People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. I don't get why so many people feel they need to tilt at windmills this way.
America already bulldozed through walkable streetcar towns for cars less than a century ago. So, the precedent for the change is there. It's not like cars are the way of the ancestors
As another comment mentioned, car infrastructure is an unsustainable spend. America is entering an era of expensive labor, lower fertility and bi-polar super powers. Therefore, unsustainable systems are beginning to give.
It's tempting to call car centrism a personal preference. But North America stands alone against a near-global consensus on what urban infrastructure should look like.
At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive.
If you're too old to drive you're probably also not in the best position to walk far or walk while carrying shopping/groceries. Combined with the obesity epidemic many people simply aren't healthy enough to walk 1km.
Honest question: What's the difference? Mitigating the negative aspects involves making others aware of the negative aspects, but many people see that as ranting and railing. What does a productive conversation look like?
This is the polar opposite of Europe. I've taken even the run down ugly german trains that they still run on irregular routes and even though the trains are antiquated, they make sense and get the job done. People are respectful even if the train is packed. I wouldn't want to go back to trains in America other than for sparse occasional trips.
I often look at maps like this and think maybe that would be amazing: https://i.imgur.com/srMhE1X.png
But then i'd probably just take an airplane for most trips because 1-2 hrs of leg cramps with a typically quiet passenger crew is better then a misbehaved train carriage.
Fixing the trains is not fixing the society. The trains are probably broken because the society is broken.
The size of the country has almost no bearing on the way we develop our towns and cities, subsidize car production, assume/require car ownership in public policy, etc.
It's also quite the stretch to claim the UK as the best country in the EU and even more to claim that it doesn't also have a car culture. And it's not just "America's worst state", the vast majority of US town and cities are car dependent.
1. The stock is divided into two sets: single decker trains that are falling apart but are still better than new stock because they were designed during an era where there was actual consideration given to comfort. They are old and run down but more comfy.
The new double decker trains are a design by committee nightmare: they have uncomfortable molded chairs made mostly out of plastic, super cold, noisier due to the terrible shifting whine of the electric motors, and now poorly maintained (god help you if you have to use their rest rooms).
2. They are constantly stopping due to priority given to amtrak and commercial rail. In the best case scenario the train takes ~45 mins to get from central NJ to NYC with stops. For about ~20 miles of track distance, that averages out to ~29-31mph. If Amtrack stops you that time is extended.
3. Very slow speeds due to old track technology.
4. Rising ticket costs for the same lousy service. (~$21 round trip from central NJ to NYC) I guess being able to have a digital ticket helps? (It probably helps them more than it helps you)
5. Pure depression because outside the main routes going into NYC and Hoboken, the dregs of society are the only ones riding these trains. This really grates on you if you take the train for years like I did.
6. Recently, they couldn't even provide working windows so people can see the 'beauty' of NJ. ( To be fair after all the TikTok meme videos called them out on this they finally got embarrassed enough to start replacing them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-a3r6i4hiQ )
It all priorities. People in the US just dont want mass rail over other priorities. The people who do are internet keyboard warriors.
(Possibly you mean by some other metric, but I'm struggling to think of _any_ metric by which the UK could be said to be the best country in Europe. Sitcoms, possibly. It does a good sitcom. Even outside London!)
An example: I live roughly 200m from the Costco in the center of town, but there's a major 4 lane road between us. Walking would be so convenient, but it's so much safer to drive. A footbridge would address this without impacting drivers. I have no intentions of giving up my car, but this particular activity would be so much nicer without it!
One big problem people have, for example, is that we just focus so much on roads and there is literally no safe infrastructure for other kinds of people; but drivers also balk at using taxpayer money to build said infrastructure, particularly if it is perceived as reducing driver convenience even by mere seconds. Or even pausing the construction of new, dangerous infrastructure.
People at large are rational and will make rational transportation choices given incentives. The incentives are all aligned towards driving right now because that benefits the auto industry.
You cannot make assertions about how Americans behave, "culturally," based on their transportation choices because these choices are not happening in a vacuum.
Case in point: when Americans visit Disneyland, or NYC, or Amsterdam, they do not typically insist on driving through those places.
But even if we accept your premise that American “culture” prefers cars (rather than being a result of decades of expanding as fast and as cheaply as possible across the country), culture can change. It does change.
Please don’t accept 100 extra funerals a day. It can and will get better.
My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to better infrastructure, better cars and better culture especially when it comes to drink and drive...
An orientation towards adopting new ways of living when the old ones become impractical or harmful can be just as part of a person's "culture" as a piece of technology.
Well yes, corporations are considered 'people'. I think it was some of these 'people' that tore up the streetcar networks in order to replace them with buses.
Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be."
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to...
[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar...
[3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/
[4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...
[5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev...
[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ
[7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-...
[8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020")
(think in systems)
How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect with one another as they get exercise on the way to school. Who wouldn't want that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” got us cars, and I think the new question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not going away, but we should not build for them specifically as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population of people, based on the evidence in my comment above.
Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and make everything more expensive.
A potential solution is for cities and communities to issue bonds, purchase housing near schools when the economics are favorable (ie try to avoid overpaying), and hold it as public affordable housing for families (perhaps in concert with upzoning; buy adjacent parcels, demo, and rebuild as more dense multi family). Political will is the wildcard.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42277358 (citations)
[2] https://www.haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/Howard_Wang... (pages 22-23, 27 specifically)
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VryFaFsKhVE
[4] https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-rema...
[5] https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/states-...
[6] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-us-fertility-and-birt...
[7] https://usafacts.org/articles/what-will-americas-population-...
It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The per-capita housing units are close to the historical highs. And per-household stats are _even_ _better_: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tRv
What the US has is the density-despair spiral going. It's creating denser and denser pits of despair in the urban centers via economic forces.
After all, what use is housing in Iowa if you _have_ to live in New York? Because there are no jobs for you in Iowa. And housing in New York will NEVER be cheap.
Construction Capacity: America's Diminishing Housing Pipeline - https://www.governance.fyi/p/construction-capacity-americas-...
Housing Supply and Housing Affordability - https://www.nber.org/papers/w33694 ("The decline in housing affordability over recent decades has promoted an enhanced interest in housing supply. This chapter presents descriptive evidence about the evolution of us housing prices, quantities, and regulations since 1980, indicating that supply constraints appear to be increasingly binding. We then provide an overview of the various approaches used to model construction and land development for homogeneous and heterogeneous housing in static and dynamic contexts to understand housing supply. Our treatment incorporates empirical implementation and policy implications throughout. Finally, we provide an overview of quantitative evidence on the consequences of relaxing various types of supply constraints.")
We live somewhere in between the "new builds" part of town and the area that has a bunch of schools, so the walk from our neighborhood to our assigned (and closest) middle school is only 2.5 miles, a 55 minute walk with 155 ft elevation change. This walk takes you across a road with a 60MPH speed limit, basically an expressway. The elementary school is a bit closer, only a 40 minutes, 2 mile walk, but same expressway.
Oh, and they don't even offer a school bus of any kind. I suppose the gen-x parents killed that idea off 25 years ago because they were so worried their kids would be out of direct supervision even walking to a bus stop, so each child is chaufferred door to door, rain or shine, until 16 when they receive their own cars.
I agree with you that all this is absurd. Kids are capable of walking to school and shouldn't have to leave a medium-sized neighborhood to do so. But significant demolition of neighborhoods and construction of schools, local grocery markets, etc. is the only prescription for our ills that would provide anything resembling an alternative to cars for the residents of the tract homes that make up a significant part of our car-dependent suburbs.
This is why I think whoever upthread is arguing that people aren't exactly being reasonable expecting the America we inherited from the 20th century to stop stalling and transform itself into 1,000 Amsterdams. Even though the places that share that awesome non-car infra are highly sought-after.
It's not. It's the right design idea. But it's just missing one factor that will make it far superior to ANY other urban model: self-driving vehicles.
Imagine children being able to just get a self-driving taxi and ride to school by themselves. Or to other locations. All while having plenty of space at home, a yard to play, etc.
Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.
I believe that robotaxis will enable totally new behaviors. For example, if you don't live immediately near a park, you won't often go there. It's just too tiresome to use public transit to visit a park just for a short walk/run/play. And personal cars are not available for children.
With robocars, you'll be able to text your friend: "hi, meet you at the park corner in 10", jump into a car, and arrive there. This will have zero friction, so it's far more likely to become a habitual behavior.
> Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.
Ha. One line of Manhattan subway now costs as much as 1500 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. Urban construction is EXPENSIVE.
A gravel road to a dying town doesn’t seem like a failure mode to me.
They don’t build train lines to dying towns in Europe either.
You can buy these cars new under $25K.
Toyota Corolla LE ($23,460), Hyundai Elantra SE ($23,025), Kia K4 LX ($21,990), Nissan Sentra S ($21,590), Mazda3 2.5 S ($24,150), Subaru Impreza Base ($23,495).
I make decent money and I would never spend more than $25K on a car. Of course you can also get used cars with low mileage.
As far as people in rural areas. They deserve every negative thing that they keep voting for.
There's a good summary on Matt Yglesias's blog of Matt Darling (economist at Niskanen Center and Twitter debunker of this paycheck to paycheck myth) on the subject: https://www.slowboring.com/i/149683266/the-median-financial-...