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Comment by hilux | Hacker News Reader

I'm a big fan of public transit, but it's not entirely "baffling" why the US lags European countries (and Japan) - the US is a MUCH larger country.

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> the US is a MUCH larger country

with much of the population in a few denser areas, where public transport would make a lot of sense.

The size "excuse" is often brought up, I don't think that's valid though, e.g. Sweden with a significantly lower density has much better public transport. Or if we talk absolute size I think even Russia has a better rail transport system than the US for example. Like usual I think it can largely be attributed politics and to the strength of the car lobby in the US (as well as a weird desire to "stick it to poor people"), which caused a complete focus on individual travel.

There’s a happy medium somewhere though and the US doesn’t meet it at all. I can’t even take a bus from my neighborhood in a California city to the grocery store in a timely manner and it’s often cancelled

Oh, I know - I live in Oakland. I think even here the population density is lower than in European cities. (It's definitely lower than in Asian mega-cities.)

But yes, I do wish California did better. People are used to bad transit, and have never visited Tokyo or even NYC, so expectations are low.

The EU is only about half the land area of the USA; Germany is roughly equivalent of the fourth largest US state, Montana, and only CA, TX, and AK are bigger.

Do any states have something equivalent to this?

And Germany has a population of 83 million. Montana has a population of 1.1 million.

I don't get your point.

You said the USA was big. Now you're saying population is the important thing. Combined that's population density, so does Maryland have this? Connecticut? etc.

On the density front, NYC is famously high density, and yet so far as I can tell a monthly pass for just there is double the raised price this ticket will be next year: https://new.mta.info/document/118601

Most adults should be able to figure out that IN THIS CONTEXT "big" refers to land mass relative to population.

Yes, NYC has a dense population, and yes, it also has the best public transit in the country.

And your best is twice the price for something strictly worse. (I've used NY public transport, it's much worse than anything I've seen in Germany).

One thing adults often also do, and which you just did by continuing to ignore the point, is treat arguments as soldiers.

Somehow that wasn't as much of an obstacle in 1920!

But the DC to Boston line isn't

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