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Comment by kccqzy

11 days ago

> Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal frameworks that in the US make it very hard for this model to work

How so? In the United States Congress granted land to railroad companies, and the companies can sell the land to finance building tracks. Many cities started as railroad stops and grew because of the railroad.

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kccqzy

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d_sem  11 days ago

I suspect the commenter above is reflecting on 2026 USA and not 1850 USA. The past tense nature of your comment if part of the concern highlights a common recognition that there is limited evidence the country is currently capable of building.

CharlieDigital  11 days ago

A lot of NIMBY/racism/classism and modern reality of legal delays means that it can be costly.

Zoning laws is another. It's a lot of fun visiting Japan and Taiwan because you can wander around and there's a huge variation of utilization in a given block. US approach to zoning means that I rarely see similar utilization in the US.

Separate from this is politics.

I'm in the NYC metro area and we've been trying to expand access into NYC for decades.

You would think that this would be a no-brainer because it enables so much economic activity in both directions (NY/NJ). Yet, Chris Christie canceled the ARC project (which itself was years in the making) for optics at the time of the Tea Party.

  • kevin_thibedeau  11 days ago

    There's an existing disused commuter rail line in NJ near the Hudson that was shut down in the 60s. It still has many of its stations and density to support rail service today but can't be reopened because of the NIMBYs. If they can't make that work, the rest of the country is mostly hopeless.

  • kavok  11 days ago

    NIMBY seems to have a hard time stopping data centers. Why do they have more success stopping renewables and rail?

    • Avicebron  11 days ago

      If we put the same amount of economic pressure on rail that data centers have...the US would have probably have almost as nice infrastructure as China and be significantly better off.

    • kjkjadksj  11 days ago

      The public rail industry has no bribing mechanism unlike the data center industry and the fossil fuel industry. Did I write bribe? Sorry, “campaign contribution.” But sometimes also literally bribes like Tony Soprano cash in the bag.