stux⚡️Luckily we already got most of it over here 👌🏻 🚄
🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦I want the trains too, but as an American I want the electric cars too. The U.S. is too big for 100% coverage by passenger trains.
Magnus Ahltorp@Methylcobalamin @stux You do know that the US existed before the automobile, right? And, there is no such thing as “too big for trains”.
Sure there is room for some electric cars, but not as a one-to-one replacement. You need to have radically fewer cars.
Do you live in the United States?
@Methylcobalamin I do know that the US is older than the automobile and that you had a widely used passenger train network. I don’t have to live there to know that.
Maybe the phrase you’re looking for is “sparsely populated”. That is *caused* by the car use, and can be undone.
Thank you for answering my question. You don't live in the U.S..
Most of the tracks in the U.S. are used for freight. Large scale passenger train routes haven't existed for the better part of a century. Much of the track has been removed and turned into walking paths and parks.
Rebuilding an entire country to be passenger train friendly is not a realistic idea. Even when passenger trains were the thing, people still needed cars & buses to get to and from them.
@Methylcobalamin You only added Alaska and Hawaii since then, right? How was the US smaller in any meaningful way a century ago than it is now? Or are you saying that technology is so much worse now than a century ago that it’s impossible because of that? It doesn’t make any sense at all.
I have a poor friend who lives in a cottage in rural West Virginia. It is a 15 mile trip on a deserted road to reach even a convenience store. There are a lot of people like her, a lot of people worse off too. A train or a bus system will not help them much.
Giving advice to a country you haven't lived in is not an intelligent thing to do. No disrespect.
@Methylcobalamin There are people like that in Sweden as well. We have trains. Everywhere? No. But the key is, how many people live like what you’re describing? 99%? 10%? 1%? 0.1%?
Why should these few people be the reason the rest of you travel by car? It’s not really because you have do it in solidarity, right?
There are MORE than a few people like that in the U.S..
Your advice is extreme, almost pie-in-the-sky extreme. Rebuilding an entire country.
You don't live here. You don't know the country. You don't know the situation so you can't give intelligent advice.
@Methylcobalamin So how many percent? If it were even 50%, which is ridiculous, that would mean that 50% don’t live like that.
I might not live there, but I obviously know a lot more about US history than you. The country was rebuilt for the railroads. Then it was rebuilt for the cars.
It’s not pie-in-the-sky to build rail networks, abolish the most harmful zoning rules, and narrow over-wide car lanes to make way for bicycle paths and sidewalks. It’s easy. Technically, maybe not politically.