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Comment by wombatpm | Hacker News Reader

I think you fail to grasp just how big the US is. Driving from Chicago to Minneapolis is ~430 miles/ 6.5 hours depending on weather and traffic. Every 10 miles or so there is an exit and usually some small town. Every 50 to 100 miles a bigger town.

As I recall, after the Chicago suburbs you hit Rockford, Janesville, Madison, Baraboo, Tomah, Eau Claire, Menominee, and Hudson before you get to the St Paul collar communities.

So 9 stops on on a single track running between two major cities, with only 1600 more miles to Seattle. And while the distance between stops increase, the population greatly decreases as you head west.

Now road construction could be better. Because while Illinois has 300k lane-miles of road, it seems like they only have 200k of asphalt and 100k under construction at any given point in time.

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Why do people trot this out every time? Driving or traveling across the US isn't particularly relevant to most people's life experience. Ok, I'll bite.

Yes, the United States is big, but some areas are more dense than other and would need good heavy investment in public transit infrastructure. For example, the north eastern corridor would in particular benefit from investment in true high speed rail.

There's also the need for investment in freight infrastructure, especially if we want to take off more trucks off the road. This is a safety benefit too. Less vehicles on the roads just mean less people risking their neck.

Now let's talk more local public transit.

Atlanta for example, really need to expand heavy rail. Traffic there is one of the worst in the country. MARTA at time outpaces cars, even with all the stops they have to make. Rather, a lot of time is eaten up just waiting for the train. A more frequent schedule would help here, but Georgia would need to actually contribute funding to make this possible. If they extend it more into the surburb, I would have less of an incentive to move. As now, I am considering moving because of how frequent I commute into Atlanta.

We talk about long distance travel because it's the only thing that makes sense. None of the cities parent listed outside maybe Chicago are walkable. You WILL need a car at all those destinations. So why wouldn't I drive my own car? It's a requirement to own one in the Midwest (I live there). I'd love rail but it just doesn't make sense as none of our cities are walkable and the bus routes are either once an hour at best or non existent. If you put a rail line from Chicago to Madison to Twin Cities, I highly doubt it would get any use because all of these people already own cars and would get there faster and more conveniently.

making a city walkable would be a great idea though, considering walking as a form of public transport literally has a cost of zero for the user.

Also, having a walkable city has massive health and societal benefits.

That's great but it's not going to happen for a generation or two even if people wanted it. This isn't SimCity, we can't just rip everything up and start over. The fight to make cities walkable will take sustained efforts for the next 100 years.

Without leaving town, I can drive nearly 200km on any given weekend to visit friends. It is common for me to go 50km.

With the suburb architecture of many US cities, local rail is nearly irrelevant outside the city center

> I can drive nearly 200km on any given weekend to visit friends

In a typical vehicle that's about 50kg of CO2. 100kg if it doesn't include the return leg.

Not having a dig at you, but this is a big part of our problem. We believe that because we can do something, we are entitled to do it. Not only that, but we've structured our society in such a way that it's actually necessary for people to do these harmful things just to get by like commuting distances that would have been considered absurd 100 years ago. They are still absurd.

I called it the suburb architecture, but you're right it is also the absurd architecture!

It may not have seemed that way in the 1950s, but it hasn't scaled well.

The laws of physics disagree with you. In what reality does driving 124 miles necessitate the creation of 110 pounds of CO2?

This reality. A typical car produces 250grams of CO2 per kilometre.

Edit: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

Public transit falls apart when you realize that less traffic on the roads makes driving a car that much more desirable.

Public transit is also more desirable the less it is used, having several seats to yourself in rush hour would make way more people want to use it.

Scandinavia is sparser than USA and as large as the larger populated states, still has asphalted roads and public stuff even up north.

This is a bit misleading as those countries tend to have the vast majority of the population crowded into a handful of cities that are fairly close together and then a vast untamed wilderness where close to nobody lives. It's easy(ish) to have rail between Oslo and Bergen, less practical to extend that rail to Oldervik.

American exceptionalism at its finest.

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