The US definitely could embrace some of those ideas. Its not "too big".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
> 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.
Direct from Wikipedia:
“Lebensraum (Living space) was the leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II”
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.
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.
> 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.
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...