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Comment by theluketaylor | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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