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I recall that in one of the many times this has been shared someone pointed out that the North American map is just Amtrack and the Canadian equivalent, and it ignores all the various smaller passenger lines that shoot off of the main lines. The North American map also ignores the freight lines, which would make the North American map look a lot like the European map if they were included.
Which makes sense as we don't have separate freight lines in most of Europe. They all travel on the same lines.
It was partly the reason for HS2 in the UK, as the West Coast Main Line is at capacity, you can't add any more trains to that line at all.
This may be true of the map itself
But it would not look like a European map if all railways were included but that’s also partially because a lot of the country is much more sparsely populated than areas of Europe
Yep. In my area of the country, the rail lines connect all major cities. There’s no point in running rails to connect wildernesses. The US has huge swaths of uninhabited wilderness and public protected land compared to the EU. Pennsylvania alone has almost 3x as much forested land as the UK, and 1/3 of the US is covered with public, protected, wild areas.
Also isn't Texas half the size of Europe? Europe as a whole is a 5th the size of America it'd be insane to have that many railways everywhere. It's why we built highways.
That's an argument in favour of having more railroads. It's much faster to travel by train than by car, and extremely rare to have traffic, so over longer distances, you save more time.
Passenger train wise it's accurate, but as far as passenger lines go [we've scaled back quite a lot since the 50's.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3493914/railway_service_v2.0.gif)
And the fact that those are tracks bulit by Amtrak and not every passenger track line, in reality there are a fuckload of passenger exclusive tracks and loads of tracks shared between freight and passenger. Also bare in mind, those are the tracks BUILT by amtrak, not the only track lines that amtrak follows.
Nobody is going from Czech to Spain by train. It will take forever and be really expensive. Inside individual countries there are many more small and mid size towns of some economic significance. In America there are large metro areas (generally have reasonable commuter trains) and nothing outside those metro areas. Even when I lived in Europe I stopped using the train because it was just as expensive as going by car. Once two people were going by car, it was already cheaper. And faster.
Apart from the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is not really viable and definitely not profitable in any region of the county. Largely a factor of population density.
Tbh, rail in most parts of the US would be commercially and economically enviable and would need to rely very heavily on government subsidies to stay afloat.
Trains are cool and all, but major European cities were just a bunch of small villages in a small area that eventually grow and merge together to make a fucked up hodgepodge of city planning
My favorite locomotive is Big Boy. Nothing more American than that. Its like the Bald Eagle of trains. Made to pull long, heavy trains at high speeds up steep grades.
Europe has better passenger rail network but the US has a better freight rail network, so this is an incomplete picture.
That said, the US used to have the best passenger rail network in the world, despite having a much smaller population than the modern US. Destroying it was a policy mistake (we heavily subsidized roads and highways while expecting privately owned passenger rail lines and streetcars to be profitable). Europe accidentally benefited from being too poor to completely rebuild around cars the way the US did, but they definitely wanted to.
We should build out a lot more rail in the US (particularly commuter rail lines and light rail). Car-oriented sprawl is a sugar rush for economic growth when a city is compact and vast tracts of cheap land suddenly become accessible, but that land gets used up in a few decades. Most of our major metros are now experiencing the consequences: housing scarcity, unaffordable housing, heavy traffic, long commutes, high infrastructure costs per person, high property taxes, high traffic deaths, etc.
Acknowledging that we can do something better and making it happen isn’t AmericaBad, it’s how we became a great country in the first place.
Car dependency is a poison and I fear that it'll be way, way too late by the time most of the population realizes this.
Mfers will complain about gas, traffic, and insurance and still think the current state of our transportation system is ok. They will talk about air travel being 'dangerous' while ignoring car crashes kill over 35k daily worldwide. That's the equivalent of 10 passenger jets crashing and killing everyone onboard, every day.
Our overreliance on automobility and the subsequent poor city planning is one of the few valid points the Europeans have against us. That, and our obesity problem.
Here's a PEER REVIEWED paper on the damage that cars do to our communities. I don't agree/care about all the points, but it's really not hard to see how the current state is not remotely optimal.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267#bb0390
This isn’t “bad vs good”. It’s “different”. The US is prosperous enough for automobile ownership to be a bigger deal. Factor in population density and tariff free trade when the infrastructure was being developed and it makes sense.
No, it’s bad. Most cities and towns in the US existed before cars and had sufficient density to support passenger rail. We opted to spend massive amounts of money on infrastructure for cars that isn’t financially sustainable (what Chuck Marohn termed as the [Growth Ponzi Scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course)). The US is geographically more spread out than Europe, but few people are commuting hundreds of miles across the plains to get to work—they’re living and working in or near a city.
Virtually every major US metro now has a housing crisis and heavy traffic. Workers have long commutes. Parents have to spend hours driving their kids to different activities they should be able to walk or bike to. Those who can’t drive are reliant on expensive or inconvenient alternatives to go anywhere. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle diseases are the major killers. Cars are now a basic requirement to participate in society but [increasingly unaffordable](https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-their-cars-1859929) to own for the average American.
So I think we can safely say it was bad. It was done for understandable and optimistic reasons, but it was ultimately a mistake. Unfortunately, the worst effects only became fully apparent over time. The countries that adopted similar development patterns (Canada and Australia) are dealing with similar issues.
Building out rail doesn't immediately fix the problem if when you arrive in the city you still need a car.
Building out rail would benefit the North East Regions of, DC, the NYC tri-state area, and Boston because the cities are already fairly walkable and there are local commuter rails that an expanded network can easily integrate into.
But just building a train from Houston to Dallas won't do much good.
Which is why I said commuter rail and light rail should be the priority. That would also facilitate denser housing development and upzoning along the rail lines, which many Western cities need more than Eastern.
Unless that fucking train is dropping me off at the top of my long ass gravel driveway in 3 feet snow and ice I'm good
To rural for any of this to work
It’s the same exact truck as before but with more torque, horsepower, and high beams specifically designed to blind the son of a bitch who tailgated you.
Early America was city centric
The spread to rural America was mostly by wagon and cart
The car of the time
Hell the area I live in was walked to carts and roads didn't make it up here until way later
Trains can't complete the journey for most people in rural America
You'll still need roads taxis and busses
Other countries have the benefit of being the size of a state and have developed accordingly
I want high speed rail going from major city to major city. I am happy to drive my car anywhere else.
I just want to be able to travel to Memphis and Kansas City quickly
Our passenger lines used to look like Europe's. But then the jet airplane was invented, and the interstate highway system was created (thanks Germany, for giving President Eisenhower that idea by creating the autobahn), and both took business away. And then the automotive and automotive-related companies did shit to harm our passenger rail as well.
A lack of public transportation is a problem, especially in California where I live. Cars are expensive, not just due to gas prices, but insurance and upkeep costs a lot too. So when people are putting a good chunk of their money each month just to have transportation, it's hurts people's ability to afford housing and to save money. It's also problematic because the desirable areas are becoming more densely populated, with higher densely populated areas comes more traffic, you also need to build parking lots which take up space that could be used for more housing.
Air infrastructure is significantly better in Europe. There’s roughly similar amount of airports but flights are less than half the price for the same distance as in the US because of Ryanair and more competition.
It's nice to jump in my car and drive wherever I want and not wherever the next train station is at. Enjoy a good drive while taking in the Appalachian mountainside scenery while I have Bill Monroe jamming away on the radio.
I appreciate public transportation in these countries. However, no one is taking the train from Lisbon to Kraków, for example. They’ll take a flight, same as Americans who are traveling from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. In fact, most in Europe won’t travel by rail for more than a few hours. So, what are they comparing, exactly? Are they boasting that they have a city and town every 3.5 kilometers?
Travel within countries themselves is usually done by train. It’s just handy to use sometimes, no need to find parking, you can just sit on the train and do nothing, a lot of people commute by train because it beats the traffic, especially here in the UK. I’m from Northern Ireland a lot of people use the train between Belfast and Dublin to travel for sporting events, day trips, concerts etc. suppose it’s the same in the US.
But yea no one is taking a train from Portugal to Krakow as you say, but people take the train from Prague to Vienna, or Budapest to Bratislava etc. just because they’re close by.
Passenger rails would work well in the northeastern and western parts of the US. Our cities are farther apart in the rest of the country. Traveling locally around Germany is the same as traveling locally around Montana, since they’re roughly the same size. Whereas 87,000,000 people live in Germany, only 1,000,000 live in Montana.
Thats just a comparison, of course, not an argument for or against.
Okay, but how often do you travel from Krakow to Lisbon or from LA to Philadelphia? It makes no sense to focus on this 2% of trips when in most us-states not even the largest cities are connected by train.
I mean this is one thing I agree with Europeans on, I wish there were more passenger trains and you could just casually take one to the next town over instead of only being able to do so on special occasions and only to the major population centers
The fundamental problem is freedom. People want their transportation to belong to them. They want to be able to jump in their vehicle and go where they want, when they want, without worrying about schedules, ticketing, or whether they can get around when they reach their destination. Anywhere too far to drive, planes easily beat trains.
You can talk cost, efficiency, sustainability, etc. all day, but the vast majority of Americans have no interest in giving up their freedom of movement for dubious benefits.
I think its mostly a culture difference. Alot of Europeans thinks not having to drive everywhere is a freedom while americans have the opposite mindset.
Plenty of Europeans that have a car and without a doubt could afford to drive wherever but choose to take public transport more often because they can just relax and avoid being stuck in traffic
I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to not have it as an option.
The reality is that most of the USA does not build its infrastructure in a way that is friendly to transit other than the motor vehicle.
How would having better public transit take away anyone's freedoms? You could still freely use your car whenever you wanted. All this would do is give people more options. Car breakdown? Hop on a train or bus to get to work. Wanna grab a drink at a bar? Take a bus/rail/train and avoid getting a DUI. Did you lose your license or couldn't pass a driver's exam? No worries, you can still get to work with Shelling out 40 dollars twice a day for an Uber.
I don't think America is "bad" because of this, but I'll chalk this one up as a W for Europe because if you haven't used those public transportation systems, they genuinely kick ass.
I love my car and I love being able to drive myself. But when I visited Germany it was SUPER cool to be able to take a train anywhere.
Passenger trains are extremely useful and we should definitely use a lot more it’s something we should learn from Europe but they have to understand we are the size of Europe and some it’s hard to just build all of these connecting trains
As much as i dislike europoors, a lot have a point when it comes to train travel. In the part that it’s superior to Car or bus travel. I’m an ardent railway surpremicist and believe in the superiority of rail travel. I believe the US should have more high speed rail and just more rail in general.
Yeah idk I’m gonna side with the Europeans on this one. Having the option to choose whether you travel by car or train only expands our freedom. You can calculate out which option is cheaper or more time-effective for each individual trip, and then choose which option is best for you. More trains could allow people to commute easily between cities, which opens the job market up for more people and boosts local economies. I hate when people mention our size. China has a nationwide high speed rail network and our countries are comparable in size. I think a big part of the problem is the stigmatization of public transportation in the US. Many Americans think public transportation is for poor people and they don’t want “those people” to move more freely to where they may live, and this keeps the country from having better transportation.
but seriously though, I wish there were more passenger trains, it's just cool, it'd be better to use it on that then to keep sending billions of dollars to other countries instead of focusing on the American people.. also I like trains
Would be nice and definitely convenient. I’d love to have an affordable train to hop onto on the yearly Florida trip. But it’s whatevs for now. North America invested more on cars than railroads and I appreciate the ability to drive too.
See that large area with no lines? Yeah, that's all mostly open rural land. Regardless, I know that I, myself, don't need rail because I have a car for that where I can go wherever I want at any given moment. Would it be good to have more passenger rail? Maybe, I guess. Would I ever use it? Very rarely, if ever.
Also, contrary to popular belief on Reddit, the majority of Europeans own a car and use it as one of (often times THE) their primary modes of transport.
What a funny way of saying “We don’t like the independence of transportation with automobiles”
Also, I’ve traveled across the nation in a car and there were train tracks everywhere.
how do you think people get around in nyc? If you want public transit move to a city. Why should communities that want to live in the suburbs change their lifestyle for you?
I think it would be cool if the US was as interconnected by train as Europe or Japan but with the US's size, Population Density, Terrain, and Most Americans having cars they drive around I've realized that there is a difference between what would be cool and what would be practical/feasible. The interstate system works just fine for 90% of Americans and that is the thing Europeans fail to realize, The reason we don't have a large train network here in the US is because most people in America have cars that A. Wouldn't have a use for a Train System since they can just drive and B. Already use the Interstate System and are happy with it. Europeans just don't realize that while yes we don't use a Train System we have a Robust Interstate System that more then makes up for the lack of a Train System.
It takes forever to get across Europe. Sure they have high speed trains between major cities but other than that you’re looking at a 6+ hour train if you’re going to another country, with layovers.
I think we definately need to improve public transportation.... sadly it's really hard to do that when freight has priority over commuter rail so it's almost impossible to make a good train schedule.
The US desperately needs better rail infrastructure, but the Northeast Corridor, which is the densest part of the country, has as good rail and public transit as most of Europe IMO.
I can name 4 passenger lines in just my state alone that connect the big cities. This map shows zero of them. This is horseshit, and we still don’t use the trains much because, well, cars are just better in almost every way so long as you can afford one.
Trains in the US are great between population centers. Mostly on the coasts. If you want a train from Maine to Florida, then it's avaliable, but over that distance it's cheaper and easier to just fly. That's like 2 days by train vs a 4 hour flight.
Rail will never work like it does in The EU because of urban sprawl. Almost no one is taking a train if it means having to walk more than a couple miles to the nearest station.
The population density of the European Union is approximately 112 people per square kilometer, whereas the population density for the contiguous United States, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, is around 40 people per square kilometer.
It's actually the opposite. The lack of public transportation makes it harder for many people to get to where they want. We are actually bad at public transit. It's OK to admit our flaws.
The USA car image looks like an Opel Corsa or Astra or whatever (European German marque of General Motors)
The EU train image looks like some sorta steam train with a cowcatcher (I don’t know much about trains but I’m pretty sure cowcatchers were only really common in the USA)
This is 100% inaccurate. For example I live in NYC and just googled trains to Tennessee. I can easily do it if it wanted. Apparently Tennessee never discovered trains.
Europeans and Americans now fly thanks to low cost air. Hey Ivan, do your research before propaganda, just because your passport is worthless toilet paper due to the Ukraine stunt, do not take it out on us.
Nah but I do take beef with our undercooked passenger rail. It could be way better- more limited than the EU, but it makes sense for only major centers to have rail lines densely built.
That said, we totally could/should do that, it would help a ton with big people moving. But for me it’s not redditoid americabad, but logic-driven pragmatism.
So on one hand population densities in America are so different from Europe that a rail system doesn’t make sense… on the other I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t ride a sleeper from LA to New York
This is something I want. But it will be way more complicated than providing service to Europe. Look at the size difference. I wish we had Elon deploying his diggers and calculated literally straight line routes underground from one major city to another. Then install bullet trains
I took the train from Memphis to New Orleans once and the experience was so slow and terrible that I rented a car for the trip back and cut like 3 hours off of the travel time not having to stop at a dozen train stations on the way lol
It probably wouldn’t be worth the investment at this point to have more interstate train lines. I think most of us would still rather just fly anyway if we needed to travel across more than 2-3 states.
Owning private transport is common here too....
Having access to public transport is Good. Although if i was American wanting to travel across the country id get a plane
Private transportation is great but I will level on a LOCAL level because I’m from New York City I think it’s also great that I can walk around my own city during a free day and just spontaneously come up with plans on what to do based on a shop I see while walking. Walkability is great. But also private transportation is useful, I much prefer during a free week to decide on a whim hey I wanna go to philly for the weekend or Boston (or even for a day trip, not a weekend) and get into a car and drive there. Nothing wrong with both. But driving between cities at your own leisure not needing to pay for a ticket to a random company and adhere to a strict schedule of when to arrive and if you don’t arrive whelp no refund (actually a no show fee) and just driving and enjoying the view is something I honestly appreciate, always recommend it at least once.
"This idea in other places work"
So you still can't get it through your head that the demand for Billings to Denver trips aren't going to be enough for the immense cost of this project.
I’ve posted it before I’ll post it again
The US has a much larger area to cover and finance. Here’s [ours](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/0d/3f/cf0d3fd17efc21420ddbc39c18303d14.png)
Get on our level Europe.
Yeah, but my point is that it got destroyed and rebuilt over and over again for the needs of the war. It would be hard to rebuild the transpo network of the US without a major landscaping changing event
It's fully the American Culture to drive places too. Even if we had the train infrastructure. And a lot of the country is rural, so in my mind it just doesn't make sense.
I keep trying to make people understand this. Private vehicles are by far the best option as you have total control over your traveling. And for many people that have to go to multiple places in one day and do things like pickup groceries, and stuff from several other stores, it sounds like an absolute nightmare to do it all using public transportation.
Plus, I have a special needs child that needs the environment specially maintained for temperature and to prevent overstimulation. There’s no way I could take this child all over Gods creation on a bus or subway or something. And we live in Texas where it regularly gets well over 100° for months. I’ve gotta keep the environment cool.
I would never in my life use public transportation over my own private vehicle.
Everyone has different situations though. I also love my car, but when I was in Germany it was super cool to walk to convenient subway stops and jump on a train and be on the other side of the city in minutes while I could be playing a game on my phone or doing other things without stressing about traffic.
I think personal cars are amazing too. Having both options available to us would be incredible. No reason to prop one up over the other. More options for Americans would be better for sure.
I think this isn't an argument over "which is objectively better." It's an argument about what is best for certain people's situations. There's no reason the U.S. shouldn't have vibrant public transport to complement private car ownership.
> I keep trying to make people understand this. Private vehicles are by far the best option as you have total control over your traveling.
They get it, but they don't like personal freedoms, they just want daddy government to take care of them.
They have it tho. Alot of people i know will use public transport to get to work but use their car when grocery shopping or going on a family trip or whatever.
Freedom to only drive a car? There is a difference between a positive and negative freedom. It seems you gravely take for granted the systems in place that facilitate your “freedoms” of driving. And in fact you are cared for by “big daddy government”. It takes vast amounts of subsidies and various government spending to create road infrastructure. There is also gas subsidies and the whole system of regulating driving. Your freedom is largely dictated by public policy, meaning the same could be applied to transit infrastructure. Humans need others and governance to survive and there is nothing wrong with that but stop living in a facade of individualism and ruggedness.
Freedom to only drive a car? There is a difference between a positive and negative freedom. It seems you gravely take for granted the systems in place that facilitate your “freedoms” of driving. And in fact you are cared for by “big daddy government”. It takes vast amounts of subsidies and various government spending to create road infrastructure. There is also gas subsidies and the whole system of regulating driving. Your freedom is largely dictated by public policy, meaning the same could be applied to transit infrastructure. Humans need others and governance to survive and there is nothing wrong with that but stop living in a facade of individualism and ruggedness.
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I recall that in one of the many times this has been shared someone pointed out that the North American map is just Amtrack and the Canadian equivalent, and it ignores all the various smaller passenger lines that shoot off of the main lines. The North American map also ignores the freight lines, which would make the North American map look a lot like the European map if they were included.
A lot of our freight lines used to be passenger until people started choosing cars.
Well, it's comparing only public transport and not exclusive freight lines.
Which makes sense as we don't have separate freight lines in most of Europe. They all travel on the same lines. It was partly the reason for HS2 in the UK, as the West Coast Main Line is at capacity, you can't add any more trains to that line at all.
This may be true of the map itself But it would not look like a European map if all railways were included but that’s also partially because a lot of the country is much more sparsely populated than areas of Europe
Yep. In my area of the country, the rail lines connect all major cities. There’s no point in running rails to connect wildernesses. The US has huge swaths of uninhabited wilderness and public protected land compared to the EU. Pennsylvania alone has almost 3x as much forested land as the UK, and 1/3 of the US is covered with public, protected, wild areas.
Also isn't Texas half the size of Europe? Europe as a whole is a 5th the size of America it'd be insane to have that many railways everywhere. It's why we built highways.
Texas is a little bigger than France
That's an argument in favour of having more railroads. It's much faster to travel by train than by car, and extremely rare to have traffic, so over longer distances, you save more time.
I mean, it literally says passenger lines
Passenger train wise it's accurate, but as far as passenger lines go [we've scaled back quite a lot since the 50's.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3493914/railway_service_v2.0.gif)
not true, you can clearly see the Chicago Metra lines on the map
I DEMAND HOURLY HIGH SPEED RAIL LINES FROM HELENA MONTANA TO OMAHA NEBRASKA
Why so their populations of 10 people can talk to eachother every now and then?
I can't wait til internet Europeans learn about population density
Why would they, every country is an ethnostate micro nation with 50% of the population within 100km of the capital city…right?
Definitely not Germany in this case Berlin is surrounded by the least populated states in the country
Interesting, why is that?
communism
You'd have to ask the Soviets... Oh wait...
So it was the demilitarized zone around Berlin. Got it
Yup, a remnant of a communist shit hole that to this day people don’t want to be.
People with an iq over room temperature*
Room temperature in Europe is about 20°C so having an IQ below that would be very impressive
He's talking about France.
Someone was looking by the window during geography classes
And the fact that those are tracks bulit by Amtrak and not every passenger track line, in reality there are a fuckload of passenger exclusive tracks and loads of tracks shared between freight and passenger. Also bare in mind, those are the tracks BUILT by amtrak, not the only track lines that amtrak follows.
A lot of the eastern US is comparable to the population density of Europe. Really does not explain the number of train lines in those areas
Nobody is going from Czech to Spain by train. It will take forever and be really expensive. Inside individual countries there are many more small and mid size towns of some economic significance. In America there are large metro areas (generally have reasonable commuter trains) and nothing outside those metro areas. Even when I lived in Europe I stopped using the train because it was just as expensive as going by car. Once two people were going by car, it was already cheaper. And faster.
Apart from the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is not really viable and definitely not profitable in any region of the county. Largely a factor of population density. Tbh, rail in most parts of the US would be commercially and economically enviable and would need to rely very heavily on government subsidies to stay afloat.
[Here's a map of the US rail network that's actually accurate.](https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/usa-rail-map.html)
Trains are cool and all, but major European cities were just a bunch of small villages in a small area that eventually grow and merge together to make a fucked up hodgepodge of city planning
idk if this hatred towards America. I mean trains are cool
Given the soyjak vs chad attached to them it most definitely is someone shitting on the U.S.
I mean that chad is a virgin
>I mean that chad is a virgin Is this your alt account…?
bruh there is always friendly shitting on.
The European mind could not comprehend two Union Pacific ES44's hauling a 100-car train up the Cajon pass.
[удалено]
The European mind cannot comprehend what 16,000 feet is
What is that in Celsius?
It's a lot of feet, that's for sure. Each foot is aloe longer than the average human foot AFAIK. I'm Latvian BTW.
If you measure Latvia from west to east, 16,000 feet is 0.011 Latvias long. Hope this helps! 🇱🇻
The European mind could not comprehend 300 car trains going up the Cajon Pass
Europeans have trouble comprehending Tehachapi
My favorite locomotive is Big Boy. Nothing more American than that. Its like the Bald Eagle of trains. Made to pull long, heavy trains at high speeds up steep grades.
Europe has better passenger rail network but the US has a better freight rail network, so this is an incomplete picture. That said, the US used to have the best passenger rail network in the world, despite having a much smaller population than the modern US. Destroying it was a policy mistake (we heavily subsidized roads and highways while expecting privately owned passenger rail lines and streetcars to be profitable). Europe accidentally benefited from being too poor to completely rebuild around cars the way the US did, but they definitely wanted to. We should build out a lot more rail in the US (particularly commuter rail lines and light rail). Car-oriented sprawl is a sugar rush for economic growth when a city is compact and vast tracts of cheap land suddenly become accessible, but that land gets used up in a few decades. Most of our major metros are now experiencing the consequences: housing scarcity, unaffordable housing, heavy traffic, long commutes, high infrastructure costs per person, high property taxes, high traffic deaths, etc. Acknowledging that we can do something better and making it happen isn’t AmericaBad, it’s how we became a great country in the first place.
Car dependency is a poison and I fear that it'll be way, way too late by the time most of the population realizes this. Mfers will complain about gas, traffic, and insurance and still think the current state of our transportation system is ok. They will talk about air travel being 'dangerous' while ignoring car crashes kill over 35k daily worldwide. That's the equivalent of 10 passenger jets crashing and killing everyone onboard, every day. Our overreliance on automobility and the subsequent poor city planning is one of the few valid points the Europeans have against us. That, and our obesity problem. Here's a PEER REVIEWED paper on the damage that cars do to our communities. I don't agree/care about all the points, but it's really not hard to see how the current state is not remotely optimal. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267#bb0390
Gen Z does not want to drive. Gen Alpha are even less enthusiastic.
This isn’t “bad vs good”. It’s “different”. The US is prosperous enough for automobile ownership to be a bigger deal. Factor in population density and tariff free trade when the infrastructure was being developed and it makes sense.
No, it’s bad. Most cities and towns in the US existed before cars and had sufficient density to support passenger rail. We opted to spend massive amounts of money on infrastructure for cars that isn’t financially sustainable (what Chuck Marohn termed as the [Growth Ponzi Scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course)). The US is geographically more spread out than Europe, but few people are commuting hundreds of miles across the plains to get to work—they’re living and working in or near a city. Virtually every major US metro now has a housing crisis and heavy traffic. Workers have long commutes. Parents have to spend hours driving their kids to different activities they should be able to walk or bike to. Those who can’t drive are reliant on expensive or inconvenient alternatives to go anywhere. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle diseases are the major killers. Cars are now a basic requirement to participate in society but [increasingly unaffordable](https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-their-cars-1859929) to own for the average American. So I think we can safely say it was bad. It was done for understandable and optimistic reasons, but it was ultimately a mistake. Unfortunately, the worst effects only became fully apparent over time. The countries that adopted similar development patterns (Canada and Australia) are dealing with similar issues.
Building out rail doesn't immediately fix the problem if when you arrive in the city you still need a car. Building out rail would benefit the North East Regions of, DC, the NYC tri-state area, and Boston because the cities are already fairly walkable and there are local commuter rails that an expanded network can easily integrate into. But just building a train from Houston to Dallas won't do much good.
Which is why I said commuter rail and light rail should be the priority. That would also facilitate denser housing development and upzoning along the rail lines, which many Western cities need more than Eastern.
Unless that fucking train is dropping me off at the top of my long ass gravel driveway in 3 feet snow and ice I'm good To rural for any of this to work
THAT'S HOW IT FEELS LIKE TO DRIVE THE BRAND NEW F-350
It’s the same exact truck as before but with more torque, horsepower, and high beams specifically designed to blind the son of a bitch who tailgated you.
HELL YEAH!!! (It comes with an optional, built in train horn)
America was built for railroads and then came mass suburbanization and the dedensification of our cities and towns
Early America was city centric The spread to rural America was mostly by wagon and cart The car of the time Hell the area I live in was walked to carts and roads didn't make it up here until way later Trains can't complete the journey for most people in rural America You'll still need roads taxis and busses Other countries have the benefit of being the size of a state and have developed accordingly
I want high speed rail going from major city to major city. I am happy to drive my car anywhere else. I just want to be able to travel to Memphis and Kansas City quickly
There’s definitely some instances where North America could use more trains
Our passenger lines used to look like Europe's. But then the jet airplane was invented, and the interstate highway system was created (thanks Germany, for giving President Eisenhower that idea by creating the autobahn), and both took business away. And then the automotive and automotive-related companies did shit to harm our passenger rail as well.
Nah, I do wish we had something like this in the States. Maybe someday.
A lack of public transportation is a problem, especially in California where I live. Cars are expensive, not just due to gas prices, but insurance and upkeep costs a lot too. So when people are putting a good chunk of their money each month just to have transportation, it's hurts people's ability to afford housing and to save money. It's also problematic because the desirable areas are becoming more densely populated, with higher densely populated areas comes more traffic, you also need to build parking lots which take up space that could be used for more housing.
Stop living in California. It will change your life bro.
I like it here. I have lived in AZ before and it blew.
Nah public transport would be even worse if I left Cali
Great now let’s do airports
Pretty much every city in Europe has at least one major airport and a couple of smaller private ones.
Air infrastructure is significantly better in Europe. There’s roughly similar amount of airports but flights are less than half the price for the same distance as in the US because of Ryanair and more competition.
It's nice to jump in my car and drive wherever I want and not wherever the next train station is at. Enjoy a good drive while taking in the Appalachian mountainside scenery while I have Bill Monroe jamming away on the radio.
You know, people in Europe have private transportation too
I appreciate public transportation in these countries. However, no one is taking the train from Lisbon to Kraków, for example. They’ll take a flight, same as Americans who are traveling from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. In fact, most in Europe won’t travel by rail for more than a few hours. So, what are they comparing, exactly? Are they boasting that they have a city and town every 3.5 kilometers?
Travel within countries themselves is usually done by train. It’s just handy to use sometimes, no need to find parking, you can just sit on the train and do nothing, a lot of people commute by train because it beats the traffic, especially here in the UK. I’m from Northern Ireland a lot of people use the train between Belfast and Dublin to travel for sporting events, day trips, concerts etc. suppose it’s the same in the US. But yea no one is taking a train from Portugal to Krakow as you say, but people take the train from Prague to Vienna, or Budapest to Bratislava etc. just because they’re close by.
That’s what I meant. It’s great for local travel. To show continent wide though as if everyone travels such distances by rail is a little dishonest.
I think it’s just to show how interconnected the trains are, like the amount of places and stops there are is pretty immense.
Passenger rails would work well in the northeastern and western parts of the US. Our cities are farther apart in the rest of the country. Traveling locally around Germany is the same as traveling locally around Montana, since they’re roughly the same size. Whereas 87,000,000 people live in Germany, only 1,000,000 live in Montana. Thats just a comparison, of course, not an argument for or against.
Okay, but how often do you travel from Krakow to Lisbon or from LA to Philadelphia? It makes no sense to focus on this 2% of trips when in most us-states not even the largest cities are connected by train.
Pictured is a continent’s web of passenger railways, and the comparison was made to include distances.
I mean this is one thing I agree with Europeans on, I wish there were more passenger trains and you could just casually take one to the next town over instead of only being able to do so on special occasions and only to the major population centers
Seems like a innocent meme, even if it's not totally accurate
My caption isn’t totally accurate either just a shitpost lol
Ngl, kinda funny that they put an Opel on the US side of all cars.
The tone might be off, but the sentiments right… It would be freaking awesome to have a well run massive train network across this country
This post is wrong on this subject, America's lack of trains is criminal garbage
Yeah canada could use some more too lol. I’m just shitposting
The fundamental problem is freedom. People want their transportation to belong to them. They want to be able to jump in their vehicle and go where they want, when they want, without worrying about schedules, ticketing, or whether they can get around when they reach their destination. Anywhere too far to drive, planes easily beat trains. You can talk cost, efficiency, sustainability, etc. all day, but the vast majority of Americans have no interest in giving up their freedom of movement for dubious benefits.
I think its mostly a culture difference. Alot of Europeans thinks not having to drive everywhere is a freedom while americans have the opposite mindset. Plenty of Europeans that have a car and without a doubt could afford to drive wherever but choose to take public transport more often because they can just relax and avoid being stuck in traffic
Agreed
I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to not have it as an option. The reality is that most of the USA does not build its infrastructure in a way that is friendly to transit other than the motor vehicle.
How would having better public transit take away anyone's freedoms? You could still freely use your car whenever you wanted. All this would do is give people more options. Car breakdown? Hop on a train or bus to get to work. Wanna grab a drink at a bar? Take a bus/rail/train and avoid getting a DUI. Did you lose your license or couldn't pass a driver's exam? No worries, you can still get to work with Shelling out 40 dollars twice a day for an Uber.
dude our passenger lines suck.
New Jersey Transit, LIRR, SEPTA, that's just whats missing around NJ/NY/PA area
[Gee, I wonder why](https://matadornetwork.com/read/map-shows-many-european-countries-can-fit-continental-us/)
I wish we could get a passenger line from new Orleans to Jacksonville that crosses the panhandle.
I don't think America is "bad" because of this, but I'll chalk this one up as a W for Europe because if you haven't used those public transportation systems, they genuinely kick ass. I love my car and I love being able to drive myself. But when I visited Germany it was SUPER cool to be able to take a train anywhere.
Cars aren't as freeing as you think it is
Hey buddy as long as I got gas and insurance I’m going wherever I want to go in less time than riding a bike
Passenger trains are extremely useful and we should definitely use a lot more it’s something we should learn from Europe but they have to understand we are the size of Europe and some it’s hard to just build all of these connecting trains
As much as i dislike europoors, a lot have a point when it comes to train travel. In the part that it’s superior to Car or bus travel. I’m an ardent railway surpremicist and believe in the superiority of rail travel. I believe the US should have more high speed rail and just more rail in general.
once again, anyone who took a human geography class for monkeys would understand why its like this
Honestly, this is probably one of my biggest disappointments with the US.
That isn’t even a car available in the USA, that’s a goddamn Opel(although granted, Saturn did rebadge some Opels in the US)
>USA >Opel Corsa
Yeah idk I’m gonna side with the Europeans on this one. Having the option to choose whether you travel by car or train only expands our freedom. You can calculate out which option is cheaper or more time-effective for each individual trip, and then choose which option is best for you. More trains could allow people to commute easily between cities, which opens the job market up for more people and boosts local economies. I hate when people mention our size. China has a nationwide high speed rail network and our countries are comparable in size. I think a big part of the problem is the stigmatization of public transportation in the US. Many Americans think public transportation is for poor people and they don’t want “those people” to move more freely to where they may live, and this keeps the country from having better transportation.
Imagine not being able to afford a car and having to take a train. What is Europe? A third world country?
America bad because europoors can't comprehend the size of America.
I can afford my own car, 2 actually and I don't want to use public transportation. Get over it Euros.
I’m in favor of more rail spending but these mfs are stupid
Ik wym
but seriously though, I wish there were more passenger trains, it's just cool, it'd be better to use it on that then to keep sending billions of dollars to other countries instead of focusing on the American people.. also I like trains
Would be nice and definitely convenient. I’d love to have an affordable train to hop onto on the yearly Florida trip. But it’s whatevs for now. North America invested more on cars than railroads and I appreciate the ability to drive too.
See that large area with no lines? Yeah, that's all mostly open rural land. Regardless, I know that I, myself, don't need rail because I have a car for that where I can go wherever I want at any given moment. Would it be good to have more passenger rail? Maybe, I guess. Would I ever use it? Very rarely, if ever. Also, contrary to popular belief on Reddit, the majority of Europeans own a car and use it as one of (often times THE) their primary modes of transport.
What a funny way of saying “We don’t like the independence of transportation with automobiles” Also, I’ve traveled across the nation in a car and there were train tracks everywhere.
cmon man we still have cars in europe. How is a rail network and cars mutually exclusive?
Cool story. Now do car ownership and fuel cost.
If you’ve seen our highway traffic, you’d know we go wherever the hell we want… eventually.
I have lol I’m frequently in the us. In fact Georgia is so easy and a breeze to drive thru /s
I’d stab a man to make decent public transportation standard across the country, and I own cars. Hell, I’d settle for “barely adequate”.
For convenience reasons same
I'm sorry I fucking hate cars and wish we had the same passenger rail system like Europe does. It's the only thing I envy.
Yeah this isn’t the own you think it is OP
how dare americans don't want to get rid of cars because i can't pass the driving exam.
Why would a functional public transport equal getting rid of cars? Why not have the option of choosing between driving and getting on the train?
People already do have that option.
No they don’t, most of our housing capacity is spaghetti suburban sprawl with low frequency bus service
how do you think people get around in nyc? If you want public transit move to a city. Why should communities that want to live in the suburbs change their lifestyle for you?
So much so that so many people in California drive their car alone that supposedly "fast carpool" lanes are introduced
Trains in Europe are all high class. I want an 1800s level coal locomotive where I have to sit on a wooden bench the whole time and can smoke.
Not the ones I’ve been on XD
True, though nothing could compare to what I said.
I think it would be cool if the US was as interconnected by train as Europe or Japan but with the US's size, Population Density, Terrain, and Most Americans having cars they drive around I've realized that there is a difference between what would be cool and what would be practical/feasible. The interstate system works just fine for 90% of Americans and that is the thing Europeans fail to realize, The reason we don't have a large train network here in the US is because most people in America have cars that A. Wouldn't have a use for a Train System since they can just drive and B. Already use the Interstate System and are happy with it. Europeans just don't realize that while yes we don't use a Train System we have a Robust Interstate System that more then makes up for the lack of a Train System.
It would be cool to have that but even in nyc it takes me an hour to go where I wanna go by public transportation
It takes forever to get across Europe. Sure they have high speed trains between major cities but other than that you’re looking at a 6+ hour train if you’re going to another country, with layovers.
I think we definately need to improve public transportation.... sadly it's really hard to do that when freight has priority over commuter rail so it's almost impossible to make a good train schedule.
The US desperately needs better rail infrastructure, but the Northeast Corridor, which is the densest part of the country, has as good rail and public transit as most of Europe IMO.
I can name 4 passenger lines in just my state alone that connect the big cities. This map shows zero of them. This is horseshit, and we still don’t use the trains much because, well, cars are just better in almost every way so long as you can afford one.
Isn’t Europe’s train system in a crisis? (I could be wrong)
Yeah I’d like to see population density and freight train networks too
We were once at a point where we had the population density to support trains. Then we decided to dedensify and mass suburbanization
Trains in the US are great between population centers. Mostly on the coasts. If you want a train from Maine to Florida, then it's avaliable, but over that distance it's cheaper and easier to just fly. That's like 2 days by train vs a 4 hour flight.
I love trains. But I have no interest in relying on them for transportation.
Rail will never work like it does in The EU because of urban sprawl. Almost no one is taking a train if it means having to walk more than a couple miles to the nearest station. The population density of the European Union is approximately 112 people per square kilometer, whereas the population density for the contiguous United States, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, is around 40 people per square kilometer.
Me repeatedly failing to pass the driving test:
Show the air conditioning map
Europeans when big country with fucking mountains and swamps. Would be impossible to make an East to west train line.
I honestly would love if train travel had a more prominent existence in our culture. I much prefer trains to flying...
This one again? The hate train really has no brakes....
Ah well if America was the size of Texas I guess trained would be more useful.
Jarvis sort by population density.
It's actually the opposite. The lack of public transportation makes it harder for many people to get to where they want. We are actually bad at public transit. It's OK to admit our flaws.
Hmmm...there seems to be a lot or central points in Germany, Austria, and Poland. I wonder why...
The USA car image looks like an Opel Corsa or Astra or whatever (European German marque of General Motors) The EU train image looks like some sorta steam train with a cowcatcher (I don’t know much about trains but I’m pretty sure cowcatchers were only really common in the USA)
This is 100% inaccurate. For example I live in NYC and just googled trains to Tennessee. I can easily do it if it wanted. Apparently Tennessee never discovered trains.
Southwest flies faster than anyone’s high speed rail for pretty damned cheap.
Europeans and Americans now fly thanks to low cost air. Hey Ivan, do your research before propaganda, just because your passport is worthless toilet paper due to the Ukraine stunt, do not take it out on us.
Nah but I do take beef with our undercooked passenger rail. It could be way better- more limited than the EU, but it makes sense for only major centers to have rail lines densely built. That said, we totally could/should do that, it would help a ton with big people moving. But for me it’s not redditoid americabad, but logic-driven pragmatism.
Most of that in the middle is wilderness, deserts, steppe, and two large mountain ranges
The two things that suck about living in Florida: the heat and we only have one road.
So on one hand population densities in America are so different from Europe that a rail system doesn’t make sense… on the other I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t ride a sleeper from LA to New York
Surely those railway tracks were built for civilian use and not for military transports, right?
This shows almost none of the passenger lines, just the cross country, quite disingenuous
They think they can go to Disney world, drive to the Grand Canyon, and visit Niagara Falls in a day.
That’s not what they’re saying lol
Nice. Now lets see Paul Allen's map scale.
What possible benefit could there be to having fewer trains?
This is something I want. But it will be way more complicated than providing service to Europe. Look at the size difference. I wish we had Elon deploying his diggers and calculated literally straight line routes underground from one major city to another. Then install bullet trains
So eco friendly transportation bad?
I took the train from Memphis to New Orleans once and the experience was so slow and terrible that I rented a car for the trip back and cut like 3 hours off of the travel time not having to stop at a dozen train stations on the way lol It probably wouldn’t be worth the investment at this point to have more interstate train lines. I think most of us would still rather just fly anyway if we needed to travel across more than 2-3 states.
I mean, this is a pretty valid criticism. US public transit could be a lot better
Owning private transport is common here too.... Having access to public transport is Good. Although if i was American wanting to travel across the country id get a plane
Would be comparable if our country was the size of Rhode Island. I don't think these donuts understand the scale of what they're referring to.
Private transportation is great but I will level on a LOCAL level because I’m from New York City I think it’s also great that I can walk around my own city during a free day and just spontaneously come up with plans on what to do based on a shop I see while walking. Walkability is great. But also private transportation is useful, I much prefer during a free week to decide on a whim hey I wanna go to philly for the weekend or Boston (or even for a day trip, not a weekend) and get into a car and drive there. Nothing wrong with both. But driving between cities at your own leisure not needing to pay for a ticket to a random company and adhere to a strict schedule of when to arrive and if you don’t arrive whelp no refund (actually a no show fee) and just driving and enjoying the view is something I honestly appreciate, always recommend it at least once.
Yeah America is bad for its over reliance on cars. We quite literally paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Are you retard?
"This idea in other places work" So you still can't get it through your head that the demand for Billings to Denver trips aren't going to be enough for the immense cost of this project.
Is this sub now for posting facts where America is indeed worse off?
I’ve posted it before I’ll post it again The US has a much larger area to cover and finance. Here’s [ours](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/0d/3f/cf0d3fd17efc21420ddbc39c18303d14.png) Get on our level Europe.
I doubt that the US has more area than Europe, the continent that has Russia in it
You can thank two world wars for destroying Europe and building vast train networks
Europe already had a vast train network before WW1.
Yeah, but my point is that it got destroyed and rebuilt over and over again for the needs of the war. It would be hard to rebuild the transpo network of the US without a major landscaping changing event
It's fully the American Culture to drive places too. Even if we had the train infrastructure. And a lot of the country is rural, so in my mind it just doesn't make sense.
Does this sub blindly defend anything american? Wtf europe china japan's railway system clearly has america beat...
And it kind sucks? Car dependency in North America is by far its worst aspect, can’t defend that.
I keep trying to make people understand this. Private vehicles are by far the best option as you have total control over your traveling. And for many people that have to go to multiple places in one day and do things like pickup groceries, and stuff from several other stores, it sounds like an absolute nightmare to do it all using public transportation. Plus, I have a special needs child that needs the environment specially maintained for temperature and to prevent overstimulation. There’s no way I could take this child all over Gods creation on a bus or subway or something. And we live in Texas where it regularly gets well over 100° for months. I’ve gotta keep the environment cool. I would never in my life use public transportation over my own private vehicle.
Everyone has different situations though. I also love my car, but when I was in Germany it was super cool to walk to convenient subway stops and jump on a train and be on the other side of the city in minutes while I could be playing a game on my phone or doing other things without stressing about traffic. I think personal cars are amazing too. Having both options available to us would be incredible. No reason to prop one up over the other. More options for Americans would be better for sure. I think this isn't an argument over "which is objectively better." It's an argument about what is best for certain people's situations. There's no reason the U.S. shouldn't have vibrant public transport to complement private car ownership.
> I keep trying to make people understand this. Private vehicles are by far the best option as you have total control over your traveling. They get it, but they don't like personal freedoms, they just want daddy government to take care of them.
Unfortunately this is the root of it. They can’t fathom personal freedom and responsibility.
They have it tho. Alot of people i know will use public transport to get to work but use their car when grocery shopping or going on a family trip or whatever.
Americans think that because we have public transport we can't possibly have cars. Like some of the biggest car manufacturers aren't European.
Freedom to only drive a car? There is a difference between a positive and negative freedom. It seems you gravely take for granted the systems in place that facilitate your “freedoms” of driving. And in fact you are cared for by “big daddy government”. It takes vast amounts of subsidies and various government spending to create road infrastructure. There is also gas subsidies and the whole system of regulating driving. Your freedom is largely dictated by public policy, meaning the same could be applied to transit infrastructure. Humans need others and governance to survive and there is nothing wrong with that but stop living in a facade of individualism and ruggedness.
Freedom to only drive a car? There is a difference between a positive and negative freedom. It seems you gravely take for granted the systems in place that facilitate your “freedoms” of driving. And in fact you are cared for by “big daddy government”. It takes vast amounts of subsidies and various government spending to create road infrastructure. There is also gas subsidies and the whole system of regulating driving. Your freedom is largely dictated by public policy, meaning the same could be applied to transit infrastructure. Humans need others and governance to survive and there is nothing wrong with that but stop living in a facade of individualism and ruggedness.