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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Why is decent rail service, like basic medical care, a contentious issue in the U.S.? Even this article casts shade by saying 'Bear is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Biden’s home of Wilmington.' As if having access to public transportation is some kind of left wing elite privelege that no one else can utilize.
Because of capitalism and the US oil and car industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Because conservatives have tricked people into believing that spending money for quality of life improvements is bad.
It cuts into the money we give military contractors.
Genuinely millions of people think the government doing stuff is socialism / communism.
I mean, sometimes it is socialism, and that's not a bad thing.
Thats not what socialism is. Socialism is basically collective ownership of all of the means of production. Its a term used by a variety of egalitarian (classless) political theories.
One part of the problem is that Congress has a rural bias, so there are a lot of rural Congresspersons who don't see the benefit of better rail service so they won't vote for it.
Less not benefit and more that it basically destroys highway based economies, that is to say it destroys all non agrarian rural economies.
Car companies successfully got out ahead of Adam Something and NJB viewers to conspiricize 15 minute cities
Because of Republicans.
Why is decent rail service treated as something only the north east can have? Like, I’m glad they’re getting more, but it can be frustrating how there’s a fair amount in one area and basically none west of the Appalachian mountains.
America is about twice the size of all of Europe. Railroads were controlled by monopoly rich people. Once America became more industrialized, planes became a better cargo transit option. That and the interstate system made trucks an even better economical option. Railroads were not an option as they were expensive and land intensive(which also meant more money for acquiring land)
For medical care, the US government actually spends a bunch on healthcare on par with most other countries. Just that a majority of the monet will go to a bloated medical company into a billionair's pocket before any of it applies to an individual.
So, extreme capitalism ruined both. Yet we have politicians and people who think we should push further towards a capitalistic way of running things..
Railroads are land intensive but somehow 27 lane highways aren’t? Also wait until you find out how expensive it is to maintain all of those highways…
Railroads have always been business owned. So acquiring land is expensive for them. Highways and interstates are government owned. So they just forced owners to accept the appraised value.
And for whatever reason you think we couldn’t do literally the exact same thing we did with highways to build nationalized rail?
We could call it, let’s see, hmmm …. America’s Track? I wish there was a way to shorten that …. AmeriTrack? … AmRail?
You might be on to something, but I gotta say this all sounds vaguely familiar for some reason 🤔
I wish we did. It seems logical that railroads should be government run transit option.
Do you have even the slightest idea how much land we already have for railroads that already existed but have been abandoned?
No they aren’t. Amtrak is literally a publicly owned company. Basically all passenger rail in the United States is Amtrak in the modern era
California is as densely populated as Spain, which has an excellent high speed rail network, the northeastern US has densities comparable with Central Europe and the rest of the East coast is well within the ranges seen in western Europe.
the u.s. spends up to twice as much on health care, and doesn't cover 'as much' or 'as many', as those other nations that have nationalized or 'socialized' health care programs.
I’m going with “size doesn’t matter” here; it’s all politics. On the one hand we have a political requirement that all these long distance routes be kept running, even if they’ll never be viable, never be funded adequately. But on the other hand most of the population is in urban/suburban areas that could be effectively served by good rail service. We don’t have the political will power to create good rail service where it’s most effective, most needed, but we do waste money on bad rail service where it will never be effective
I’m not buying this, since the tracks and right of way used to exist. Yes it’s really expensive to acquire now, and that’s going to happen since centers of population change but you can’t use this as an historical reason, because historically we had a lot more train service.
Yeah I’d love to take a train from Ohio to California if it didn’t take longer than the greyhound for more money than a plane ticket. At our size low speed long distance passenger rail is unwanted. But I think a lot of people would be comfortable with a 1-2 hour ride from Cleveland to Chicago and another hour or two to St. Louis, and so on until they’re in California by the end of the day or so. And it should be subsidized to allow it to compete with the heavily subsidized highway and air systems.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d also love to take long distance train rides and believe it more than worthwhile to build them all up to modern high speed lines. Some services are worth more than immediate profit/loss.
However the reality is long distance lines will never have high ridership, never be profitable, so it is disingenuous to require those lines while claiming rail never makes a profit.
We need to make a decision and stick with it:
— is good train service a societal good that benefits us all over the long term, in which case the long distance lines deserve better funding, along with the entire system ?
— Or do we focus on profit/loss, in which case we need to close the long distance lines, the connectivity to to less populated towns, small cities, counties, entire states, the integration to bring our country together, in favor of greatly increased inter-city rail where it is most needed, most effective and can be profitable by serving half the population in the highest population areas?
I believe it’s a public good and we deserve it regardless of profit. Just like mail. Though I think prioritizing high population areas is worthwhile in part due to the fact that it will help fund the unprofitable bits.
But the current air travel system cannot be sustained long term. Whether by willful decarbonization or by lack of oil in the ground airplanes will have to move towards alternative fuel sources. On one hand there’s hydrogen but I’m a huge supporter of using rail as a more efficient and affordable solution if we build the infrastructure in.
US has an incredible number of railroads. They are freight-only.
Maybe North America but Europe is larger than the US and especially the contiguous US. There are also a shit ton of different countries in Europe which all have different laws and standards which are not easy to work with. They seemed to be able to do just fine. Although they did not cater near as much to auto manufacturers and rip up rail line we did in the US.
As for medical care, the US spends significantly more per person (19% of GDP vs 10-11% for most others) and you are correct that the main reason for that is bloated medical companies.