Because I value my autonomy and don’t want to have to wait for a train to show up when I want to go somewhere. Also, paved roads are significantly cheaper to maintain than rail lines, which makes a substantial difference when you take into account the size of the US.
A frequent transport networks gives you much more autonomy than a car, since you don’t have to worry about maintenance, parking, or traffic. It can be frequent enough to just turn up and go.
Cars come along with many external costs that are often not accounted for, such as the costs associated with pollution and the increased healthcare costs associated with that as well as injuries and deaths caused by cars. Plus there’s all the parking and extra space needed between all of the places people want to go to needed for that parking and road space.
A train network isn’t going to run 24/7 in a town of 300 people no matter how many subsidies it gets from the government. It doesn’t make any sense to spend the resources and incur the pollution cost of running a train with nobody on it.
And before someone brings it up, I absolutely refuse to accept the idea of forcing people to live in cities, or anywhere else for that matter.
Most people live in cities. If those people don’t drive, the problems are pretty much solved.
Small towns can be very walkable, since you can easily get from one edge of town to the other. And they can have a connection to the outside. But again rural populations driving isn’t too much of an issue, as long as they aren’t driving into the city every day.
Instead I have to worry about switching trains and schedules and the weird guy in the corner who might have a gun and the homeless person yelling at the voices in their head.
I honestly will never use public transit as long as a private option is available. Fuck being packed in like sardines with no personal space. It gives me panic attacks.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}
Because I value my autonomy and don’t want to have to wait for a train to show up when I want to go somewhere. Also, paved roads are significantly cheaper to maintain than rail lines, which makes a substantial difference when you take into account the size of the US.
A frequent transport networks gives you much more autonomy than a car, since you don’t have to worry about maintenance, parking, or traffic. It can be frequent enough to just turn up and go.
Cars come along with many external costs that are often not accounted for, such as the costs associated with pollution and the increased healthcare costs associated with that as well as injuries and deaths caused by cars. Plus there’s all the parking and extra space needed between all of the places people want to go to needed for that parking and road space.
A train network isn’t going to run 24/7 in a town of 300 people no matter how many subsidies it gets from the government. It doesn’t make any sense to spend the resources and incur the pollution cost of running a train with nobody on it.
And before someone brings it up, I absolutely refuse to accept the idea of forcing people to live in cities, or anywhere else for that matter.
Most people live in cities. If those people don’t drive, the problems are pretty much solved.
Small towns can be very walkable, since you can easily get from one edge of town to the other. And they can have a connection to the outside. But again rural populations driving isn’t too much of an issue, as long as they aren’t driving into the city every day.
Instead I have to worry about switching trains and schedules and the weird guy in the corner who might have a gun and the homeless person yelling at the voices in their head.
I honestly will never use public transit as long as a private option is available. Fuck being packed in like sardines with no personal space. It gives me panic attacks.