this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Yeah, I agree with you. Being 100% without a car is hard in most cases.
And the answer I see is trains. For the amount of money that does into the car industry (+ multi lane roads, administration, maintenance, etc) we could have super fancy, comfy, fast, frequent, and cheap/free trains.
And people would have more mobility too, at a fraction of the cost and environmental damage.
Robust public transit is the obvious answer to ridding ourselves of the car menace. Now, I need a few hundred billion dollars to "lobby" this into existence.
Trains for long distance + trolleys and subways for local travel. There will invariably be people whose transportation needs require a private vehicle but this combo alone would clear up the majority of cars on the road in my opinion.
Yes, exactly this.
I would love all city roads to look like this (but non-monoculture, have some flowers):
Even in countries with pretty good public transit like the UK and Germany, a large majority of families have a private vehicle. If we had better trains and subways in the US, I don't think too many people would sell their cars, but only use them once or twice a week, rather than once or twice a day.
That's a huge win in my book.
UK and Germany don't have good public transport, maybe except for individual cities. Switzerland on the other hand has good and frequent public transport nationwide.
As an American who has experienced Deutsche Bahn, National Rail, and Amtrak, I'll stand by Germany and the UK having pretty good inter-city rail compared to us. Lübeck and Bath are the cities there I've been with the worst public transit, and they would be well above average in the US.
I haven't been to Switzerland yet, but it's not shocking to hear the public transit there is all-around better.
The trains in Japans greater Tokyo area were amazing when I went to visit. 99 percent of the time they took like 3 or 4 minites more than taking a car and I didn't need tk worry about parking or driving.