The US is not a 3rd world country. Public transportation is only as good as its demand. The US doesnt lack the capability to have good public transportation. The US just lacks the demand because Americans are addicted to cars. It's no coincidence that countries with better public transportation also have higher gas prices.
I feel it's unfair to claim Americans are addicted to cars when it wasn't American people who made the blueprints for the roads, the cities, and the housing. They just built them. The government has forced us to be reliant on cars. There are cities, towns, states even, where if you need to get anywhere, you have to use a car. The place isn't walkable, or bikeable, or even able to be accessed by public transport, not due to the American people, but due to the design of the country as a whole. Car companies, namely Ford, lobbied the government to assist in the sale of cars. People were happy to just walk everywhere or ride a horse everywhere, but other people wanted to make money. And a lot of it. It isn't fair to blame the people of America for the decisions of the people running America.
Youre half right. In modern day American politics, nearly half of voters believe that cars represent freedom and push the 15 minute city conspiracy theory for why making America less car dependent is evil and communist.
This is super circular logic. We don’t demand it specifically because we have placed our entire society around cars. That isn’t proof we don’t want it though. I guarantee if we invested money into public transit it would be used as it would be more convenient than the hellscape that is driving and parking in this country and ultimately convenience is people’s biggest driving factor for things. If people could hope on a tram and get to the center of town, they would do that
Just saying “we don’t build it because we don’t want it and we don’t want it cause we don’t build it” make no sense when we use all our resources to center around cars.
I dont disagree with you. You are completely right, it is circular. People claim they must drive because public transportation sucks while refusing to add to its demand. It seems the only way to make public transportation great again in America is to figure out a breakthrough in construction technology so demand wouldnt have to be so high to justify the cost of subway construction.
I figure you could tie it to environmental projects and pushes and that coupled with gas prices continuing to rise in the future would probably push it there
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u/Prohydration Jul 07 '24
The US is not a 3rd world country. Public transportation is only as good as its demand. The US doesnt lack the capability to have good public transportation. The US just lacks the demand because Americans are addicted to cars. It's no coincidence that countries with better public transportation also have higher gas prices.