Comment on Detroit's newest road can charge electric cars as they drive on it
SquishyPandaDev@yiffit.net 9 months ago
Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
I would love to have both. Especially trains! The trains here are so bad though. They cost more than flying and are such a hassle to deal with. The train stations are sometimes far away from the city in some cases too. So you need a ride from the station.
I would support building that out if it was offered.
There’s public transport in large and dense cities. It doesn’t work to move around the country very well. These people that think something that works in a country that’s smaller than an individual state in the US should work fine are “special”.
… but this is Detroit which is a city that can support NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL teams. We’re not taking about the sticks here
Japan is the size of the entire east coast and has high speed interconnected rail.
There’s only about 800 cities to connect in all of Japan.
There’s about 19,000 in the US.
You prove my point. Japan is small and easy to get everywhere by rail. The US is not.
Yeah, area wise Japan is about 60% the size of Texas. With Japan having more than twice the GDP. Seems pretty straight forward why infrastructure should be better there. Japan has 4x the populous as well. Makes a lot more motivation to focus on public transport.
The roads are there. They ain’t moving skyscrapers in major cities! For better or worse, American travel is very road-based, and we’ll never have as many diverse options as some other countries…
Or just build trains. Which move tons of people, every day, for cheaper, safer, faster and overall more efficient ways. Don’t have space for a train track? Make it a tram. Problem solved by changing up a road for cars into a road for cars and trains.
Or do what has been done for over a century now and just build the train line underground if there’s no room above. It’s more expensive, but in moderately dense cities that can still be worth it.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Trains are amazing for small countries, or between cities. The problem comes when you take into consideration how spread out the US is. You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable.
EVs are not a perfect solution, by a long shot. And ideally we would move away from cars being ubiquitous in America, but that is many, many years off. It’s better to work towards that slowly than it is to say “well it’s not perfect so let’s just not.”
IamAnonymous@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You will always have cases where a car is needed, it’s unavoidable. That’s because it’s designed for cars. We have huge parking lots designed for cars but nothing for public transport. Whenever I travel to NYC or Chicago, I can go anywhere in trains and buses. In my city, I can’t even get milk without driving to a store.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Because your store probably doesn’t serve thousands of people to validate the cost of the infrastructure. My city has busses, but it also has corn fields and open lots and a lot of spread. It’s just not viable to walk all your groceries a mile to and from the bus stop both ways for a bus that comes every hour. It’s different when every train and bus is full and the need is well met.
Ask for more taxes and more spending on this infrastructure, or use your car.
IamAnonymous@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The infrastructure is developed around cars so obviously using cars makes sense. We could have smaller grocery stores and have it closer to neighborhoods so people can walk to it but we have buses which only come once an hour which takes 30 minutes to drive 2 miles and your grocery trip will take 3 hours so you are better off just buying a car!
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Oh pish posh. China is exactly as big as the US and you can get pretty much everywhere for a few bucks in high speed trains.
Trains are fantastic and the US should definitely be investing in them, it’s a huge disadvantage and a national embarrassment that we don’t have affordable and effective mass transportation.
luthis@lemmy.nz 9 months ago
China does a lot of stupid things, but their train network is admirable.
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Truth
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
“Everywhere” as long as you’re just trying to get to the south-east, sure.
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Nope, everywhere.
Image
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
96 percent of Chinese people live on the east half of the country.
as well as the North and West. That whole center bit is accessible too.
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
isn’t that exactly what trains were designed for and are best at?
FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 9 months ago
You are correct. I can only assume that person got trains and trams mixed up.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
You have a train that takes you directly to your house? O.o
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Are you implying other countries don’t have train stations? They just stop at each individual houses because it’s a small country?
force@lemmy.world 9 months ago
… you’ve never heard of bikes, or legs, or car sharing like in e.g. the Netherlands if you need to transport stuff? you don’t need to own a car, it’s unnecessarily expensive and bad for literally everything
blazera@kbin.social 9 months ago
Trains famously bad at traveling long distances.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
No, trains famously bad at “last mile” travel, except that in America it can be “last dozen miles” between a city big enough to have a station, and the place the person is going.
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
This is again a problem of America not investing in its transportation infrastructure, not a fault of trains.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Just north of the us is a mainly freight railway system that spans the width of the continent…
Then there is this image in an article about that on Wikipedia Image The spread out reasoning just seems silly to me on the basis of that literally being what trains were even for in the first place, going distances not suitable for horses. If it connects cities, that is also a start that shouldn’t be passed on for being imperfect.
The only reason a car would be needed at all in north America is because of all the poorly designed car centric infrastructure that ends up not even being good for cars as demonstrated by the absolutely heinous traffic that only seems to get worse with every road “upgrade” I have ever seen the before and after of.
Rootiest@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m confused, are you trying to say cars are not needed because there’s a railway every 100+ miles north or south of any point? Should people walk 100 miles to the rail station on their way to work?
The US/North America is huge, it’s not like just providing public transit for all of Europe or something, covering all of America would be an orders of magnitude larger project
Grass@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
No I’m saying the us being too big for trains is a dumb statement because there already are trains all over north America.
Cars are only needed because the infrastructure is designed that way. It also features idiotic setups like 4-6 lanes on the main road and single lane when parked up side streets that are a bitch to make a left from because the lights never line up to give a break in the traffic. I hate these and they shouldn’t exist because they are bad for literally everyone. There are so many road setups that aren’t even good for cars, yet cause them to be necessary, which just worsens traffic guaranteed.
I don’t understand your Europe comparison. It’s not like a blanket needs to cover the entire country. You only need transportation where people live to where they work. Anything else can come later if it turns out to be needed. Do people daily commute across the whole country or something? If they do there is way more necessary work reform than I could have imagined.
Realistically though if the us can send money to Ukraine and Israel yet still not rebuild hawaii, the country is fucked.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Trains have their bigger advantages on long distances. You get tired in a car, you can’t go pp or take a nap. Your costs rises proportionally with the distance etc.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
There are tons of areas of the US that have the population density to support it, but still have horrible train service. We made deliberate decisions to favor highways over trains, and we can undo those decisions.
farcaster@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Nationwide, sure. But localized I wish we would do better, given the population densities. California has a population density of ~100 people/km2. Not far off France at ~120/km2. Yet we still are mainly reliant on cars to get around.
xenspidey@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
California and France aren’t that far off from total area from each other. Most of California’s population is in a hand full of counties. As an example, LA has a population density 3 times that of Paris.
Magiccupcake@startrek.website 9 months ago
There are places that would be wonderfully served by trains, but just aren’t.
Cars are best in rural areas, but by far the majority of peoole live in cities where cars are the worst, yet we still build them for cars.
xenspidey@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
“Build them for cars” cities aren’t built anymore. They were built a long time ago. Modifying existing cities for trains would be nearly impossible. Yes it’s a 4:1 ratio of urban to rural areas. But remember the majority of the population lives in like 4-5 counties in the US. That’s a lot of area that is empty.
Magiccupcake@startrek.website 9 months ago
It’s a good point that cities aren’t built anymore, and that’s part of the problem. Our population has grown drastically, but we don’t build hardly any new infrastructure for them outside of roads. So traffic is terrible despite enormous amounts of money from both government and people.
Cities aren’t supposed to be static, they’re supposed to grow and adapt to the needs of those that live there. There is a large need for non-car transport that is either ignored or sidelined for cars.
I’m not talking about 90% empty land, that’s not where people are.
When the car was invented, governments had little issue buildozing entire neighborhoods for highways, but now that some places are realizing that’s a bad decision, its really hard to undo.