this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Americans will literally do anything to not build trains
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.”
Trains famously bad at traveling long distances.
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.
This is again a problem of America not investing in its transportation infrastructure, not a fault of trains.
There are many benefits to trains, but when you have 100 people in a 1000 square mile area, is anyone, including government, going to be willing to run the rail, build the station, and send trains there multiple times a day? I highly doubt it.
Your doubt has no bearing on all of the stops in which that is a reality in every country that has proper transportation infrastructure.
Your example is also immaterial to the benefits of trains public services.
You're arguing that we shouldn't build any libraries because a couple people somewhere can't read.
I’m not at all saying that train infrastructure should not be built out. I’m saying it still requires cars in many parts of the US.
The person I originally replied to however, heavily implied we should be ignoring EVs and focusing on trains instead.
I get that.
I travel a lot, and the US is the only country so far where traveling to different areas is a pain in the ass because they never bothered with transportation infrastructure, so I'm very dedicated to the US catching up with the rest of the world in terms of transportation.
Like you don't have to plan road trips in China, you just hop on a train or bus and you are there. Wherever you want to go, national parks, mountains, it's all just taken care of, and there are meals and snacks to buy, sleeper cars, electric charging.
You can decide to take your family to the equivalent of Yellowstone if you lived in California and get in a train to go there without any hassle or planning, and it'll be within your budget.
But EVs rock too.