Comment by troupo
3 hours ago
No, the pitch isn't that. And yet in the US inevitably people will always demand to know government subsidies for everything but cars, and will pretend that alternative modes of transport are only proposed as a full replacement of cars. No one is taking your precious cars away.
I didn't bring up money except to call out that profitability of either trains or cars is irrelevant to actual utility and comfort. Obviously they both cost money and you can subsidize either one.
I'm also not concerned with or pretending that alternative modes of transport are full replacements of cars; basic comparison of the modes obviates that.
I also don't own a car, and if I did I wouldn't consider it precious, or be worried about anybody taking it away. Public mass transit advocates always go there though, it's a pretty common ad-hominem-adjacent implication. Cars are just generally a better experience. They go from A to B, and they don't have other people on them. Those factors make them obviously desirable.
If somebody comes up with a teleporter I can install at home I'll use that instead. Maybe then I'd consider that precious, or even be in love with it. It would save me a lot of time.
All of that aside my main point is to push back against the idea that more trains solve any problems with US transit, especially looking forward even a little into the future. They're complicated and time consuming to build out additional infrastructure for compared to an airport, and solve a transit gap between self-driving vehicles and air travel that will likely increasingly narrow.
> I wouldn't consider it precious, or be worried about anybody taking it away. Public mass transit advocates always go there though, it's a pretty common ad-hominem-adjacent implication.
Aka your pure fantasy that you present as fact. Of course there might be idiots who may claim to "seize the means of private transportation" or something like that, but let's not pretend it's a serious argument.
> Cars are just generally a better experience. They go from A to B, and they don't have other people on them. Those factors make them obviously desirable.
Can't see anyone arguing against that.
> All of that aside my main point is to push back against the idea that more trains solve any problems with US transit, especially looking forward even a little into the future.
Strange then that Northeastern Corridor whose validity you immediately called into question, keeps increasing ridership.
> solve a transit gap between self-driving vehicles and air travel that will likely increasingly narrow.
Of course they don't for many obvious reasons that start with words like "capacity" and "throughput".
It's also funny and ironic that you imagine the fantasy argument of "we'll take your cars away in favor of public transportation" and then literally arguing for taking away any and all alternative modes of transport except cars, and especially except cars owned by private companies (I do love the coming era of arbitrary surge pricing at any convenient time).