This is something that I don't understand. California highways are filled with big electronic billboards remindins people that "buzzed driving is drunk driving" and "if tired, pull over and take a rest." This suggests that the government knows that driving is dangerous, many people are bad drivers, and they are going to drive under less than ideal conditions. They then set up a system that requires people to drive to get anywhere and go out at night.
Just because inter-city passenger rail in the United States might not have made sense like it did in Europe, doesn't mean that we should have totally ignored intra-city transit. Like the gigantic sprawling cities create a lot of miserable driving experiences and road rage. Even with dispersed work destinations rather than everybody going downtown or to a few industrial areas for work, having everybody have to drive everywhere causes problems.
I don't think this is accurate on how America abandoned public transportation and inter-city rail transportation. A lot of transit systems like BART, the DC metro, and MARTA were built during the height of the Cold War because it was clear everybody driving everywhere did not work. Other systems were planned but got nowhere. Plus, transit and rail transit was in decline long before the Cold War started and only the Great Depression and WWII rationing saved it a little. Transit ridership peaked around WWI and started crashing down fast after that.
By the mid-1930s, over one out of three American households had cars. In contrast, I think only around 4% of British households had cars at the time. Americans were wealthy enough to afford cars and the car also fitted our cultural self image as free wheeling and dealing people who went where we wanted when we wanted. So Americans took to the car in vast numbers and government policy followed them because of a combination that is what the people wanted, overall cultural love for the car that effected officials too, and a reluctance to give a tough no to a public that loved cars plus some other stuff like a belief dispersal is better defense policy in case of nuclear attack and a love for the single family home. A lot of the transit and rail companies were also hated during the early to mid-20th century.
Europeans also promoted the car a lot after WWII and Europeans took to the car when they could afford it. Britain, France, Italy, and other countries ripped up many of their tram networks and replaced them with buses just like the cities of the Western hemisphere. The reason why transit and rail was invested in was because fewer Europeans could afford cars until the 1960s and 1970s. Italy invested a lot more in roads than cars. Same with the United Kingdom. Only France really invested in rail like the United States did.
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This is something that I don't understand. California highways are filled with big electronic billboards remindins people that "buzzed driving is drunk driving" and "if tired, pull over and take a rest." This suggests that the government knows that driving is dangerous, many people are bad drivers, and they are going to drive under less than ideal conditions. They then set up a system that requires people to drive to get anywhere and go out at night.
I'm actually a bit pissed at the speed because it shows that a government can move fast on physical work when it wants to.
The gates are being put up fast.
SF has been adding fair gate barriers that people can't jump over to the system. I haven't seen any bad behavior in months.
Just because inter-city passenger rail in the United States might not have made sense like it did in Europe, doesn't mean that we should have totally ignored intra-city transit. Like the gigantic sprawling cities create a lot of miserable driving experiences and road rage. Even with dispersed work destinations rather than everybody going downtown or to a few industrial areas for work, having everybody have to drive everywhere causes problems.
I take BART everyday. There was a problem with disorderly conduct but that has been cleared up.
I don't think this is accurate on how America abandoned public transportation and inter-city rail transportation. A lot of transit systems like BART, the DC metro, and MARTA were built during the height of the Cold War because it was clear everybody driving everywhere did not work. Other systems were planned but got nowhere. Plus, transit and rail transit was in decline long before the Cold War started and only the Great Depression and WWII rationing saved it a little. Transit ridership peaked around WWI and started crashing down fast after that.
By the mid-1930s, over one out of three American households had cars. In contrast, I think only around 4% of British households had cars at the time. Americans were wealthy enough to afford cars and the car also fitted our cultural self image as free wheeling and dealing people who went where we wanted when we wanted. So Americans took to the car in vast numbers and government policy followed them because of a combination that is what the people wanted, overall cultural love for the car that effected officials too, and a reluctance to give a tough no to a public that loved cars plus some other stuff like a belief dispersal is better defense policy in case of nuclear attack and a love for the single family home. A lot of the transit and rail companies were also hated during the early to mid-20th century.
Europeans also promoted the car a lot after WWII and Europeans took to the car when they could afford it. Britain, France, Italy, and other countries ripped up many of their tram networks and replaced them with buses just like the cities of the Western hemisphere. The reason why transit and rail was invested in was because fewer Europeans could afford cars until the 1960s and 1970s. Italy invested a lot more in roads than cars. Same with the United Kingdom. Only France really invested in rail like the United States did.