I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?
I've lived and travelled in a ton of places. Trains in low density cities are simply not working well enough. I now prefer to live in exurb and drive everywhere. It's so good.
Pretty much by definition, yes.
Repeating "trains" in every transport context is unproductive. Each mode of transport requires certain density. Most US cities just don't have it. It's that simple.
Which American cities have notable modern train systems? Not Portland, or NYC, or Washington DC.
adjective
no· ta· ble ˈnō-tə-bəl for sense 2 also
1 a : worthy of note : remarkable
| a *notable* improvement
I’ve become quite radicalized on trains after visiting Japan and Switzerland myself.
UK spent $100M just to deal with bats in a single train tunnel, which is representative of the issue https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo
China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build.
China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)
The metro area density of Tokyo is 3,000 / km^2
The metro area density of Beijing is 1,747 / km^2
Greater Los Angeles: 208 / km^2
A perhaps more interesting use case is the utsunomiya light rail. Utsunomiya has a density of around 1200/km^2.
What they ended up doing was building a new tram with exactly one line. The main thing they did was make sure the tram comes frequently, including off peak.
End result is people rely on the tram line and the tram is making good money, being operationally profitable (still gotta pay back construction costs of course).
Utsunomiya is obviously not exactly greater LA, but Utsunomiya has on average 2.25 cars per household[0]. It has traffic issues and people feel the need to own a car. And yet the tram line is finding success because transportation is a local issue, not a global one!
You can solve for transportation issues in crowded areas. Few reasonable people are lamenting that you don't have a train between madison, WI and Chicago every 15 minutes. Many are simply lamenting that even at a local level PT in many places is leaving a lot on the table despite there being chances of success!
Smaller focused PT has proven itself to work time and time again, and compounds on other PT projects in the area.
[0]: https://www.pref.tochigi.lg.jp/english/intro/overview.html
Most of the rail has get around mountainous, uneven terrain subject to earthquakes, strong winds, and heavy rain. California should be able to build rail parallel to the I-5, a long, flat terrain without extreme weather or strong earthquakes. The problem seems to be a political one, not an engineering one. In fact, if the Interstate Highway System did not already exist, I doubt the U.S. today would be able to accept and complete it.
> one long line with a few branches
I currently live in Japan, and that does not really match what I've observed. There are three distinct railway companies in my area (JR, Tokyu, Yokohama Municipal Subway), each with their own dedicated rail, trains, power supply, etc.
The situation is more like "a disjoint union of graphs, where some of the graphs are connected".
It has to be said: even in Japan train projects are multi decade projects.
Is Cali HSR stopped? I can imagine it being slow but I wonder if it's 10x slower or "merely" 3x slower.
https://www.metro.net/about/media-relations/156-million-new-...
A BRT system would have had a capacity of, very optimistically, 6,000 people per hour per direction (a 100 person bus arriving every minute), but in practice probably less (that is difficult to maintain without delays). At the time, there was some doubt that even this capacity was required. The original tram setup also had a capacity of about 6,000 people per hour. Within years, the trams were full to overcrowding, and the line was expanded to 10,000 people per hour. Now it's at capacity again, with some of the longest trams in the world arriving every three minutes at peak. The only realistic option to further increase capacity is to turn it into a metro line (which, fortunately, was in principle planned for from the start, and _is_ possible, albeit with some disruption).
If they'd gone with a BRT, they'd now be looking at ripping up the whole thing and having nothing for years while they laid tracks.
Normal Person: I heard about shellfish, but it turns out I don't like to eat it, because it tastes bad.
Seafood Advocate 1: You are wrong, shellfish is highly nutritious. And one of the most calorie dense foods.
Seafood Advocate 2: Everyone knows you need to eat shellfish between the hours of 11AM and 1PM. If you learn to eat at the proper time, you would like shellfish.
Seafood Advocate 3: People in Japan eat shellfish, so it is highly likely that you like shellfish as well.
Seafood Advocate 4: The only reason someone could say they dislike shellfish is because of the anti-seafood conspiracy.
Normal Person: I thought this was originally a thread about chicken pasta recipes? Continues to not eat shellfish.
and thats a policy decision rather than a commercial one
That might be an unintentionally excellent analogy, because like a Band-Aid, self self driving cars have the potential to heal the urban environment. The widespread adoption of self driving cars doesn’t take cars off the road, but it does reduce the reliance on destination parking. Entire city car parks could be replaced with medium density residential, substantially increasing density and paving the way to walkable cities.
That's buses. Even more with electric buses. They are insanely subsidized by public. Robot taxis are vastly cheaper for everyone.