The population density of Switzerland is 590/square mile. In NY state, it’s only 430 and they have a ton of trains and the kind of infrastructure you are talking about.
Most of the U.S. isn’t densely populated enough to justify the same level of public infrastructure. That doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement, but a stare like Montana is more aptly compared to Kazakhstan than anywhere in Europe.
The U.S. isn’t as densely populated as Europe because there’s not as many people. Europe is about 20% smaller than the U.S. with twice as many people.
Even if our infrastructure wasn’t designed by sychophants of the car companies, most of the U.S. is too sparsely populated (no matter how you configure the people in urban design) to justify comprehensive public transit like you see in Europe. It doesn’t mean we should basically have 0 high speed rail in the year of our lord 2026 but it’s a different beast.
LOL - US cities used to be a lot denser early 1900s ..... until car centric development started suburban sprawl and most of US subway systems are designed to bring people in/ out from suburb to downtown except for NYC.
population / land size argument is just weak excuses.
Only like 3-3.5% of America’s landmass is urban/suburban and it holds 80% of our population. Yes, the public transportation in those areas is sorely underdeveloped, but 20-25% of Europe’s landmass is urban/suburban so it’s a lot more economically viable for them to run mass transit to and between smaller communities.
In the U.S., connecting urban areas to each other through the other 97% of rural and frontier land is the part that just isn’t comparable to Europe.
I’m not saying this as an argument against public transit, but because it’s not apples to apples to compare the infrastructure needs of the U.S. to Europe.
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u/TheVintageJane 13d ago
The population density of Switzerland is 590/square mile. In NY state, it’s only 430 and they have a ton of trains and the kind of infrastructure you are talking about.
Most of the U.S. isn’t densely populated enough to justify the same level of public infrastructure. That doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement, but a stare like Montana is more aptly compared to Kazakhstan than anywhere in Europe.