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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Are you implying other countries don't have train stations? They just stop at each individual houses because it's a small country?
Also, the biggest city in the US is set up on a giant train system (Im referring to New York's subways).
No, obviously not. But they also don’t have stations in rural areas where there are houses with many, many miles between them.
That's nice. It's a small percentage of the population, and getting smaller. They can keep using cars if they want. We don't need to hold back all other progress on their account.
Cool, of course that has nothing to do with the original argument….
To be honest, I do see where you are coming from. If we had public transportation as good as our network of roads, people would have incentives to cluster up in the first place.
Shape defines function and function defines form. In this case that means the public transit would be built near the denser populations which will then cause people to move closer to the transport I on for ease of moving goods. It's why these other countries look the way they do, they didn't plan these out 3000 years in advance.
Other countries are no percent of the size of the US. The entire Indian subcontinent can fit on our eastern seaboard with room to spare.
The US is big, and has a lot of cities. We have an enormous amount of existing road infrastructure. We are not going to stop using all of that infrastructure any time soon - that's just reality.
You're acting like this change would be "just build trains lol" and that couldn't be more incorrect.
We built those highways over the last 70 years, with most of the work done in the first decade or two of that timespan. These decisions are not immutable laws of nature. They can be undone if we determine they are bad, and they pretty clearly are.
I have not seen a convincing argument that highways are bad. Do you have a link on that?
Global warming?
Global warming and highways aren't causally linked.
Too many too adequately cover here, but let's start with induced demand. You notice your highway is backed up constantly at rush hour. You figure adding a new lane will help, so you do, and it appears to help at first. What happens over the next year or so is that people who were taking other options now use the highway, and it fills up again. That leads to needing another lane, and at some point, you've invented the Katy Freeway.
Or how about that we're subsidizing the trucking industry with our taxes? The wear and tear on our roads goes up exponentially with weight--not by a square factor, not by a cube factor, but by the fourth power. There is no way that the additional amount trucks pay in taxes can be covering that. These trucks could be largely replaced by a better freight rail network (we already have a pretty good one, just needs to be better), which would be far more fuel efficient per ton of goods.
Or how about that highways encourage urban sprawl, which makes all other infrastructure more expensive. Have to run sewer and electricity to all those far flung neighborhoods. Your taxes are higher because of this. Not only that, but the neighborhoods that are subsidizing other neighborhoods might not be what you think (I linked to the pertinent point around the 5 minute mark, but the whole video is worth a watch on this subject) (and the whole channel, for that matter).
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the neighborhoods that are subsidizing other neighborhoods might not be what you think
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You're not going to teach me to support density and mass transit, because I already do. Passionately. I am incredibly annoying to everyone I know because I beat them over the head with zoning reform rants and the paradox of more lanes.
That's not what we're discussing here.
There is no viable means of moving goods in this country without trucks. I've worked in logistics. There is no intermodal method that can possibly service all of the non-arterial areas of population with only last-mile trucking.
We'd have to forcibly relocate millions of people (as the Chinese did) in order to have this kind of conversion away from single vehicles.
You asked for "why highways are bad?" and I gave it to you. Now you're running over there acting like we were talking about something else.
Hey sorry man I edited and added a lot more. I thought of it right after posting. That's my b.
I appreciate your take and agree with these things, but I view this argument as our over-reliance (I would even say cultural addiction) to highways rather than their existence as a whole.
If we built trains we would start at the most densest areas. Most of these would move people (subways). This builds more railway tracks that could aslo send goods to rural arras as well.
The trains would do 2 things. One would most likely start clustering people together do to the ease of use of having more railways. Second, it creates more economic opprunties for the rural folks (like having a means to work in the city more or just having a way to sell goods) could cause enough economic success for buses.
I'm all about both jacking up density and expanding mass transport any way we can in urban areas. It's got to creep out from there though. We can't just wipe the slate clean and start over in a decade.
I'm constantly proselytizing to people locally to vote for and be interested in changing zoning and regulations policies. I'm super annoying about it if I'm drunk lol
I agree. The rural transit issues would be a much slower rollout. Would take a while to see any changes in those areas.