Seriously, why is this idea being thrown around? It’s not based in reality, and just fuels into pessimism. I’m American, so I’ll mostly focus on what I’m seeing here.
There has been so much progress, even just over the past decade. I think the reason that it feels like not much is being done is because the United States is so Massive. Even just New York can contain Beligum, Switzerland and the netherlands.
Looking at the US on a macro scale could give someone a picture of a country eternally doomed to have shitty transit and suburban sprawl forever. Thankfully, we have a beautiful think called local government.
There are a good number of places that you can go in the US that are very walkable and have good transit. Sure, it’s not on the level of Europe, but it’s definitely a good starting point if we’re talking about progress. Especially if we’re talking about progress within our lifetimes.
There are a lot of cool projects going on in the US right now, such as new rail lines, rail extensions, new BRT lines, and work being done on density. And of course roped into that we can’t forget about the massive California High-Speed Rail project, which if successful could have major implications for rail in the United States at large.
Is this enough? No. But it is real progress, and a sign that we’re at the beginning of real change in this country for transit and walkability.
And if you still think the US is shit and you really feel inclined to move out of your current suburban hell hole, you don’t even have to leave the US to do so. There are cities where you can go today in the US where you don’t have to own a car and can get around by walking. Not everything is a 6 lane stroad with giant parking lots and dead strip malls. We have DC, Philly, Boston and NYC as prime examples, which may not seem like much but NYC alone has 8.8 million people and could sure as shit fit way more.
Sure, we may never live to see the whole US become the netherlands, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that certain places in the US could be seriously be at that level within our lifetimes.
Hey I won’t probably live to see France be the Netherlands in biking, but we too move forwards!
I know all the enshittyfication/capitalism in social media pushes Trump(well you have a way choosing your presidents don’t you…) Police murdering minorities, conspiracy theories etc etc etc so people get dopamine locked to their feed. It’s quite infuriating to say the least.
Cheers for you!
A European friend.
I don’t think you understand the critique. The problem is all of the single-story and two-story construction. There’s no way to fix that quickly. It took a century to build it all. It’s going to take twice as long to migrate all of that low density into higher density construction and decrease the mileage required to live normal lives. Right now, the average suburbanite has to travel an insane number of total miles to do the basics of what they need to do for their families - food, healthcare, schooling, shelter, clothing, socializing, multi-generational relationships, work.
It’s not like local governments can build light rail or even busses to even 50% of the necessary things. Plus they’d have to change zoning codes against all the NIMBY pushback, plus it would take decades to consolidate those activities into higher density buildings.
No, the USA is fucked and it’s going to remain fucked for a long time.
I just don’t understand how any of this means the US is fucked. For example, in Georgia the majority of the population lives in small area of the state. Even if there’s a lot of suburban sprawl in the area, there are transit solutions that can accommodate for that, and we don’t have to tear up any suburbs to do it.
You’re right. We absolutely could build transit solutions, but people become dejected because we don’t. At least not in many places.
I’m in the SF Bay Area. It’s been dense here for a long time and there’s plenty of tax money sloshing around, but transit improvements move glacially slowly. I want to ride my bike to work. I want to take the bus to my kids pool. But I can’t. The infrastructure isn’t there, and there is no concerted regional effort to build it. Sure, we might have high speed rail in California decades from now, but meanwhile I have to keep driving literally everywhere. Unfortunately.
Yeah I hear you. Fortunately for CA HSR it seems like they’re pretty set on finishing up in about a decade, and I hope that remains the case and you get to see it and use it.
There’s no money for it, doing it requires obtaining rights of way the city doesn’t have, the belt highways are built specifically to prevent this, etc, etc, etc. The amount of time it would take to build these systems is its own problem. The only way to do it would be under socialist central planning, and it absolutely wouldn’t make any sense to build it into the suburban sprawl. Doing so would cement that sprawl by building additional infrastructure into a footprint that logistically is unsustainable anyway.
Its just America bad from the terminally online lefties. You can ignore it, join in on the circlejerk, or troll. Make your choice.
Not really it’s the reality that the necessary lifestyle changes necessary to combat our effects on the climate will take a long time, longer than we really have any ability to fix, compounded with a huge segment of our population that doesn’t believe climate change exists, and their representstives actively writing legislation that dampens any forward momentum on dealing with it, and some very fanatic religious peiple see it as the Book of Revalations being fulfilled.
I think on the climate change issue we are truly fucked and there’s nothing we can do (although I still don’t say we give up). I don’t see how this has to do with transit though, and it might actually help spur transit development in an ironic way.
A large part of the climate change problem comes from how absolutely dependent on cars we as a nation are. Fuck Cars focuses on climate change with using the lens of transit, but it’s interconnected with suburban sprawl, low density housing with no way to walk to walk anywhere, the perpetual underfunding of public transit, the stranglehold car manufacturers have over various segments of our society.
The pessimism comes because the overall trend looks bad, and people feel alienated politically and just in general.
The same people saying federal government shouldn’t meddle in state issues are now saying the state should meddle in local issues… obviously because the federal and local levels aren’t conservative enough for their tastes. How anyone could keep up with the mental gymnastics required to defend these inconsistent, contradictory hypocrites is beyond me.
