Yes. If we had infinite money, infinite time, and the ability to put people into stasis while we tear up entire cities to retrofit them for a train system… that still wouldn’t solve the problem.
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
EDIT: lol so the !fuckcars on lemmy.world is just pro car drama addicts, got it.
Fun how we did that over multiple centuries. And it mostly corresponds to horse/buggy infrastructure
I will basically never defend modern city infrastructure. The US is probably one of the worst for it, but you can also see it in a lot of european and asian cities as well. And a lot of it is because those rail lines were being built while the country was.
It is a lot easier to build an efficient rail network when you are building up the city/country itself. Paris has been a center for culture in all of Europe (arguably all of the World) for centuries, so it makes sense to have lots of solid rails becoming a hub there. But also? Sometimes the city that was a major player last century becomes a glorified truck stop this century (I am going to intentionally not cite references since people get pissy). So you have a bunch of rail lines that exist entirely to change trains. And so forth.
And we can actually see this with the north eastern US. NYC is obviously one of the few properly functioning cities in the country. But if you actually check out the amtrak lines, they look very “european”. https://www.amtrak.com/plan-your-trip.html You can get almost anywhere within two days or so. Most of the major cities have a few major stops and those are generally serviced-ish by buses to get you the rest of the way. I grew up on the East Coast and rode the hell out of amtrak. It works about as well as the UK rail system (now THAT is a backhanded compliment…).
And you can also see which cities were “big” in the 1800s but mostly faded to irrelevance in the 1900s and 2000s.
The issue becomes as you go farther West (because, remember, comparing the US to a European country is stupid. Our states are about the size of a country and it is a much more realistic comparison to do US and EU… and here is hoping for a Texit or a Frexit pretty soon…). There is just so much empty landmass (and not even just the flyover states) that it doesn’t make sense to have a proper grid over everything. But you then run into the issue of cities like Detroit that more or less collapsed for socioeconomic reasons or the hellscape that is Phoenix Arizona where even the residents don’t understand why so many people want to live on the surface of the sun.
Given time and money? I think we could get a REALLY solid network. Just looking at that amtrak map, a train line from Albuquerque to Dallas and turning Denver into a hub would go a long way toward making rail travel viable in the Southwest (and probably help with supply chain issues massively). The flyover fun that is the Dakotas and Wyoming… moving on.
But, again, that doesn’t solve the problem outside of those cities/“cities”. Because maybe you now have a nice train going through Buffalo, Wyoming. People in Worland are still looking at a 90 mile trip just to be able to start their travel. And MAYBE that is a popular enough route that we have regular bus service. But what about the folk in Hyattville? Also, I have no idea if any of these towns have more than five people in them, I am literally just looking at google maps and picking arbitrary names. So grain of salt, but the principle holds.
My brother in Christ we haven’t BEEN HERE for multiple centuries. Fun watching people give zero fucks that their defense of the status quo doesn’t make a damn lick of sense or even adhere to basic knowledge of reality.
My brother in Christ we haven’t BEEN HERE for multiple centuries.
Is this a “god made Earth last week” kind of thing?
In Europe and Asia, we have literally been building up infrastructure for over 1000 years. If we consider the early Roman/British/Whoever roads to be the “origin” of modern infrastructure, that goes to “around 753 BC”. If we actually go by history and the origin of “the road”, then we are looking at 10,000 BC. And if we are just saying paved roads, Egypt in 2600 BC.
Cities emerge out of population centers (unless you are building stuff for the Saudis) and railroads/highways/whatever all emerge from the heavily used roads. Whether replacing them or following similar paths.
As for the babies in the room: The United States was “gifted by the Native Americans” in the 1600s and declared in 1776. And the Louisiana Purchase, which was France selling the Americans large parts of the land that was “gifted” to them by the Native Americans, was in 1804. And, for poops and giggles, California became a state in 1850, but white folk were doing their thang back to the 1700s.
So… yes, we have been here for multiple centuries, regardless of whatever Father Tom says to you.
Also, that very mockingly euro-centric view ignores all the trails and outright roads that the indigenous people of the Americas and Australia and the like had. That colonizers mostly just claimed for their own, the same way they claimed the choice places for population centers (access to fresh water, game, etc).
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}
Fun how we had zero fucking problem doing it to every city in the country for cars. 🤷
EDIT: lol so the !fuckcars on lemmy.world is just pro car drama addicts, got it.
Fun how we did that over multiple centuries. And it mostly corresponds to horse/buggy infrastructure
I will basically never defend modern city infrastructure. The US is probably one of the worst for it, but you can also see it in a lot of european and asian cities as well. And a lot of it is because those rail lines were being built while the country was.
It is a lot easier to build an efficient rail network when you are building up the city/country itself. Paris has been a center for culture in all of Europe (arguably all of the World) for centuries, so it makes sense to have lots of solid rails becoming a hub there. But also? Sometimes the city that was a major player last century becomes a glorified truck stop this century (I am going to intentionally not cite references since people get pissy). So you have a bunch of rail lines that exist entirely to change trains. And so forth.
And we can actually see this with the north eastern US. NYC is obviously one of the few properly functioning cities in the country. But if you actually check out the amtrak lines, they look very “european”. https://www.amtrak.com/plan-your-trip.html You can get almost anywhere within two days or so. Most of the major cities have a few major stops and those are generally serviced-ish by buses to get you the rest of the way. I grew up on the East Coast and rode the hell out of amtrak. It works about as well as the UK rail system (now THAT is a backhanded compliment…).
And you can also see which cities were “big” in the 1800s but mostly faded to irrelevance in the 1900s and 2000s.
The issue becomes as you go farther West (because, remember, comparing the US to a European country is stupid. Our states are about the size of a country and it is a much more realistic comparison to do US and EU… and here is hoping for a Texit or a Frexit pretty soon…). There is just so much empty landmass (and not even just the flyover states) that it doesn’t make sense to have a proper grid over everything. But you then run into the issue of cities like Detroit that more or less collapsed for socioeconomic reasons or the hellscape that is Phoenix Arizona where even the residents don’t understand why so many people want to live on the surface of the sun.
Given time and money? I think we could get a REALLY solid network. Just looking at that amtrak map, a train line from Albuquerque to Dallas and turning Denver into a hub would go a long way toward making rail travel viable in the Southwest (and probably help with supply chain issues massively). The flyover fun that is the Dakotas and Wyoming… moving on.
But, again, that doesn’t solve the problem outside of those cities/“cities”. Because maybe you now have a nice train going through Buffalo, Wyoming. People in Worland are still looking at a 90 mile trip just to be able to start their travel. And MAYBE that is a popular enough route that we have regular bus service. But what about the folk in Hyattville? Also, I have no idea if any of these towns have more than five people in them, I am literally just looking at google maps and picking arbitrary names. So grain of salt, but the principle holds.
My brother in Christ we haven’t BEEN HERE for multiple centuries. Fun watching people give zero fucks that their defense of the status quo doesn’t make a damn lick of sense or even adhere to basic knowledge of reality.
Is this a “god made Earth last week” kind of thing?
In Europe and Asia, we have literally been building up infrastructure for over 1000 years. If we consider the early Roman/British/Whoever roads to be the “origin” of modern infrastructure, that goes to “around 753 BC”. If we actually go by history and the origin of “the road”, then we are looking at 10,000 BC. And if we are just saying paved roads, Egypt in 2600 BC.
Cities emerge out of population centers (unless you are building stuff for the Saudis) and railroads/highways/whatever all emerge from the heavily used roads. Whether replacing them or following similar paths.
As for the babies in the room: The United States was “gifted by the Native Americans” in the 1600s and declared in 1776. And the Louisiana Purchase, which was France selling the Americans large parts of the land that was “gifted” to them by the Native Americans, was in 1804. And, for poops and giggles, California became a state in 1850, but white folk were doing their thang back to the 1700s.
So… yes, we have been here for multiple centuries, regardless of whatever Father Tom says to you.
Also, that very mockingly euro-centric view ignores all the trails and outright roads that the indigenous people of the Americas and Australia and the like had. That colonizers mostly just claimed for their own, the same way they claimed the choice places for population centers (access to fresh water, game, etc).
OOOOHHHHHHHHH You’re comparing apples to turnpikes and claiming it a win. Gotcha. Have fun mate.