Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Other democratic countries all manage to have perfectly fine rail systems, it's not solely the domain of totalitarian governments- just functioning governments.
Much like healthcare, it's literally just the US government that fucks it up.
For those who want to go the "well Europe/Japan/Korea/China/etc had the advantage of being bombed flat in various wars which made rebuilding for rail easier", we STILL have plenty of unused, unmaintained rail in the US. We could do this. Hell, you wanna solve unemployment numbers going up? Public works to rehab the right-of-ways that the big companies aren't using, rehab the rails they ARE using, and suddenly we can AT LEAST enable 100mph trains across the country in less than a decade, and probably bring back passenger rail if we wanted to invest in more rolling stock.
Of course, this means we'd have to lift the steel tariff. And rehab steel mills. And also nationalize good portions of the railway (I'd suggest the entire rail network, and lease usage to the freight companies).
A really sad fact is that rail lines used to connect even the most rural of communities. Many cities removed rail lines to put in roadways.
You can still find rails to a lot of farms in Idaho because that's how produce used to be shipped.
The big rail companies are a major reason rail sucks in the US. They were given the land for their lines nearly for free with the promise they'd provide public transit. Well, they stopped that. So the US created Amtrak to relieve them of the obligation of public transit with the promise that Amtrak trains would get priority. Well they constantly break that law which makes Amtrak suck with constant delays.
Heck, these companies are at least supposed to be in charge of maintaining the lines, and they don't do that either. The US has a crazy number of derailments and a big reason for some of them is that the tracks receive little maintenance.
These are still multi billion dollar companies and they do what all giant companies do and nickel/dime everything.
It's actually worse than that- amtrak was a reagan thing, which was meant to intentionally fail so they could give the passenger rail lines to big freight companies as well.
It was literally meant to fail so they could privatize it, but Amtrak pulled off a miracle. Amtrak is actually really, really good in places they can own their own rail- it's why they're really not allowed to build or own their own rail anymore.
Then let’s have examples from those EU countries, instead of an authoritarian state.
I see all these posts, and can’t help but think of the thousands of tankies constantly spamming exhausting propaganda on lemmy. There are so many great examples from democratic countries, so I’m suspicious if someone picks China.
I live in the EU, and currently standing in a bus stop. I’m all for public transport, fuck cars. But fuck China, too.
Yeah but China’s authoritarian system is how they went from no high speed rail to the most high speed rail in the world in just 25 years. It took Japan 70 years to get where they are now and many European nations more than a hundred.
Maybe also having the largest population in the world had something to do with it. They have way more people to do the work. They also have way more money than Japan to do the work.
And that's not even considering how they have a lot more land to work with. Easier to put high speed rail through some farmland than to redevelop several urban blocks to create rail infrastructure.
Well, the perk of being an authoritarian regime is that you don't really have to put the high speed rail on farmland. Urban blocks are fine too if it's a better path.
Don't know if you read my comment very well. Regardless of the state's authority it's still way easier to develop land that's not densely populated versus that which is.
Japan is significantly more densely populated
Yes of course, but the easiest might not be the best.
You're not making sense. Easier just explains why they built more. China has several large cities separated by large swaths of rural land.
Japan is a significantly smaller island that is densely populated.
Mile to mile it is simply more laborious for Japan to construct rail
Where's that picture of the one house in the middle of a highway because the owner wouldn't sell/move?
You mean the places that did the actual research and development on how to effectively build (high speed) trains and rail networks took longer to get where they are than the place that could just use already well-established technology? No way!
Don't get me wrong, there can absolutely be political barriers to having a good rail network (as evidenced by the US), but let's not pretend you're comparing apples to apples here.
Sure, it's much easier when you can just take all the land and built right over anything in your way.
The US has such a law, look up emminent domain.
they also regularly abuse it for nonsense.
Yes
Then why not use those democracies as examples but post basically the same post within 2 hours about china good?
I tell you why: Propaganda
No, because it makes no difference here.
If I as a European come around and tell Americans how public transport, healthcare, and city planning are just better here, I get to hear the same crap about "propaganda".
That, or I hear the all too often repeated "BuT thINgs aRe JuSt diFfeRENt HerE!"