naturally result in greater public transportation formation?

Or is it just the "dumb americans" and their "evil car culture?" With no further investigation of the first-principles reasons that culture was formed?

What’s the population density of Madrid and Barcelona compared to Los Angeles and San Francisco?

i’ve been using this example for about a decade.

of course, that route didn’t exist 20 years ago when I took Madrid to Seville. I can’t imagine what the population density of Seville is.

it would help if you give us the numbers you’re working with. I sure hope you aren’t doing the population density of the entire country. That’s a common mistake.

HN'ers love fixed rail for some reason. It doesn't make any sense -- if there's a less progressive transportation modality I can't imagine what it would be -- but it's axiomatic. If you value your karma score you'll back away smiling and reach for the doorknob.

> if there's a less progressive transportation modality I can't imagine what it would be

Genuinely curious what is meant by this since if I was asked what the most progressive ideal city layout was I'd respond with extensive, highly connected, frequent metro lines with islands of density around the stations that included plenty of non-market rate housing options within easy walk of each station. When more housing is needed extend the lines and start a whole new island of density. Make sure plenty of public green space is accessible from the metros just beyond the density islands.

Inter-city connections would be broadly similar, just zoomed out. Each city an island of density connected by fast and frequent rail.

Progressive to me means, simply, "That which leaves the most options open for the most people."

Creating hardwired infrastructure to transport people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be, over timespans measured in decades for construction and a good part of a century to pay off, at a time when technology is delivering more options for individual mobility concurrent with other options that render commuting and travel less relevant, doesn't strike me as progressive.

Compared to the progressive utopia that is sitting in traffic? Passenger vehicle lanes move 1500-2000 cars per hour. Even with extensive carpooling and possible future technology that allows cars to bunch more, 10-15k people per hour is likely the limit. A double tracked train line can easily push 40-50k per hour without much stress and with grade separation can be fully automated with short dwell times and huge frequency.

I'm a huge fan of ebikes and other micromobility solutions for solving the last mile problem that has always plagued rapid transit, especially in low density areas. You want to move huge amount of people any significant distance? You need a train. Pretty much every proposal I've seen to move masses of people without a train ends up being train but worse, either in OPEX or CAPX (usually both).

Even with extensive carpooling and possible future technology that allows cars to bunch more, 10-15k people per hour is likely the limit. A double tracked train line can easily push 40-50k per hour without much stress

Of course, you're comparing a single rail line to a single road, rather than to the entire network of roads that could have been built with the same funding in a fraction of the time, but... that's why I offered the OP the advice I did.

I'm comparing roughly similar right of way width requirements. Super-wide roadways are awful for pedestrian safety and walkability since it means destinations worth going to are further apart. Using huge amounts of space for the transportation network itself puts huge limits your goal of the most options open to the most people. Trains being incredibly space efficient is why so many people love them so much. Roads for cars are the exact opposite.

When you compare total CAPX and OPEX including the vehicles themselves and then actually moving people from place to place trains crush everything else. A highway-mile might be cheaper to build than a rail-mile, but it requires maintenance and replacement far more often and the vehicles don't last any where near as long. Large amounts of total costs like vehicles and fuel are shifted to the traveller, reducing the options for many unless they meet a certain economic threshold.

Trains being incredibly space efficient is why so many people love them so much. Roads for cars are the exact opposite.

And yet when people have a choice, they take their car.

And nobody ever asks why. They just stamp their feet and demand more trains.

Where train networks are extensive, frequent, and reliable the ridership numbers are huge, orders of magnitude beyond what a road network of equal right of way could hope to support.

I have no issue with people choosing a car. I have issues where a car is the only choice due to the built environment being actively hostile to all other forms of transportation. Walking --> Cycle --> Train depending on how far you want to travel is far more sustainable and opens options for far more people than car-centric infrastructure where only a car is functional.

Building out a train network also doesn't mean we shouldn't also have a quality road network as well; there are plenty of long tail needs where a vehicle that can go direct point-to-point is very valuable. We just need to be building more than just a road network as roads alone simply cannot handle the needs all travellers.

> And yet when people have a choice, they take their car.

That just false. Yes some people prefer cars, others don't. Overwhelming evidence shows that people most often prefer what the fastest thing is, and secondarily what the cheapest is.

I have plenty of money for a car, and I don't use one. So apparently I don't exist. Talking in absolutes makes you seem foolish.

The question you should be asking is, looking at society as a whole, whats and efficient and green way to meet the transportation needs of the population.

The reality in most cities less then 50% of population have cars, often much less. And that is after 50 years of pro-car policy. And literally every other possible benefit for cars.

What you should actually educate yourself on is that HUGE AMOUNT of pro car subsidies that actually exist in the real world. Of course if you make parking free, ram a highway right into the city center (burning existing communities down) and then make those people not even pay for the cost of that, then they will prefer the car.

If you design your roads in a why that makes it incredibly dangerous for anybody that is not in a car, guess what, more people take cars.

> And nobody ever asks why. They just stamp their feet and demand more trains.

There is actually lot of people that ask why. There is lots of research on this topic.

This research you clearly ignore because you have already made up your mind.

So maybe you should ask the 'why' question about your own position and study the history of it.

That's just factually false.

The reality is cites don't move, and population don't move very much either. And once you actually have fixed trains, population are even less likely to move. Many cities in Europe have literally been in the same place for 1000+ years.

Your augment might apply to mongolians in 1800s, but not to real existing western society.

Living in a country with amazing public transport, its just amazing what you can do. I was using public transport by myself when I was like 10, by 14 I was traveling all over the country and by 16 internationally without parents.

I can at any part of the day, randomly decide to go literally to any village above 100 people (and sometimes below), check and App that gives me a step by step guide how to get there. I have no fixed cost (if I don't want to) and then I can efficiently reach my destination while using almost no carbon. How is this not progressive? And btw, this can be done by anybody from 14 to late 70s. And this works right now, not in some amazing techno utopia future.

And I can use may laptop with high speed internet. I can easily go to a high quality bakery in between and get a high quality meal without losing any travel time either.

How non progressive it is to sit in a nice quite place with my laptop, eating a sand-witch driving threw beautiful country side.

A railway is simply the most efficient way to transport goods and people and if you have city and you have a lot of people, it will always be better then whatever 'individualized fancy AI pod' you imagine.

Notice how those companies working on all these individual pods eventually come back to 'platooning' and then 'docking'. Then they realize that operations on rubber wheels suck. Just slowly reinventing trains. The same techno future ideas existed in the 60s.

The fact is 2 cities exist, and will continue to exist. People will want to continue travel between them, that was true 100 years ago and its true today, and its still true in 100 years. Rail ways were the most environmentally friendly and efficient way to do that, both 100 years ago, and still today and it will still be true long into the future.

And its absolutely perfectly compatible with the most intelligent individual of transport, the bike. Getting on low impact, high threw-put trains to connect urban centers (urban doesn't mean big city) and then having individual transport in terms of bikes and e-bikes waiting for you is by far the most progressive and most innovative transport system you can design today. People on bikes will navigate more efficiency then whatever AI pods some California startup will come up with.

In Netherlands a staggering amount of people arrive at the train station by bike and they can easily pick up another bike when the arrive at their location. This is not only incredibly green, incredibly energy efficient, its also good for health and fitness (one of the biggest public health crisis) and road safety.

And the sad thing is, non of these are fancy high tech solution. These are literally all technologies that existed 50 years ago. But we should really way for some company to finally sell us some individualized EV pods that cost 40k$ per pod.

> for some reason

Fixed rail is the only reasonable way to get large numbers of people in and out of cities.

- walking and cycling takes too long

- cars lead to congestion and you need to store them somewhere

- flying has security overhead and is terrible for the environment

Population density and urbanization is not equally distributed, the Eastern half of the US has a population density on par with Europe since a huge majority of Americans live there.

You are also starting from the assumption that higher population density is better for high speed rail, which is easily countered with my previous point. An argument could be made that, practically, high speed rail is really better suited to places with low population densities centered around urban areas... like the unpopulated parts of the US West.

HSR is expensive and requires high degrees of funding and coordination. In other words there has to be a strong political and cultural will behind it, so yeah, it stands to reason that the US doesn't want it since they certainly have the money to do it if they want. Maybe there is a culture around forms of transportation that is particular to the US...

Person spouts of nonsense about Hitler and then accuses other peopel of 'emotional trigger'. That's quite funny.

> Instead of linking to a youtube video from the r/fuckcars filter bubble, is there any succinct points to refute why a 3X greater population density would not naturally result in greater public transportation formation?

Do you really not understand how aggravation works?

Somehow the US can have very dense subways in New York, how is this possible, the US isn't dense. Its as if aggregate statistics aren't a good indicator when doing regional transportation planning for a region.

Linking urbanism to hitler was a strange point of discussion.

Only strange if you’re not familiar with history.

Direct from Wikipedia:

“Lebensraum (Living space) was the leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II”

You are completely misrepresenting history!

The Germans wanted 'Lebensraum' because they didn't want to import food and resources from others. They didn't want to relay on anybody else. They wanted the German race to dominate those resource areas. They wanted to compete in the great power game with US, Britain and the Soviets.

You act like they saw the apartment buildings in Berlin, decided that was 'to dense' and therefore they started WW2. That is simply not accurate.

Their aim was not to reduce density, but rather massively increase the population of the German race. Their policy was literally pro population growth. Their 'Lebensraum' was not for currently existing Germans, because German was to dense. The 'Lebensraum' was for future generations of German Supermen that they would literally breed.

I am serious by the way that this is an utterly disgusting way to argue. You should seriously be ashamed of yourself. I know that housing policy makes people insane, but you responding with 'Hitler genocide is because of urbanization' is the lowest level of argument I have come across.

Twist my words however you like if it makes you feel better, but we’re both describing the same thing.

Anyways, being confronted with contrarian ideas on the supremacy of European urbanism is clearly triggering for you (proving the point I made earlier). So much so that you feel the need to resort to ad-hominem personal attacks!

I won’t be responding anymore, but I recommend examining why you’re revisiting a thread days later to call a random stranger on the internet “utterly disgusting” for challenging your feelings on this topic.

What 'triggering' me is that you are using 'this causes genocide' in a complicity spurious way.

> for challenging your feelings on this topic.

Don't flatter yourself, you aren't 'challenging' anything. There are plenty of arguments you can make about Urbanism and I have heard plenty of of them. Reasonable people can differ and I'm fine with that.

> I recommend examining why

Because you are using the suffering, death and rape of millions to justify your position.

> days later

Yeah whole 'days'. I mean its like you wrote this in the 1960s.

How much better do you think public transportation is in the US (35 people per square kilometer) than in Finland (16 people / km²) or Sweden (24 people / km²)?

While you're checking the provided citation, you might want to compare those countries' fertility rates too (and others as well, of course – France's for instance is quite a bit higher than that of the US': 1.82 vs. 1.67). You have yet to demonstrate that your hypotheses are well supported by data.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

> The root cause of this is blue states often get Euro public transport envy

The root cause is that blue state Americans are still toxically individualist and anti-social and can’t undertake collective projects for shit. Europeans are at least somewhat orderly—in part because in several countries the disorderly anti-social people left for America: https://www.ft.com/content/dd212e0f-508a-3171-824c-d6076ae19....

If you’re built like a linebacker, you should give up your dreams of becoming a world-class ballet dancer. Likewise, blue states should give up the delusion that they can build large scale public projects like Europeans and Asians.

… blue state Americans are still toxically individualist and anti-social…

You’ve got the wrong color unless you think right leaning Americans are even worse than this description.

… should give up the delusion that they can build large scale public projects…

The highway system is a counterexample.

> unless you think right leaning Americans are even worse than this description

That does seem to be exactly the point. Notice the word "still".

I wasn’t sure becuase it seems to me that if the description applies to Democrats and Republicans then just saying Americans would be a better phrasing (given that a large majority of Americans fall into one of these two camps). Singling out blue states is weird if it also applies to red states.

The Dems are building the rail, Republicans associated with hyperindividualism

The point being articulated is that although red states are even worse, blue states are still not good by this measure.

Thank you for the clarification. I was asking if this is what was meant. I asked it poorly though.

I’m singling out blue state Americans because their professed desires are inconsistent with their natures. Neither California nor Texas have effective public transit—or a populace that could build such a system. But only California is in denial about it.

Indeed, California isn’t very good at being a blue state. Its educational rankings are near the bottom. It doesn’t have universal healthcare. It doesn’t have good transit. Its cities aren’t safe and clean and homeless people aren’t taken care of. California—the beating heart of globalist financial capitalism, with some of the highest income inequality in the country—is much better at being a red state than even Texas.

Looks like I was right that this was an ideological snipe. The others appear to be wrong.

Your take, as usual, is badly wrong. You fail to take into account pertinent facts and draw the wrong conclusion. Here’s one pertinent fact: California subsidizes states like Mississippi. California is also hamstrung by the fact that isn’t its own country. There are limits to what it can do given these two facts.

> California is also hamstrung by the fact that isn’t its own country.

How? All the areas where California falls short—education, transportation, housing, healthcare, etc.—are ones left primarily to the states. For example, state and local governments provide 90% of educational funding, while the federal government provides only 10%. No federal law is stopping California from levying Sweden-like taxes to provide Sweden-like education, transportation, healthcare, and housing services.

It’s true that, under our system of progressive taxes, Californians pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes—because they make more money. They pay about 13% of all federal taxes, and get back about 83% of what they pay in federal services. That nets out to about $100 billion net transfer out. But that’s out of an economy of $3.9 trillion. That’s just 2.5% of California’s GDP. That money isn’t what’s standing between California and having high quality social services.

Also, to be clear, it’s not an ideological snipe. I’d like to live in a blue state with good public transit, universal healthcare, good public education, etc. But blue state Americans aren’t capable of building such a society, because above all they prioritize the individual and the self. I’m simply pointing out that at least red state Americans are honest with themselves.

The historical details of the highway system and the motivations behind it are pretty rough though.

> You’ve got the wrong color unless you think right leaning Americans are even worse than this description.

I think in many cases right leaning Americans are even worse in that regard. (E.g. tatted up Trump supporters and anti-vaxxers.) Orderly traditional conservatives are a minority on the right today.

You actually have to start somewhere. High Speed Rail is the backbone of the rail and public transport network for the next 100 years.

> yet they don’t understand Europe has 3X the population density

Aggregated statistic comparison are completely meaningless. They might serve in a low-quality online rant but not much more then that.

California has many cities over 500k people and some with many millions connect in a line. The idea that there isn't enough population density is total nonsense.

Switzerland has towns with 100 people in low density areas that have regular public transport. The idea that cities like LA and Bay Area are to small or not dense enough is insane.

> IMO fetishizing the European way of life is a bit silly, given density comes with its own problems

Again, you totally misusing density statistics and that invalids your whole argument completely.

> comes with its own problems (ie nobody having kids). In fact, there was this German guy in the 1930s who led the killing of millions of people partly to get more “living space”, so European density does have its downsides for…shall we say…stability.

What complete and other nonsense are you peddling now? Nothing said here makes any sense at all.

hing Hitler was a zero-sum thinker who didn't believe in density and that's why he thought conquering more land was a good idea.

Also invoking Hilter and Genocide in a argument about trains in California is such a insane thing do. It shows that you have no interest in real debate and rather spout inflammatory nonsense about Hitler.

> In fact, Europe has roughly the same amount of people today as it had in 1939.

At least try to look up basic statistics:

558,000,000 -> 746,225,356

And to somehow relate this to some argument about density doesn't make any sense anyway so its completely idiotic to bring it up in an argument about trains in California.

I'm sorry you feel it's inflammatory to question urbanization & public transport as panaceas.

First, aggregated statistics matter a lot, especially when examining the history of why humans have clustered in the US the way they have.

Second, nobody is saying public transport doesn't make sense inside the most dense US cities like LA, SF, etc (yes NYC exists). The issue is the network beyond those areas, due to suburbanization. The topic of this thread is building high speed rail to a suburban desert location.

Third, when discussing internet people's fetishization of European density over American suburban sprawl, its not crazy to bring up downsides -- of which there are many. It's true, the German desire for territorial expansion (and resulting World Wars and Genocides) were a direct result of perceived overpopulation. I dunno...I would call that a downside?

I know it's impossible to understand for an internet person in 2024, but childless urban living wasn't always cool and aspirational. Why do you think the automobile found such strong product-market-fit in the 1900s.

> At least try to look up basic statistics: 558,000,000 -> 746,225,356

If we want to argue of the semantics of "roughly the same," I'd say 35% growth qualifies when comparing a US population that grew 250% over the same time and a world that grew by 400%.

> I'm sorry you feel it's inflammatory to question urbanization & public transport as panaceas.

That's not what you did and its not what I objected to. But do play up the whole victim complex you have going on.

You are truly hitting all the 'alt-right' highlights. First make grand statements using totally misleading statistics then when this is pointed out to you react with 'Oh sorry I'm not allow to question things'.

There are actually good statistics that you could have used to make your point, but you didn't.

> Second, nobody is saying public transport doesn't make sense inside the most dense US cities like LA, SF, etc (yes NYC exists).

All of these huge places are by far big enough to have a robust local and regional public transit network. And then you connect those networks with an inter-regional connection, making both networks stronger by doing so.

That argument might not make sense to connect NYC with Denver. But it makes a hell of a lot of sense for LA and the Bay area. Specifically when both are trying to expand their public transit network and there are major cities in between where people would like to access both the Southern and the Northern regional transport networks.

> The issue is the network beyond those areas, due to suburbanization.

Aggregate density statistics would look the same no matter if urbanization or suburbanization.

> Third, when discussing internet people's fetishization of European density over American suburban sprawl, its not crazy to bring up downsides -- of which there are many.

And yet of those many non of the ones mentioned were correct or made sense or had statistical evidence backing them up. Maybe that why you got pushback.

Then you spun into some nonsense argument about Hitler.

> It's true, the German desire for territorial expansion (and resulting World Wars and Genocides) were a direct result of perceived overpopulation.

Assuming this was true, the term 'perceived' is meaningless. People can 'perceive' anything if they want to with enough ideology. The evidence would have clearly point out that they were wrong.

And people like you making argument in favor of those wrong positions against evidence are part of the problem with that perception.

> I dunno...I would call that a downside?

You are literally reducing WW2 to an argument about housing density. That completely ridiculous.

What matters to the Nazis was not relative density of urban areas but rather the TOTALITY of LAND and RESOURCE under state control. The wanted this to compete with continental scale powers like US and the Soviets.

So their conquests and ideology had LITERALLY nothing to do with urban housing density. They didn't see Berlin and think 'man people are so close together here, I guess we need to conquer Ukraine. That just total wrong, your argument is 100% wrong.

I suggest you read Adam Tooze work on Interwar and WW2 economics.

In terms of their architecture and city design they were french and Napoleonic inspired.

> I know it's impossible to understand for an internet person in 2024, but childless urban living wasn't always cool and aspirational. Why do you think the automobile found such strong product-market-fit in the 1900s.

The largest expansion in human population happened when humans started to live together more closely during the industrial revolution. And immigrants who usually have more kids most often move to cities as well.

The biggest fear of the 'over population' crazy people are mega cities like Delhi and Lagos.

Unless you have really amazingly solid statistics about humans living in density having much lower child rates when taking into account education, wealth and other factors. But you have not presented any such evidence. You have just asserted it to be true.

And even if it was true, to create urban sprawl just in the vague hope that people are gone have more kids is insane.

> If we want to argue of the semantics of "roughly the same,"

If you think '35%' qualifies as 'roughly the same' I question your sanity.

Need I remind you that you used pre-WW2 statistics and millions of people got displaced or killed? And millions of men died, leading to less kids? That had long term effects on population.

So if anything that 35% totally under-sells how many people would be in Europe how had WW2 not happened. So the argument that Europe grew less was related to housing density is nonsense.

WW1 had happened and reduced long term growth potential, then WW2 happened and made it worse. So of course for the next couple decades the US had a powerful economy and literally millions of Europeans went to the US and had kids there and many millions of Mexicans and Cubans (and many others) moved to the US. And non of that happened because of housing density.

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