I want to give some clarification because a lot of people misunderstood what I said in the video and I missaid some things as well. 1. The map at the beginning of the video is of "Mass transit railway lines" that go between nations, which I then compared to mass transit railway lines that go between US states. The map also includes ferry routes, which I know is a bit confusing because I didn't state that in the video so apologies for that. Here's an interactive map so you can click around for yourself: www.eurail.com/en/plan-your-trip/railway-map 2. I do switch between talking about the European Union and Europe a few times throughout the video which might have been a bit confusing as well. 3. When I say that the "EU's" road network is not nearly as congested as the US' it's true, and I think people got confused because they thought I meant Europe, which would have contradicted my statement because European nations are in the list I show. I do know that I said Europe instead of the EU once when showing the list however so that's a mistake, sorry for that. 4. The fuel prices I showed were from 2021 because I felt they were more accurate long-term since prices have gone insane recently.
It's just the Eurail/Interrail Map. It doesn't show every major railway line in Europe, especially in eastern and southeastern Europe. The other map, you showed, with the high speed railways is more accurate. The purpose of this map is to show popular routes across Europe to popular destinations and major cities, e.g. London - Penzance is not an important railway line in Europe.
Well, you said each yellow line represents a rail line and there most certainly is not a physical rail link between Great Britain and Ireland and there aren’t two links between the UK and France
Saying that Europe is less congested with showing that Europe has 7 of the the most congested cities. America 0. Then you follow by saying it’s weird how the place with more roads has more congestion. Except the table you showed previously counters that.
A few issues here: Europe has double the population density of America. The denser areas of America actually do have much better public transit than the rest of the country. America has the largest rail network in the world, and it used to provide excellent passenger service. It could do so again if more local public transit was available from stations on that network. Los Angeles did tear up its street car tracks a century ago, but it’s currently building out its heavy rail subway and light rail streetcar network again. These trains will serve as arteries, with bus routes from train stations serving as capillaries in a circulatory system of public transit. Many other American cities are currently building out similar networks. Freedom of travel in the EU isn’t totally a good thing. Sure, rich Northern and Western Europeans can vacation easier and poor Southern and Eastern Europeans can go get jobs easier. But Southern and Eastern European countries suffer brain drain and get stuck with low value added manufacturing, resource exports, and tourism industries. Meanwhile most of the wealth flows straight back to banks in Northern and Western European countries. The system benefits the rich far more than it benefits the poor.
@@iggiewalsh2237 i live at the italian-austrian border and over that 1 track we have 6 more train tracks, ad for every italian region and ur already 120 more or less added for 1 country
The rail network at the start is not actually the rail network, it shows most major cities and to which major cities they are connected to. The actual railways are waaaay more complex
@@timontoth2728 Not quite, the map represents lines between major connected cities from different countries. Those rails cross more cities in their paths. The don t represent the path of the rails themselves. Moreover, Italy's or France's rails would literally fill the map with no visible gaps if they are drown with such thick lines.
I am living in Hannover, Germany. I once read that our public transport company guaranteed that in the city nobody has to walk more than 250m to reach a bus or tram. You can reach every part of the city with those in a short and efficient timespan. Most of the time we do not appreciate this system but if we visit other countries we realise what we have at home and well the system works.
@@Snibble Never had a issue with that. I took a train direct to Vienna and Amsterdam several times. You can travel to several major and smaller Cities.
The thought of not having a car growing up in Kansas is almost insane to me. Now that I live in Prague, I personally think that great public transportation is far FAR better in almost every way possible. Hands down. So cheap, so efficient, I don't have to worry about leaving my car and getting an uber when I get wasted on a night out, and honestly, I think it contributes a lot to my mental health, you feel far more connected with people. You don't feel isolated! If I were a city planner back in the states I would put a MASSIVE focus on public transportation in cities, it'd be a no brainer.
Like yeah the Public transport is really cheap... Here in Ústecký kraj in the litle town of Bílina, The bus cost only 2 czech crowns...which for any american out here is 0,080 dollar.
I don’t think the maps used (at least of europe), both for rail and highway systems, reflect the real life situation very well. In both cases you show the official international routes in both cases. On top of that there are thousands of extra lines in every country, this is the same with highway networks. The rail network in europe is much more comprehensive in comparison to this map..
Just a small correction. At 5:58 you claim that EU citizens are able to move freely to other schengen EU countries and stay up to 3 months. THIS IS FALSE. You are allowed to stay INDEFINITELY in other schengen countries as a EU citizen. You can buy/rent a home and work in the other nation without even notifying anyone and it's your RIGHT as a EU citizen to live in another schengen EU nation indefinitely.
Depends on the country i think. German foreign office: Since the entry into force of the Freedom of Movement Act/EU on 1 January 2005, EU citizens are no longer required to apply for a residence permit after entering Germany. However, they need to register, like everyone else, with their local residents registration office
No this video is correct: EU citizens with a valid identity card or passport may: -enter another EU Member State without requiring an exit or entry visa. Family members who are not nationals of a Member State do not require either an exit or entry visa if they possess a valid residence card; - live in another Member State for up to 3 months without any conditions or formalities; - live in another Member State for longer than 3 months subject to certain conditions, depending on their status in the host country: ---- those who are employed or self-employed do not need to meet any other conditions, ---- students and other people not working for payment, such as those in retirement, must have sufficient resources for themselves and their family, so as not to be a burden on the host -country’s social assistance system, and comprehensive sickness insurance cover; - have to register with the relevant authorities if living in the country longer than 3 months. Their family members, if not EU citizens, require a residence card valid for 5 years; - be entitled to permanent residence if they have lived legally in another Member State for a continuous period of 5 years. This also applies to their accompanying family members; - have the right to be treated on an equal footing with nationals of the host country. However, host authorities are not obliged to grant benefits to EU citizens not working for payment during the first 3 months of their stay. Freedom of movement only applies to people who work or are self-employed, those that aren't like retirees or students have rules like mentioned in the video.
@@mrpotifar no passport required, BUT, a travel document is required as you must present one IF asked for it by that member state's authorities. (Which almost never happens in my experience). An id card inside of Schengen is also considered a travel document (so that's where ne 'no passport' comes from). I worked as an immigration officer for a couple of years. Rules might have changed in the meantime though, or my memory is failing me.
I was born and raised in the UK but moved to The USA at 22. I had never felt more isolated! In England I could easily look up bus timetables, many of which would take me exactly where I needed to go, use the bike lanes or cycle tracks to go to the town centre or take a train for the day to the next city over and it would be quick and cheap. Here in the USA I felt I HAD to have a car and learn to drive, its near impossible to function in society without one and that’s terribly sad. EDIT: for context, my town in the UK has less than 40,000 people and is about an hour and a half away by car from any large city, and we STILL had good public transport for nearby towns, villages and cities. Low population density isn't an excuse if it makes sense for people to use it!
UK is also insanely smaller, the bus and train ticket prices much higher, and there isn't as many places to go. Quick and cheap? You haven't been to UK recently. Bus pass prices are significantly better in the US, and the buses were nowhere near cheap. The drivers will also pass you by even if you're at the stop. US doesn't do that. They have specific times at each stop unless its completely empty. UK mass transit is neither fast nor cheap.
@@luzhang2982 sure the us is a big country, but density wise it’s not that different, and even then, cities in Europe are as big as cities in the US, the cities in the us are designed around cars, that’s just a fact.
@@luzhang2982 but it's not larger than individual states, let alone particular agglomerations. The problem is that the US cities are built for cars, designed for cars, and everything else is distant second. With people actively campaigning against public transport, because they think it would bring crime and people of color from "inner cities".
@@joaquinelorrieta4203 No, the population density is incredibly varied in the US, and overall the population density of the UK is much greater. There's also vast swaths of the US that literally have only one person per thousand km sq
Im from switzerland. Here most people go to school with a bike, which saves money and is good for the environnement. The people that live further away take the bus or train. What always amazes me is that theres always a bus-/ trainstation no matter where u live. Its so practical especially for students.
The map for European railways and road networks are missing a lot of detail. The Autobahn network alone can equal any US area for density. And the French, Swiss or Italians aren't that far behind either.
@@SimpWhiper Because of incompetence and political mismanagement, Germany is notoriously known to have an overall issue in making new infrastructure projects and not halting it for some unknown reason up along the way, the do extremely with construction in other countries until it’s back in Germany, their rail schedules are laughable at best, but still better than a lot of places, and have u forgotten what happened to the BrandenBurg Airport that was felt abandoned for years
That’s a good point. A more useful comparison for this video would net the fact Europe tends to build lots of highways for freight and interregional travel outside cities and less often within them. USA tends to force concrete spaghetti through historic urban neighbourhoods and everything along the route rots.
@@trent6319 you don’t get it, really. Europeans from different countries speak different languages that can’t be understood among them, and you find that by just walking a few meters across country border locations. There’s nothing comparable to that in the US
Dutchie here, manager project control for mostly infrastructure. When you ask what can still be improved, realistically it'll mostly be incremental additions with the current technological limitations (which is usual in a historic context I know). For instance, we're redesigning a street in a major city centre at the moment. We want to untangle cyclists and pedestrians by offering the cyclists an alternative. Problem is, the best alternative is also used by lorries to supply the city-centre shops making it a bit less safe. We'll widen the street of course, remove parking spaces (always a huge protest) but the best alternative would be to have specific supply-raillines underground in urban centres. But those are mega projects and not feasible at the moment. When it comes to international traintravel, we're getting there. Last march I traveled to Austria from the Netherlands by train and it was just as fast as with a regular car (and cheaper). But one hiccup and you're screwed with transfers. More reliable trains and schedules would see more people taking PT as a viable alternative.
@@sergeantmajor_gross one way depended on the day you were traveling. On the weekends it was about 70 euro, during the week it was less than 50. Also depended on when you booked. If I was quicker it'd be cheaper
It always amazed me how the train was invented in the UK and had an important role in US history, yet here in Spain it never became a thing in its early days because Spain is the second most montainous country in Europe apart from Switzerland, but nowadays it has as many highspeed railways as France
Spain didn't have much of an economy for a very long time, after the new world gold and silver dried up and the stupidity of the Franco regime. It still has serious lack of development outside of the main urban centers and large swaths of it are virtually empty. Having access to the EU markets and free movement of people plus pretty good education system has greatly accelerated Spain, but it still lacks basic industry and probably never will have those industries due to specialization of economies.
@@no_soy_rubio It has some fundamental weaknesses due to not having a robust construction industry, weak industrial base, and leans too heavily on foreign markets and tourism. It's relatively decent growth over the last couple decades is largely a result of playing catchup and having access to the more developed parts of the EU as neighbors and close partners. It's true potential as a country is nowhere near realized given its large unemployment level and under utilized expanses.
Austria is the most mountainous country. 78% are mountains. Compared with the size, austria has double the amout of mountains than switzerland (only 45% and half the size)
I am from Belgium and i live in a minor city, the proof that our transit system works is that i can buy a train ticket right to Amsterdam for 10 euros and be in amsterdam 3 hours later. Also your map of highways in europe is too simplified.
10 euro's? Must be some sort of deal because NS is extremely expensive, it would cost me 20e for a single ticket to get to Amsterdam, and I live only about an hour from Amsterdam. That would be 40 euro's just to sit in a train for 2 hours.... Europe may be "well designed" but it's extremely expensive to use public transport. A cheap car will save you allot of time and money.
@@MasthaX I can't wait for some "European transport pass" to be a thing, imagine having a titre de transport valable everywhere in Europe. even with a high price tag it would need to be subsidies, but considering how expensive cars are for the entire society, I think it would be worth the collective cost.
Well yes, but it's not a huge achievement if you consider that the entire BeNeLux is just a bit larger area than the Transdanubia part of Hungary(which is also considered a small country). So yes, cheap and efficient, but in that particular case, it's nothing to marvel about.
I am from Slovakia and the tram shown at 1:45 is actually the one I use on my daily commute to work! Btw, the railway line through the middle of Slovakia does not really exist as depicted. You can travel this route without changing trains, but not through mountainous Slovakia as shown. These trains go through Czech republic instead.
As far as I know those lines only show the connections between two cities and don't necessarily describe the actual rail line (I mean, trains don't really go only in straight lines, do they...)
The problem with Europe's public transportation systems (Italian here) is that, even if they are not always perfect (maintenance and punctuality), they are just the better alternative, compared to the car, in cities.... but that ONLY applies to medium-large cities. The moment you strive just a little further away from the downtown areas, you NEED to have a car. There are the occasional buses here and there and the local train lines are good enough, but they can't physically cover all of the areas that need to be served. So, if you live in a city and do most of your business there (work, family and friends), you don't need a car at all, but if you live in the countryside or even in smaller towns... good luck surviving without a car.
In other words, the majority of your population can get by without a car, which means that you experience significantly less traffic when you, someone who needs to drive, uses the road.
I understand your point, however i live in a town of about 30.000 residents. I have acces to 8 trains every hour going in 2 directions (4 one way, 4 the other) and many busses giong to various smaller towns (of which multiple are basically some houses along a street). You can also rent a bike at the train station. I do have to be clear that this is the netherlands, however it is in the more remote part. The closest bigger city being Leeuwarden (just less than 95.000 residents). My point is mostly that if done correctly public transport will be able to get you basically anywhere you need to go. Edit: i want to make clear that im not trying to bash your opinion, im just giving you my opinion. I hope everyone who sees this has a nice day
@@robinboonstra107 sorry but this simply cannot work for Italy. Cities in the Po Valley are all very well connected because we live a densely populated *flat* area but as soon as you go either North to the Alps or South to the Apennines everything changes dramatically: they're so scarsely populated montanous areas that comparing them to the Netherlands simply does not make sense. For example: I live in a town of 32.000 inhabintants in Lombardy, I do not use my car at all here, but I use it to go to my holiday house in the Maritime Alps... there are buses to my village of 800 inhabitants there, but only 3 times a day... it is 20 km of curves and 600 m altitude difference from the nearest town on the coast... having a more frequent bus service would simply not be financially viable.
@@mimmiblu6138 but you still do have coverage even to a tiny village such as that so with proper planning you could make the trip without a car. That's all that's needed and sounds great to me actually
Yes! Lived in Belgium for ages. Stayed above a shop in city Center. Could do all my shopping in the street and had a tram stop in front of my appartement. Bike lanes everywhere and very safe so I could cycle out at night to wherever I wanted and always felt safe (single female). My cousin who still lives there has started learning to drive this year (he is 45 and never missed a car before)
The thing is: The train lines in Europa were less DESIGNED than developed in very small iterations. The various countries made their train tracks where knew it would be intelligent, and they were connected then. The towns were first, the train came later, when people already knew where they would be interesting to use.
@@অজানাপাখি-ষ৬গ Depends on the language. In a number of European countries Europe is spelled Europa: Spanish, Polish, German, Norwegian, to name a few.
In the us it was for the most part the other way around the train lines were designed and towns developed around them to support the infrastructure the lines were not made for connecting towns they were made for connecting the east coast to the west coast and a few mines/farms
honestly, my biggest issue about Europe and specifically France (I'm french) and Italy (studied there), is that although large towns and cities are incredibly well connected it becomes an insane hassle to go to most smaller villages and towns as they might fall off the grid. For that reason and pretty much that reason only I would consider buying a car whilst living in Europe, and that pretty much points out the achilles heel of this system. Unless covering essentially 100% of the towns and villages, there will always be at least one person incentivized to buying a car. It shouldn't be a hassle to have to live in the countryside, and it definitely shouldn't be a hassle to visit your family living in the countryside.
I have noticed that this is an issue mostly in the larger European countries, like Germany/France/Spain. In the Netherlands, even the smaller villages and towns are accessible via bus. Sure, one might have to walk for 20 mins extra apart from the bus, but at least it is accessible. The geographic size of the larger countries + the fact that Netherlands is flat making transportation easy is the difference, I suppose.
Is car rental (incl. sharing) out of the question? I mean, car ownership could be problematic for those living in an urban setting with limited parking space, but free floating car sharing has been a life saver in many instances.
@@SV-mc1jq Netherlands is completely different they do it alot better, the tram is a big thing in the dam plus the city is designed for biking really or walking but your gov push biking and public transport more than cars, but by pushing people to walk and cycle in the city centre you don't need as much public transport like London. Count how many buses go past you in a hour in London 😂so to me cos alot of people bike or walk in Amsterdam that would mesn you can focus on the public transport which goes to the outer villages making it a better service than other places in Europe
Having cars in the countryside is no issue whatsoever. There’s space. Barely anyone lives there. Many jobs and occupations in rural areas require you to operate a vehicle anyway, as you’re literally working the land and we do that with heavy equipment nowadays.
2:16 Tokyo, I remember before traveling I saw some people on youtube saying how the transport system was maze-like and confusing… but when this Madrid-native arrived, had no problem at all either underground or on the surface, being used to conmute bus-train-metro since young age, Tokyo and Osaka felt like home, with kanji characters on top 😇
i was 2019 in Tokyo and it was very easy to understand. but some said they made it new over the years. years ago ( or maybe centuries?) even for the people of Tokyo it was very confusing.
Tokyo is pretty easy to navigate the only thing that sucks are all the different companies. It's like 30 different companies and in a lot of cases you need to pay again when you transfer to another line ran by a different company.
By just quick glance at the map provided of railway's of Europe, there's a hug amount of missing lines. From my travels I can say about 13 country's: 1) Spain: North Pontevedra-Santiago was built already10years ago / some missing in north / Valencia in south is not correct. 2) Italy: Bologna-Venezia has line connecting them (without goin to Verona) this summer had. 3) Croatia: had way more lines 4) Bosnia: I saw A lines- but didnt use them myself 5) Montenegro: had some extra lines-and interesting mix of Soviet and Italian trains on them. 6) Slovaks: had more too 7) Netherland: so many lines that you wouldnt be able to see grey color in this map there 8) Poland: There 1/10 on this map, bet trains like to take 5min on arrival, especially in Wroclaw and Warsaw 9) Lithuanians: had some more line I saw, but havent use them, but there should be line to Klaipeda 10) Latvia: There is 4 missing branches that span a country 11) There's Line between Parnu And Tallinn missing. * Bonus: *Poland , Lithuania, Latvia , Estonia building new highspeed line - not marked on map at all. 12) Finland: There was a line form Helsinki to Ravoniemi(arctic circle) already 8 years ago 13) Oh!... And the Swiss... Point is ... If I could see these - probably this map doesnt have even half of whats there in Europe. And it wasn't good source.
I've been a helicopter pilot for 9 years throughout Europe. I've never gone to my job (the airport) with my car. I've always used trains, buses and in the worse case scenario a taxi/Uber. Now I live in Mallorca and go to work with a bike.
2:00 that is NOT the European road network, that is a TEN-T corridor map (Trans European Network - Transport) which is actually representing the international corridors of which many are, in fact, railways and river transport routes. You can clearly see that in the example of Croatia/Hungary on so called 'Mediterranean corridor' (railway Rijeka - Zagreb - Koprivnica - Gyekenes - Budapest) and 'Rhine-Danube' corridor that is a river corridor that lies on those two rivers.
2 года назад+16
I wanted to highlight exactly the same fact. They need to be precise if they want to convince people
@ I do agree that all of the information provided in the video needs to be checked, however I do not deny that EU transport system is generally better than the US one. Partially due to economy differences of course, where EU gives a lot of subsidies payed from taxes in order to make public transport affordable, while US with lower taxes does not interfere the market as much. And of course, I am not talking about the infrastructure that is being funded from the national budget of both unions, but the subsidies to local bus companies to connect rural places where their service is often not profitable, completely free travelling with train for everyone under the age of 19 (in my country, Croatia, at least), affordable tram tickets (1 USD for a 60 minute ride in any direction!), free public mechanical and electric bikes (also in my city, Koprivnica), free buses that connect suburban areas and the frequently visited city locations (hospital, university, malls...) and lots of other measures I probably missed out.
but the US map is also only the interstate route map i think
2 года назад+11
@@Illuminat-ve5ue Yeah maybe, but the european map way off the reality. Take France for example, the country has more than 100 motorways over 10000 km. However on the map, it is like the country only has 5 or 6 of them...
@@dkundih you have fallen into the "US- low taxes, not meddling vs EU- high taxes, protectionism" fallacy. The major difference is not the total amount of taxation but prioritizing the subsidized industries.
I'm European and I visited Texas recently, I have to say the difference in infrastructure is startling, and the lack of walkability throughout the cities also, in Europe every city is walkable, you can't do anything in the US without a car :/// I drive a car, but I still go to work by bus and by foot every day because it's cheaper, more eco friendly and more convenient (parking and gas are expensive! :'))
@examplenameyoutube Certain parts of the USA are walkable, just not the suburbs or outside of the metro. You can walk around cities and use pretty decent public transit like NYC, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle (I would add san franscisco too but idk if you wanna walk around there LMAO) but cities such as those can be walkable. I'm from Chicago and currently do not own a car, I had one then sold it once I realized I really did not need it.
Geography is always a major factor. Here in Southern Italy there is very little public transportation but they are building the second- SECOND- tunnel under Monte Bianco, in the north. Southern Europe is largely forgotten about, when it comes to national infrastructure.
Sounds more like Italy is thrashing south Italy than that Europe is responsible for it. I think you guys get a lot of money from the EU. Well deserved of-course, but should be well spent as well.
@@ruevyvlogs3631 North Italian here. That's exactly the case. Italy has immense potential and is treated and managed like garbage by those who should administer us and our money. It's a shame.
(Southern) Italy is notorious all across Europe for corruption. Even in Venice, they made EU money for the dam system "disappear", only to get a second fund with which they actually installed the system. I wouldn't be surprised there was actual money provided for a rail system and then it simply vanished into a politician's or the maffia's pocket, or was used for another project like you say.
@@ruevyvlogs3631 Switzerland is way richer than Spain, so it can spend alot more money in making the terrain suitable for trains. Plus, it collaborates with neighboring countries because it's relatively small and thus has alot of transit traffic. Spain, like France, or Germany, is HUGE. Big countries often take on personal projects and only cooperate when the rail is extended abroad like Eurostar or Thalys. This also limits funding.
One comment about the US Amtrak map in the beginning. Some of those greens lines are currently cargo only. As in, Wyoming has no passenger rail. On another note, those red splotches, and they should include Wyoming as well, are incredibly large and unpopulated, for the most part. As a European you cannot imagine how few people are in some of these areas. Take for instance, Wyoming. Wyoming is roughly (I'm sure someone will correct me) the same size as Poland, or about 8 times the size of Belgium. Poland has about 38million people, Belgium has about 11million people, Wyoming has 600,000 people. If you put the United States on Europe you can cover from Madrid and Dublin to Ukraine and Turkey and well into Russia almost to Kazakhstan and down into Syria. The distances are enormous compared to what people in Europe think is a long distance. The US needs to work on regional rail. Just as nobody in Europe wants to take the train from Lisbon to Vilnius, nobody in the US want to take a train from Sacramento to Raleigh.
Thanks for this reply. Its amazing how ignorant Europeans are. Its like they cant take account any other extraneous variables and must only come to the conclusion that we arent doing it because we just arent as smart and sophisticated as Europe.
Regional train is ideal for the States, the issue is, just with anything America, politics! The red tape issues and etc makes it hard to accomplish anything.
A REALLY high speed train would actually make a lot of sense to travel between Chicago and the east coast for example. It's far easier to zoom at 400 km/h without having to pass all the controls at an airport, so in the end it could be as fast as taking the plane. But cheaper. And way better for the planet.
I’m an American that lived in Europe; Germany specifically, for 7 years in the 90s. Seeing the overall public transportation system there compared to the US really made me envious. I think the US is still far behind Europe in every aspect of public transport, most glaringly the rail system.
@@snorfallupagus6014 ye some people some how don’t understand oh hey america has a smaller way way wayy more spread out population than Europe and the cities we do have a re far denser making it difficult to build rails and other infrastructure through them
@@snorfallupagus6014 lol no one is saying to start with Wyoming what are you talking about. We could build up and re-invest in corridors first where the majority of Americans live. IE large metros and their surrounding suburbs.
@@andrewpropson8464 We already have public transit of some kind where most Americans live (IE in most US metros). All it will take is continuing/increasing our investment. It is not impossible and there is no need for extra excuses when we are already so far behind the rest of the developed world. Where is the famous "can-do" American attitude?! We need more transit options. More transit options = more freedom. Especially this will help our fellow Americans who cant drive. (Elderly, disabled etc) and those who are too poor to maintain/own a car.
@@snorfallupagus6014 being Fr there are areas where it could be better. I live in east PA and it’s p dense but only a couple cities are connected with rail. Last time a passenger train stopped at the local train station was decades ago and it supports a county of 150000 ppl. Shit j don’t make sense
Unfurnately trams weren‘t removed only in America but also in some cities in Europe. For example, I am from Kiel in Germany and our tram system also got removed many years ago. And now politicians think about adding a new one because it’s way better for the climate than driving with a car or bus. So why did they even remove it then? And: Great video haha, I love seeing what people of other counties think about Europe.
Do, erase and redo.😅 In my city had cobblestones during many centuries...all had been pull up in 1950 for modern bitumen and now since 20 years they redo cobblestone because its pretty , clean and cheap in longtime.
I think one of the most important factors is that of gradual historical development, with initial reliance on much slower modes of transportation, as opposed to almost immediately motorized cities. You can find a microcosm of such difference in Russia - west of the Ural mountains, where cities are mostly medieval, you see a large network of convenient roads (rail included). Once you go to the mostly post-18th century Eastern Russia, it's the same problems that the USA infrastructure faces.
Yeah people act like it just so dumb that US cities and the US in general is so car centric.. it should be no surprise since alot of the boom and buildup of the US happened after the car was invented.
Not in this case. In Soviet times, no one had a car at all, they were available only to officials. Accordingly, public transport developed. Nowadays, almost everyone has a car, but at the same time, urban infrastructure is being reduced due to the fact that cities do not have their own money.
The US is older than the train, so your argument makes no sense. In fact, given that US cities are younger and more grid based than European ones, it would have been a lot easier to implement a railroad network in the US than in the EU.
World War 2 and soviet rule/city planning straight up ruined most of the cities in my home country Estonia. The city councils are working hard and spending millions in urban planning to fix that but it takes time and even more money. But in general, the cities are not very pedestrian and cycler friendly.
The European rail and highway maps were both too oversimplified to make any conclusions. Europe also isn't a single country, so not everything said is true for all of it. The main point still stands though
I was thinking the same… the moving paths that were paved later, where the ones that “happened” (people started using it, it wasn’t really planned). US simply planned too much, square routes and stuff that is super inefficient…
@F. A. Europe isn't a single country, full stop. EU does have many qualities that make it much closer to a single country than Europe as a whole, but it's important to keep those two distinct since many European countries don't belong in the EU and one dastardly kingdom decided to even leave
I think its also important to note that a lot of european countries are trying to retain or redevelop communities within cities/towns. So you can live in a town center above a shop and easily do a food shop, get to work, school, meet friends etc without having to drive out to an industrial estate, or drive in from a suburb. Also having just retail on a high street is no longer working so a lot of places are diversifying and finding solutions to make it more attractive, pedestrian friendly and enticing to live and visit. However in the US whenever I've been it always felt like everything was so far apart! You had to drive ages to get to anything from your hotel, house, apartment. We were the silly europeans trying to walk to a restaurant or shop on a basically non existant pavement. Another note living in Germany you can make a fairly accurate guess as to who the Americans are... the ones with the massive 4x4 gas guzzlers, that don't fit in our small streets, parking spaces etc. Its amusing.
@@MustacheDLuffy When they go to find a rental there are usually a couple larger cars to choose from. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they were only there to rent out to Americans...
It's well designed because its smaller than the US and was developed almost a thousand years ago for walking and horse traffic. Shops are closer to home, schools, hospitals, etc. The US is designed for automobile traffic.
I lived on campus at Stanford as a foreign student from Spain and I felt like in prison. Without a car I was disabled: I couldn’t reach a a bar, a restaurant to meet friends, or even a supermarket to buy groceries. There was no Uber at the time. The bike helped, but even with it, distances were huge. Whenever I took public transportation in the area it was mainly weirdos or very poor people on it. Sometimes it was scary. It’s a complete strange feeling for a European university student.
Oh no, you can't have a car? Your life must be very tough. Bruh I highly doubt you even have friends with that mindset or feeling bad just by taking a bus with common humans in it, you felt disable without a car in a campus? Have you ever walked more than 25 minutes a day in your life like a normal person or ride a bike more than 15 minutes? Mueve tu trasero príncipe, los españoles siempre demostrando como son patéticos 💀
@@bernardogabriel6200 nah it’s just bizarre that public transport in the US is a working class thing, in countries with actual functioning public transport systems it’s used by everyone. Reliance on cars for everything is unhealthy, to say the least.
Great vid! I'm from The Netherlands, 26y/o and i don't have a car. Not even a licence, and it barely effects me. We go to work by bike, we go on vacation by train/bus and we take this all for granted. Gas is about $2.5 per liter now by the way😂
Same in Norway. Some of our tracks only were built because the nazis were extracting minerals during ww2… we have terrible railway systems and doesn’t go to half of northern norway
@@richardc316 Oh man. Once flew to UK for 20 pounds and expected the train ticket to not be far away from that. It was 50 pounds for 3 hour ride with 3 different trains, absolutely horrible.
From Finland: public transport works only in bigger cities and smaller cities and towns it is much more easier to just own a car to even move around the town if you don't live at the center. As a teen it took me 2km walk to get to the nearest buss station. My town does have a railway going through but not for people. So the system doesn't function like it should and I never learned to use public transport bc there wasn't any to use
Yes you understand finland has a much closer in terms of density of america so you guys look much more similar to us in terms of transportation thank you i love the fins
@@andrewpropson8464 Population density in the USA is almost 3 times higher that in Finland. I lived 7 years in the Bay Area where there density is very high, still the public transport was very poor (Bart, train and busses). All very slow, dirty, expensive and inconvenient. If you compare to smaller Helsinki metropolitan are that has only 1/3 of the population the public transportation and bicycle trails are so much better. In the bay Area you could not even ride the bicycle from Oakland to SF. In Helsinki area you can drive from any place to any other place using only dedicated bicycle roads. Even smaller cities in Finland such as Tampere, Turku, Oulu and Lahti have good public transportation. The guy that wrote the original note lived in the countryside and that why there was no public transportation. 80% of Finns have a good access to public transportation. 95% of Finns have an access to good bicycle roads.
@@jaska145 i know someone who moved to Wyoming. Hmm i wonder how dance there population is. America is a very big place and a lot of places are way under populated and a lot of places like the north east and south west are over populated,
You didn't mention something very important to smaller cities, I live in Oxford, England and there's a really good bus network. The City Centre is pedestrianised so you really don't need a car. A similar thing is happening in London with the Ultra Low Emissions Zone in the centre to stop polluting cars.
Speaking as an urban planner, I recommend reading The Life & Death of Great American Cities (by Jane Jacobs) and also Cities for People (by Jan Gehl) these are extremely valuable pieces of knowledge for subjects like this. In Europe there is one outlier when it comes to urban planning designing and that's Belgium, it's basically all road with houses built against every street possible, low density and relying too much on cars like the US. It will be an interesting case to see how this develops. Nearly all architects and urban planners in Europe are starting to realise the importance of providing spaces for PEOPLE, not cars.
...but the US is _mostly_ rural not urban. That's why cars make sense. In cities and towns the US actually has public transit. The impression is that it's only cars. BTW Book (American Cities) I see lots of new mixed-use developments with small community parks and other such spaces all over the US, even in small towns and cities. Very nice. :)
The US is still planned mostly for cars instead of for people, sadly. The fact that a big part of US is rural doesn't excuse the way cities are designed. There's been some progress in recent years, mostly in places like California but it still pales in comparison to pretty much any EU country, at least from what i've seen. The amount of soulless parking lots, the grid street outline, the stroads, the missing middle housing, the very scarce and usually not very safe bike infrastructure is hige and it's all the effect of generational car-centric planning. I, living in pretty much the suburbs of not too wealthy EU country, have access to busses, trams, intercity rail, top notch bike routes etc within walking distance and it just gives more freedom to people of different social status and of all ages. Kids living in the suburbs in the US are mostly limited to their own neighbourhood and places their parents can drive them to until they get their own driving licenses and become one more car on the road contributing to the traffic. Yes, some US cities started paying a bit more attention to things like communication and walkability but it's still nowhere near european standards
Hmm i agree and disagree. You kinda forget that living outside the city gives you your own space. In Ireland we do similar to Belgium, housing dotted everywhere. But people love having their own space and garden. Try getting Irish people into apartments - not happening. Apartments are essentially viewed here as something for students and people in their early 20s. When you 'grow up' you buy your own house with garden. Me personally I live in an apartment, but that's the general view in Ireland. The attitude needs to change here, more public transit, more green spaces in cities, larger more liveable apartments (the apartments in Ireland are oftenlike chicken houses, tiny).
@@mryan4452 Same here, in Poland. Most of adults want to have house (country or suburban) at the age of 30. However, the problem is low wages and the ability to accumulate (18% tax on interest on the account!). Those who can take out a mortgage pay it off for 25-30 years, and the banks force them with expensive compulsory insurance (banking market in my country is the wild west).
@@GreyDeathVaccine My biggest shock as a foreigner (EU) in Poland... No houses available in the city, almost everything is taken up by appartments. Small appartments at that. And being unable to secure a loan because prices are insane and the way loans are structured (wibor 3m/6m) is also mindblowing. I couldn't believe my ears when not a single bank offered a fixed rate loan, I mean they do but even then after 3-5 years it switches to 3M/6M floating rates. So still renting in Sopot and nowadays even being unable to save much due to inflation.
My parents lived in the US for a while. They came back to Europe because the weren't adapting well to the country. They kept saying it was because things were too different there. Fun fact: whenever I asked what exactly was that different, the first thing coming to their minds was "the roads were too big" 😭 No but seriously, they explained to me that basically, if you don't have a car in the US, you're f*cked, you cannot go anywhere. That felt so weird to them, even though they did have a car themselves. I cannot barely imagine living in such a place. I now study in Paris and I still don't have a driver licence because having a car in that city just doesn't make any sense so meh why bother?
I am 21 and don't have a driving license nor a car. College was always easily accessible with either a bike or public transport and even now with a job I still make use of the great public transport here in the Netherlands. When I was 18 I made a roadtrip through the US with some friends and it felt weird. Places only accesible by car which make those places really isolated from the world. For example even a small town nearby where i live has 2 bus stops while having a population of just 400 people. It felt just odd and weird and also very unorganized in the US. It's a great country, but some things could better. Question, would you recommend going to Paris by car or train? Train rides are kinda expensive ( 135 euros if you dont buy a ticket like 6 months before) and going by car would just be around 60 euros for fuel expenses, although i imagine going by car would be hell in such a big city? Also whatever you may study I wish you all the best and good luck with it. :) ( your daily positve message on RUclips lmao )
@@highlymedicated2438 would only be "'bragging" if i even had the intention to get something from this girl. which i dont. i am just saying something as an reply to point out my personal facts and as to the reason why i dont have it. because it aint necessary. So your comment which i assume is you thinking i somehow simp over this random girl in youtube make no sense at all. Mind your own bussiness or get to know the difference between simping and just an normal comment. That's the difference between boys and men mate.
i think the good thing about europe, (i can only speak of denmark) is that the public spaces like bars resturants and even normal shopping is all very close by normally at the center. then the city if it is big has a few grocery shops scattered around the outskirts. this makes it much easier to go shopping and you feel all the more connected, together with public transport that takes you trait to the city center and out again if you wish to do so. the lovely thing here is that it is a choice to have a car, not a nessecity. you can easily get around. and of course its way more beautiful in europe (just not as much in denmark, its flat as fuck here)
Well, flat terrain is good for bikes, in my city (cuz t'he ground inclination) If you had to go in summer from t'he city center to my House in bike... xD
I'm from Denmark... I'd love to have a gas guzzler, but only for fun. Wouldn't use it for regular day commute. With the public transport actually working, I'd still like to have a car in some cases, but with electric vehicles getting ranges that actually make sense... I don't see a need for a V6 or 8 to make the everyday work. And petrol is kinda expensive. I could, however, see it as a fun thing to rent once in a while.
I have 2 gasguzzlers in the netherlands, i only use them for travel and rally's. A RS6 bi-turbo and a challenger str8. Use public transit 99% of the time, cars have no place in cities really.
That works too, the problem with EV is that they’re still cars, and aren’t really that much better than gas guzzlers that elon musk wants ppl to believe
I’m Norwegian, but I’m visiting Denmark often (Also looking into moving there). Compared to Norway u have a much better public transport system. One thing I don’t to be quite interesting is how u find pedestrian/bicycle roads on the countryside, which is unusual most of the time here. Also ur cities feels a lot more pedestrian friendly, but to be fair our cities are on average smaller I think one of the main causes is that u have a higher population density to support the system (Norway has about 15 per km^2, u got 137). We often live in quite spread our. Sadly I think most of Norwegians will keep being dependent on cars, unless they live in a city. Luckily we have a hight number of electrical vehicles already (I always have a small culture shock when I don’t see that many teslas in the road)
It is kind of needed in the US when you travel long distances imo. I also thought about why one needed a truck or big vehicle. I went for a long solo trip once, across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. My 2.0 L sedan was struggling on highways, there was not enough pull on the straight loooong slowly elevating highways in New Mexico or Arizona...let alone Colorado. It was barely managed, the other trucks / SUVs were just passing me without an effort.
I'm from the Netherlands and I could probably say we have some of the best infrastructure even within the EU. But as you said, nothing is perfect, it is in fact not very cheap at all to use the national railway lines. They're thinking about changing that soon but I'm not sure yet. For now, even with the super expensive gas prices (it went up to €2,30 per liter), going from one side of the country to the other is cheaper by car if you go with more than 2 people.
I'm from France, and when i saw "30dollars" from paris to amsterdam i was like "more like 80e just to go from paris to amsterdam lol"... But i agree with the fact that netherland is freaking expensive for everything compare to france, despite having more or less the same "life level"
I live in the Netherlands currently and think you have great train lines, but the bus lines are still bit poor in some cities, if they could improve that then it would be the perfection. And have to say that going by bike everywhere is not always duable, weather is fucking rainy or cold most of the time. In Spain is the other way around, less train lines but lot of buses in the city.
@@BenitoCarmela Tbh, i dunno where you went in France, because in most "major cities" there are a bus every like 5 to 10mins, i'm not living in such a big city (Valence in France) but there's more than 30 bus lines + something around 25 to 30 "express bus lines" (those lines are mostly used by students) and it's covering more than 50 to 60 KM around Valence, I think it's pretty big and it's the same for most "common/big agglomeration". But i do agree with the fact that "small towns" doesn't have that much bus lines
I live in Manchester in the north east of England. A few years ago an American friend from Florida came to visit us. One evening we went for a meal with friends in Liverpool about 30 miles away. We went on public transport, which I always do when I go out because it's easier, you don't have to trouble with finding parking and I can drink! We walked from my house to a local tram stop (10 mins). Went by tram to Victoria Station (15 mins) and got a train to Liverpool (about 35 minutes). The Liverpool train station is in the centre of town and we walked from there to the restaurant. We had a great time, had a bit too much too eat and drink, walked back to the station and did the same journey in reverse. We got the last tram home and it was packed with people who'd been out in Manchester and it was loud, friendly and there was a bit of singing. My friend told me she'd had a wonderful evening and one of the highlights for her had been the trams and trains. She said she had never in her life used public transport. Apart from private cars she had only ever been in a taxi.
Well that's because, the size in US makes public transportation rather infeasible, for large swathes of the US. For like in Manchester you might be within walking distance to shops or your local pub. In the US on the other hand, you could easily see a good 20 or so miles (32km) to your nearest store.
Personally, I live in germany and have basically no problem getting around, even if I'm too young to drive. There's sidewalks on basically every even remotely majorly used road, and the ones that don't usually are used to give access to homes and other roads that do. Sidewalks never just end seemingly randomly, and major ones also have spaces on the road (which are often colored red) specifically for people on a bike. And that's not even mentioning other ways to get around, like trains. While the trains barely manage to arrive on time, it's quite a well structured system. Major stations are able to bring you to as an example the underground trains or buses. Basically every town, even a very small one, gets a train station. It's not hard to basically get anywhere that you'd wanna go to.
When you leave the big cities it becomes very hard to get anywhere without a car. And when you do wait at an remote train station it is not uncommon that the train is just missing (so you have to wait an 30-60min for the next one). This problem occurs because the Deutsche Bahn was privaticed (That means it has to earn money like a usual company). Because of that the Deutsche Bahn save money everywhere (for example train tracks) and now the infrastructure is not working properly anymore).
Dein Englisch ist echt gut! Muss aber dennoch Lukas W. rechtgeben. Since the Deutsche Bahn is heavily privatized they do not really fulfill the their service as intended in the German constitution.
@@lukasw9067 Deutsche Bahn is mostly responsible for inter city travel. Travelling between cities on a smaller scale (or travelling in cities) is the responsibility of the regional train associations. Also why does everybody think that Deutsche Bahn being privatized is the root of the problem? If politicians cared about public transport they would fund it well enough. But they don't. I really don't see what would change if Deutsche Bahn was owned by the state again. It would just be owned by people who don't care about it and I doubt politicians wouldn't try to save money.
Hi, Dutch man here. Seeing the bike lane map made me really appreciate the fact that there are so many bike paths here. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to grab the car to get to work or to the city center. Thank you for making this video.
It helps that the Netherlands is so flat. My country Greece might be all beaches and islands but it’s incredibly mountainous. So difficult to use bikes in such an extend.
The map labeled as "EU Road Network" here is actually a map of european rail corridors (EU-TEN-Rail) which is a plan of high speed and cargo rail routes connecting major cities and sea ports.
Im from Finland. I have to say Helsinki-Tallin and Helsinki-Stockholm ferry routes are very important for Finland. It comnects Finland to other countries. We don't have trains we could take to other countries.
To be fair to the US, we can see that most of the European rail lines are within the EU, and none of them extend to Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, which contain a large part of the European landmass (particularly European Russia). Also, Europe does have the advantage over the US of being more dense. There are many more destinations for railroads, trams, and buses because population centres are close together and the cities are pretty centralized. In the US, there is a high degree of urban sprawl which makes public transportation harder. However, I still agree with your points and that the US needs to invest more in public transportation.
Well, the maps only depict high speed rail. And I guess there's little to no of such kind in 3 countries - Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. But almost any other country has.
All of the rail lines connect to all three coutries at multiple places, it's just not cool to go there nowadays 🙂 and these are of course not part of EU...
The dense point was imo the most important, I live in one of the “big red” areas on his Amtrak map, there’s simply no reason to run rail through it. We don’t have the population, and because of that, the traffic issues urban USA deals with, we don’t. Our roads are empty, you could go 45 mins without seeing another car. Public transportation is important for urban centers and the suburbs that surround them. But a lot of the US is empty, and investments in that kinda infrastructure wouldn’t be worth the cost for some of us.
I agree with you. Nevertheless I'd argue that it is actually the other way round. The urban sprawl in the US is a direct result of bad city planning / no public transport options available and not the main hindrance to good city planning.
Planes face serious competition to High Speed rail in European nations, so they basically have to sell you tickets also near the price of a restaurant meal especially with low cost airlines like Ryannair
It is cheap if you plan the trip in time and buy the tickets months before. However I disagree regarding the plane. Planes are cheap if you don't have bags, moreover, while train stations in big cities are nearby the center, airports are almost always outside the city, which make you lose time and money.
It's pretty indicative (and hilarious) of the public transit systems in the US that the only public transit you showcased was in New York City. Because outside of NYC, there's very few cities that actually have even passable public transit.
Not really. Chicago, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, Boston, and Washington DC just to name a few others. Sure they’re nowhere near european standards in most respects but they have great coverage
@@gio160 There’s no use replying to individuals who have superiority complexes. This channel harbors the closed-minded, as can be seen with the constant US-bashing on every video. Pure ignorance is not worth valuable time.
@@kronk9418 well the problem already seen mentioning there was hes listing major us cities, capitals of states or the country and within the colonies area which is far more developed compared to state infrastructure like Wyoming or Montana fir example
I studied NYC public transport, it simply have the best underground in the world with the Parisian one. But it’s also the only city in North America which have a good public transportation, compared to nearly all European city... One of the reasons is that big places in Europe where build hundred and hundred years before cars, so they often don’t have enough place for parking and lot of cars.. USA built their cities when cars already existed, or simply expanded without verticalizing which favored the car. For NYC it was geographically necessary to verticalise, in case of the river and sea. And of course a huge increase in population.
@@9000k4 If you actually think people want transit in rural Montana, I’m sorry for you, because you somehow missed the entire point of my comment. Public transit in rural areas cannot work in the modern day US. People are advocating for transit in cities that people LIVE IN which SHOULD have better transit. Like for example: Miami, Atlanta, Houston, LA, and mostly other medium sized sunbelt cities. That’s where people want transit. That isn’t me saying these cities with ‘good transit’ by US standards are great either. NJT has horrible rail coverage of southern NJ, SEPTA’s workers get paid jack and they have plenty more lines they could operate with if they electrified them or brought some Diesel engines, The NYC subway practically runs on signaling from the 1920s, CTA can be unreliable at times, and metra’s scheduling on some lines is so awful you might as well just drive. Also, all of the listed systems get don’t get much funding to begin with (besides the MTA) Maybe that’s too much to expect from an OBF comment section, however.
One thing people fail to understand about the US railroad is that it was not designed with public transport in mind after a certain point. It's very heavily designed around freight, so much so that increasing public transport via train would likely be more of a detriment to the economy than a benefit. Even as it stands they charge a significant amount to ride the train in the US because you are directly competing with freight.
The bad thing of public transportation in Europe is that it isn't usually as great in rural areas. So many people need to take their car to the cities to work and they have to face the obstacle of car restrictions the city councils impose.
I guess that’d depend where; there are tiny little hamlets and towns in Italy that are serviced by regional trains, that are generally an hour at most to the nearest high-speed station. Barring extremely rough terrain and isolated, high-elevation comunes, even the rural networks in most European countries fare better than some urban networks in America. I live in San Diego and on Sundays, Broadway will have no buses running on it after 11:30pm. Broadway. In a downtown. Of a city of 3.4+ million…
@Furnizorul Koala in a village with less than 300 people you don't get any busses driving through for you to get to the store and back. So you NEED a car, and you know what? That sucks so much when the car registration tax is 180%.
@@missa2855 I think you actually hate village life, you just haven't admitted it yet. Amenities are where people are. You either put up with the people, or go without amenities.
While true, in comparison I would point out that while "not great" in the rural outback of Sweden where I grew up, in contrast to the USA public transportation still did exist. I was able to live with 20km to get to the closest town larger than 500 people (and closest town with a grocery store...), and still technically not need a car. It was inconvenient, so most people around there would indeed have a car, but not as inconvenient as there being no public transport at all. For example, I could hop on the 55km bus ride to the county capital, go on an absolute pub crawl with my mates, and no-one needs to find a driver to get home, because there's a bus. :P
(Caribbean) Dutchie here :) I love traveling to the motherland because I can finally do away with the car and enjoy public transport and bikes. If only you could make it cheaper to love around, that would greatly encourage people to move around and visit other lovely places, stimulating local economies.
Ive lived in Ireland which (although it is in Europe) has a system based on highways and cars much like the US. I moved to Vienna recently and I have to say I've never felt so unencumbered and free to do and go as I please. It's so much better than having a car. I will probably not buy one as long as I live here. And I guarantee that anyone who moves to somewhere with a transportation system as good as this will agree whether you think you will or not
The fact that a Madrid to Barcelona very high speed train can cost 10€, traveling at 300km/h, and arriving in around 2 hours while by car is around 4, is just amazing… Something I really appreciate as Spaniard, and European of course.
The problem is that's an outlier. I flew from Dublin to Bucharest a dew days ago in 3 hours plus 3 hours getting to / waiting at Dublin Airport for total of €29 (that cost is inclusive of €4 bus ticket direct to airport). Would be great if more trains were like your example.
@@redsbricks5993 as I said, that's an outlier example. In most cases airplanes (due to low cost carriers) or car is cheaper and / or quicker. Sure there are outlier examples such as Madrid to Barcelona, but they are the exception rather than the norm.
@@navilluscire2567 for some reason that I don't understand trains are not particularly cost effective right now. I'd like it to be the norm trains are great. Maybe a low cost train company needs to get involved in train market and shake it up.
One more point: Having no alternative to cars makes your children and teens utterly dependend on parents, leaving them less freedom, sheltering them from being able to manage on their own, and perpetuating a culture of fear from leaving kids alone.
this is exactly how i’m feeling right now, i come back home from college every summer and it is just so boring when i don’t have a car, but i’m only at home for 3 months so it’s not seen as a necessity for i’ll just head back to college soon
@@Super_Trainspotter Adults in the US are very more controlling of kid. Allowing kids to enter a public train by themselves is a absolute no go for us.
@@baronvonjo1929 could you expand on this point? Is there a cultural reason for this? I concur with my fellow Brit above. While it can feel unnerving to let your children explore the world without you, their experiences will help them to become independent. It did me no harm.
Living here in the U.S, we are overly dependent on personal vehicles. The public transits we do have are often quite sketchy or just simply arent that great. Having a car is nice because you can be completely independent and just go wherever you need to. But at the same time, everything is so spread out and so far apart so that in itself, is inconvenient despite the fact we have our own personal vehicles. And its become a problem especially in big cities like LA where traffic is notoriously ridiculous due to the mass amounts of cars and people.
I'm from Ukraine, but I lived in München for three months. I was amazed at how well-designed the public transport system was. I lived outside of the city (cheaper rent) and commuted by city train (S-Bahn) every day to the city center. The whole journey usually took only 40 min. What I found even more amazing, was how the whole system responded to the unexpected. Due to an incident, the trains I usually took to get home didn't work, but I was still able to go home using the bus and tram.
The real advantage of public transport is that you stop worrying about how you get home. At some level of interconnected-ness you just are always 5 mins away from some transport option. When I went out with friends and ended up drunk somewhere in a town I've never been, I never worried about not getting home. And sometimes we randomly go on a train to other cities. Even when I was 14 I would go visit my grandma who lives across the border on my own. My parents weren't worried a bit. That's the real advantage: ease of mind when it comes to transportation. It's like a insurance, even if all other travel options fall away you always can rely on train
With good public transport, how would American local governments fill the void of revenue they're earning from the non-stop DUI's they catch daily? Just like if there was no war on drugs, all that sweet "asset forfeiture" money would vanish. America is designed the way it is because of pure greed from the top.
The disadvantage is that public transport almost universally runs at a lost with the costs getting harder and harder to recoup the further into rural territory you get.
The US has the most extensive river system on earth for cargo, an excellent cross continental road system and relies on air travel for Long distance travel. If we wanted more rail we’d have it. We just don’t need it
You know those places without railway lines in the US are, for the most part, completely unpopulated, large wildnerness areas, right? There's generally no reason for transit to run there. I'm a big fan of trains in general, just think that's worth pointing out.
Europe has no space for freeways. They have a billion people in less land in the US. They have no choice but to spring for more expensive train systems. Lou knee Thems just doing things for no reason and costing us a pretty penny.
There is no link between Lisbon and Madrid. Right now, Portugal is a railway island and that is largely exactly because there is a fundamental clash of interests between Portugal and Spain. While Spain wants Madrid to be a central hub for the entire peninsula, Portugal wants the quickest way possible to the more afluent northern european states, rather than wasting time going to the poorer and ill located Madrid. Thus no actual connection between Portugal and Spain exists right now!
Funny enough is Spain doesn’t even connect their population centers much outside of places like Madrid Barcelona and Zaragoza, so if you live in a rural area or population outside of the major cities, it’s going to be quite the hassle
As for parkinglots, most US states have actual regulations on parkingspots per x square feet of commercial/industrial zones. That's why you see all these large empty parkinglots, it's mostly about regulations.
Those parking lots can be demolished away and used for more buildings and housing and a single or several tram lines. It’s absolutely ridiculous seeing parking lots larger than the stores themselves due to these regulations, but ofc my comment is something car companies in the US don’t want to here because it’s their pockets that matter
@@Racko. it's not car companies. I often don't go to places where parking isn't freely available. We have an expectation here that parking is always easy to find.
@@Distress. Even if it's not car companies they still have influence over these regulations, so the massive roads and parking lots aren't really an accident, that's why it's easy to find
Great video and pointing out taxes fact was really smart :] I live in Prague that is in top 10 lists of public transport and I can only agree with that. I mostly walk everywhere or using public transport for longer distances. When you are drunk you call taxi and its at your place usually in two minutes at any time. I own car as well but using that only for trips out of cities or big shoppings so mostly 3x a week. I think that except things mentioned in the video that is also one thing that is different from US - that Europeans are use to walk. Vilages, small cities or major cities - there is pedestrian infrastructure everywhere. My wife lived in Texas for a year and she toldme that she missed just walking around but in US everything is so spaced out that is not possible nor fun. Also night walks are not safe but that was maybe just her experience.
At 0:50, that map is someone's fantasy of what high speed rail in the US could look like. I think the Acela line is like the only high speed rail line in the US lol, there might be another one but i dont remember.
I live in a rural region in Austria. I mean most of Austria is pretty rural. The big cities within 20km have 10-20k inhabitants wich still is kinda big from my perspective. And still, we, in a 800ppl village have bus routes and just 5km away there's a train station that easily connects us to pretty much anywhere. And normally us folks from rural reagions don't like Vienna. Cuz Vienna is different. I mean nearly every fourth Austrian lives in the urbanized region of Vienna wich is kinda insane. But omg. I love the public transport there. It's so convenient and easy to use. A big reason why I want to live there at some point.
It seems to be quite common for europeans that live in more rural areas that they don't enjoy their countrys capital. It's just different, way faster way of life in these bigger capital cities than smaller towns and villages. Me and my friends doesn't enjoy Helsinki either. Heard a lot from french people that Paris is just different, and same trend seems to be in most of the countries. I think it's different in usa since theres so much more big cities, and their capital is small compared to their bigger cities. Could be same trend in rural areas versus biggest city in state thought, would like to hear from americans on this front, and why not from other europeans too.
@@Nakkiteline i live on the west coast of the us, and the opinions usually are about regions rather than individual cities. like there is a huge difference between southern and northern california, and east vs. west oregon and washington is like night and day. the differences are complete opposite in climate, demographic, political leaning, population density, primary occupations, etc. i feel like most states have that, where specific regions/ city groupings have massive differences compared to others parts of the state. i do know that certain cities like las vegas, nevada and austin, texas are outliers in general tho. Its not so much the capitals of the states, but its moreso wherever the population density is highest/most urbanized area that tends to be the outlier.
One major point which was not coverd, is that Europs citys largely existed BEFORE cars, and the cities of the USA, as well as Canada, Australis, New Zealand, etc were founded and developed after the automobile became common. Other than that, I think you covered the topic rather well.
Yeah, but not to that big of an extent to which you might think. Europe has increased in population from 450 to 750 milion since 1920 till today and US from 106 to 330 mil. Thus both Europe and US had to accomodate a quite significant population increase - and yet Europe took a completely different aproach to the same issue.
I can only speak for the US here. But US cities also existed before cars. Alot of them actually. Probably most of them, really. Even the westernmost cities like Seattle and Portland were founded by 1850s and 1860s. And sure, they only had 50 some years to develop before the automobile got popular (being loose here. Presuming 1908, when the Model T made it so cars became more common) But that argument doesn't fly with eastern cities like NYC, Philadelphia, and Charleston who were around for atleast 200 years before the invention of the automobile. And yet their public transport today is OK at best (atleast for NYC and Philly. Charleston's is..... non-existent). What's the cutoff for this point that you make? I've never seen anyone else talk about this and I watch quite a few tubers so it'd be interesting to learn how this point actually matters in the scheme of things. Also, links to anyone who talks about this would be nice.
@@evanroberts7271 I agree, but they also had a desire to restore what was lost in simmilar fashion. I'm not excusing America's and my Canadian car-centric lifestyles, just pointing out that there are very real and entreched "Cultural world-view" factors which were not addressed in the video. I think Europe is a better model.
I'm from Spain. I've studied in school, highscool, university, and worked in 3 different cities. I've never needed a car, nor I own one. Watching how the USA is designed seems distopic and counterproductive to me.
It would be really interesting to do a deeper comparison on this by picking an 'average' EU city and an 'average' US city. It just depends on the 4 or 5 parameters you choose for this but focused mostly on inner city transport. Also, that car parks in the US take up more space than housing is absolutely insane!
It’s because the US has 5X more shopping malls…all with parking stalls. Expect this to change into mixed use space over time. The US just has too many shopping malls and with e-commerce this will change pretty fast.
I live in an about 500K inhabitants French city (1 million with the suburbs). The city centre is car-free (pedestrians and bikes only, the only cars allowed are emergency services and deliveries). We have access to dozens of bus lines, 2 metro lines, a tramway line, free car-parks, free bike-parks and bikes-for-rent all with the same travel card (visitors can purchase a travel for 1.30€); we have several train stations, an international airport, motorways all around the city but none at all *through* the city (we wouldn't want them). Several people I know don't have a car, and we share one whenever we can... ...And in this city we consider we don't have very good infrastructures, as we're more than 5 hours of train away from Paris XD (no direct travel, we have to go to one of the train lines on this video first) (travelling to Paris by car just isn't done, you don't need a car in Paris either...) ...Hearing about how so much more complicated everything seems to be in the USA is crazy!
@@offrainc6455 It’s partly city planning (a big part) and population density. The US is a really big country with low population density. You don’t need a car in New York or Chicago and even small cities like Salt Lake City have good public transit, but most of the country is too spread out and designed for cars. LA and Phoenix are great examples of terrible city planning. Over time this will change... The US could triple its population and still not be crowded. Love France BTW. I’m an engineer and used to work for a company with a factory in France. Always enjoyed my trips. I will say that the factory was in the Normandy region and you did need a car to get around that area since things were more spread out.
While looking at an "average" city makes sense in Europe, I don't think it would in the US - there is a very small number of really huge cities and a huge number of really small cities, so that an "average city" could be more an abstract thing than a representation of something real
@@offrainc6455 driving in US cities isn't all that bad. We tend to exaggerate and look only at LA or NYC but these are cities which have 5-6 million people compare that to the Midwest where the cities are 200k-600k proper the city isnt that bad to drive in and parking isn't that hard to find either
To all the Americans: we have highways. We have rail lines but we have a lot of motorways as well (especially the oh so praised Dutchies). Just go on Google Maps, turn the traffic-showing option on and you'll see those green strings covering our countries. In fact, if we didn't have those we'd have to move our freight by trains like you (which doesn't happen unluckily).
@@therealdutchidiot A lot is relative, and since a lot more is moved by trucks that pester our motorways and a lot more is moved by rail in the US, that makes our modal share FOR FREIGHT pale. I'd rather see them on rails than on tyres, they're also kinda frightening to drive by, especially on mountain highways, during rain or with strong winds. Plus, correctly managed freight transportation is much more profitable for rail companies than passengers', that could also be a way to lighten the (totally necessary) burden of rail companies on the State
@@Hastdupech8509 While the share of freight trucks in Europe is high, it's also high in the US. Their trucks are just a lot larger. What Europe also does is shipping by ocean. That wouldn't work all that well in the US.
You also incorporated 50 states, which are basically countries, under one country and one language, Europe will NEVER accomplish this. You can also travel freely and live in any state, same with working or studying. I'm European, but this video seems biased in many parts
@@therealdutchidiot Yea, US has over 250,000KM of tracks and most are used for Freight considering those companies already own the tracks, BNSF and CSX for example own a bunch of tracks in the SouthWest and East Coat and are given priority on the tracks over Passenger rail, which can cause delays and lateness, interference when passenger trains. Germany on the other hand usually does a mixed traffic but passenger rail are still given the green light due to demand in European countries just being higher
Europe is very well designed for those living in large cities. If you are like me who are Norwegian and live in rural South-Western Norway, you don't have any options. On occation we can take the bus to the nearest large city (Stavanger). But that is only a couple of times a day, excluding weekends where you basically have no public transport what so ever. I have been to alot of rural areas over much of Europe, and it is the same situation. If you live only like 10 minutes or more outside one of the large cities, you almost certainly need a car
@@direnius Why does it matter to me how well designed a train ride from Oslo to Ankara is, when Oslo itself is 8 hours car trip away? Which is my point. Europe is well designed for those living in a big city
Have you thought of Petitioning for better schedules and services on weekends in your area? Maybe make that part of any candidate's priorities in local elections. It sounds like atleast part of the problem could be solved through reforms.
As a German I wanna say one thing. (The following accounts for Germany, not all of Europe) The Big Problem about public transport in Germany is that the tickets are too expensive, not unaffordably expensive, but still on the long run more expensive than owning and maintaining a small car. I used to own a 1994 Ford Fiesta, and no matter how hard I tried and wanted to go public transport, it was either no possible in my area, or later when I moved to a town, driving my Car was still cheaper than getting a Train or Bus ticket. And that's a massive issue, if driving your Car is cheaper or just slightly more expensive than choosing public transport, most people are gonna choose the comfort and flexibility of a car over rail or bus. Again, not for all of Europe, looking at the Netherlands I always feel like they are 20 years ahead of everyone, their public transport is superb, their cycling paths are amazing. Whenever I visit the Netherlands, I don't even think about using a car
How is public transport not affordable in germany? i just locked up the price for monthy public Flatrate in berlin (wich is 88€, wich is 95 in US dollars) We can take me as an example, i have a very low income of 1600€ a month, 700€ goes to my rent and another 100€ for internet and radio. 88€ for transportation is not much. owning and maintaing a car is much more then 88 bucks a months here.
My argument no longer fits, since there's now a new Ticket that lets you use all trains, trams and busses in German for 49€ (InterCityExpress not included) The "Deutschlandticket" and it is a very good thing to exist which I got immediately. Before, owning and fueling my car was a rough estimate of 120€ per month (1994 Ford Fiesta Petrol 1.1l engine/ that includes tax, insurance and fuel, maintenance not included in my calculation) And it was about the same for a monthly ticket to get from 1 city to the other, which my first comment was based off of. And I am fairly sure that if it's literally the same price, people will choose the flexibility of a car, over the unreliability of public transport. Germans know that already but German Railways run so unreliable that it became a meme, too many canceled or delayed trains, and it's looking only mildly better for busses) tho again, with the introduction of the 49€ ticket, the whole price question changed and my point is no longer relevant.
Great video, we need more like this to feel more proud of the things we have here in Europe. Economic growth is just a number, living is an other thing and life quality matters a lot more than the GDP. A lot of people dismiss the EU because it grows very slowly but to be honest I think we are on the right track to make a better, smarter world here.
Not to mention that GDP is, and almost always was, a lie. As with most indicators, they're only useful when nobody uses them to direct their activity. It's always been easily manipulated too. We need to learn how to do more with less, and how to build stable lives. The eternal-growth culture ("sustainable growth" only to people who don't understand exponential growth) is a problem. Moving away from that doesn't _have_ to mean that people get poorer.
2 года назад
@@LuaanTi You can use the MPI: Multi-dimensional Poverty Index.
Its a shame that some of the politicians in some of our countries try make Europe look like a bad deal. A lot of things we dont even think about in day to day life are good because of the EU. And with how things are going at the moment we might need each other soon. So for all people that have some of those anti-EU politicians, please, look up what EU does for you and ignore the fools 👍
One big difference between Europe and the USA that limits the feasibility of rail lines as transportation to some areas is population density. The USA has a lot more areas, particularly out in the Great Plains states, where there are large areas with very low population densities, which would not as very feasible when it comes to laying out a public transport network. Places like Wyoming, South Dakota, and so on are so sparsely populated and spread out overall that public transport really wouldn’t do a great job of servicing the area, which makes cars necessary. Europe is much more urbanized overall with notably larger shares of the population living in cities, especially in Western Europe
While it is true that the population density is low across much of the US, most places were still served by private intercity rail into the 1960s and 70s, even South Dakota and Wyoming. Comparing apples to apples, my home state of Wisconsin has a population density twice as high as Finland, yet we have just 8 daily intercity passenger rail round trips and a very limited number of intercity buses. According to wikipedia, Finland has 260 daily intercity passenger rail round trips and I'm sure a bunch more intercity buses than we have. Also, if the federal government is willing to build multiple interstate highways through South Dakota and Wyoming, there's really no reason they couldn't build passenger rail too.
They have roads. Freeways go through no man's land all over the central and western US. We just use our money to build roads, but it's not as if we couldn't afford to build interstate passenger rail networks. We mostly choose not to
@@altriish6683 it would be ecomically unviable, you don't build a interstate rail network just so maybe 10 people would use it on a given day, and waste millions to maintain it. Passenger Rail, looks nice but Reality says you need population density to keep it. If you want to simply burn and waste money, then there are other things you can use that money for.
I have seen this same argument used as a reason why Spain has the largest high speed rail system of the continent. I don't think it's true in either case.
@@altriish6683 all of three interstates go through Wyoming and that's almost entirely for transport and Yellowstone. Not to mention that interstate roads are easy and cheap to maintain compared to highspeed rail
As a person from Europe that studied for years in the neighbouring country I can confidentally say that the train delays are the worst... The trains I was taking are considered top priority trains as they go through sometimes even four countries, yet the delays for them are more usual than them going on time. But still, it's amazing to have such opportunities.
7:18 uhmmm, even if as a European citizen I love our public transportation network, unfortunately a rail travel from Paris to Amsterdam is way more expensive than 30$. It’s actually about 150$, and at it’s cheeper it’s about 100$. Sometimes even flights are cheeper :(
As a British born Canadian raised living in Europe in mid adulthood i can definitely state that European and Japanese public transportation systems need to be replicated all over the planet
@@williams6206 u not that smart huh? He said he was born in Canada and now lives in the uk. Nobody eishes to live in america if they previously come from a european first world country
To clarify, it's the density inside cities that matter. Spain is like western US in many ways and just as empty in between cities, but the cities themselves are quite dense.
I’m European, Portuguese living in uk. And the increased costs of personal transport is not supplanted by good public transport. It just pushes poorer people to not have cars and lower working families to spend loads on fuel. I don’t know how it is in America but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Europe
Not very far into the video so I won't comment on the whole yet, but it seems like the map you used at 0:51 is actually a map of potential future high-speed rail. :)
exactly. In Portugal we dont have high speed. Nor any international rail conection that gets directly from Lisbon to any other country. To get from lisbon to madrid you need 1 day and 3 trains. With the same time you can get to Poitiers, France, by car. And those 3 trains belong to 2 rail operators, so you need to buy 2 tickets from 2 countries taht are colectivelly more expensive than gas. For instance, if you need to travel from Lisbon to anywhere else out of Portugal, rail is just out of question. And if you force yourself to go by train, it also depends on the amount of people. If you travel in a group of 2-5, going by car is just so much cheaper, because the costs of the train tickets, while cheaper than gas for 1 travel, 5 tickets are much more expensive. And dont get me started on the fact that cities outside os Lisbon/Porto dont have public transportation, so, you get out of the train and what? a ticket Lisbon-Faro can be 36€ and take up to 5 hours. By car used to cost 40€ and its 2 hours. Even if the price of gas doubled, it would still be cheaper to go by car as a family of 4. European passenger rail is not that good, and the conections between countries are simply terrible. If you dont live in central europe nor border germany, rails conections are even worse.
@@Duck-wc9de I was referring to the 'United States High-Speed Rail System' map, which is a hypothetical map, and not a depiction of the US railway network. The European rail map seems to be perfectly accurate, at least from what I can tell, though I can't speak for the on-the-ground situation, or Portugal for that matter. I use European rail very frequently and across many countries - mostly in Western Europe - and can't say I've had bad experiences, though using Benelux and DACH railways help of course. :)
As many have pointed out, both the rail and road networks in Europe are much more complex. Also, in the densely populated German Ruhr-Valley, you can take the subway or „S-Bahn“ (city train I guess) to all the surrounding cities. It takes me like 20 minutes to reach 5 different cities with +100k people. And in Germany, we usually get a semester ticket (*as students), with which we can take all public transport option within our state
Still, in Europe, over the last 30 years cargo transport has been shifting from rail to street. Especially in Germany, the Deutsche Bahn now transports only half of what it was transporting 30 years ago, even though total cargo has increased. Since Germany is at the center of the EU this leads to issues on west-east-conneting roads, as they are jammed with all that trucks transporting goods all over the EU (Mostly from east to west, since many companies outsource manual labor to east Europe for the cheap labor wages there)
In the EU it is ridiculously difficult to park a car in a big city. All parking lots are taken practically 24/7 so you have to be planning your transportation in advance and know on which time and day of the week you can find a parking lot. (From my experience in Warsaw Poland). Also parking almost everywhere is paid.
Why were you parking a car withing a fricking city in the first place? A city is for shops, for people, for jobs, etc. Not for spending government money on giving your car parking space, so that actually profitable buildings can't be placed there
I dont quite know where u got the maps or what does it strictly represents but the highway map of europe is highly dubious, and that map of yellow lines representing railnetwork is again more like a visual representation than an actual map
That "highway" map of Europe represents the Trans-European Transport Network and includes not only roads but also rail, airports and even water infrastructure. So it represents planned corridors that the EU considers important, it's clearly NOT a representation of highways in Europe.
absolutely! the map he has chosen is the EU TEN-T network map, which is used to coordinate investments and improvements to EU transports (roads but also railways, airports, seaports...) - it's definitely useful, but VERY different from the map of highways in the EU (which i would say its even more widespread and dense than the US one)
A lot of these generalisations of "Europe" simply do not apply to an Italian reality. It's very difficult to bike, public transport sucks, and without a car you are basically stuck relying on a faulty system... Lucky Dutch I guess....
Yeah, same thing here in Finland, useful public transport pretty much doesn't exist, if you live in the less inhabited areas. And because Finland has the lowest population density of EU, we have a lot of those areas. And due to high taxes and the gas prices skyrocketing, (currently around 2.6€/L) many people living in these areas are really struggling financially.
Yeah same in Greece specifically Athens it is easier to have a car than to use public transportation for example a 15-20 min trip by car can be a 40+ min trip by public transport.
5:00 This is also a consequence of the fact that the land in Europe has been divided up and appropriated hundreds of years ago, before the Renaissance. So there is simply no space left for _parking lots._ All in all, it demonstrates the obvious superiority of an organic long-term development forced to a large extent by nature over the man-made fast one.
I'm from the UK, here it doesn't matter if you use private or public transport, it's expensive af. On the railways the infrastructure was set up for the demands of Victorian Britain, and modernising it is extremely difficult. But there's something great about taking a train from the centre of one city to the centre of another - much better than taking a plane to the outskirts of somewhere to the outskirts of somewhere else
USA, grew up with cars not trains. People from Europe can’t seem to understand this. Europe is also much older than the US. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and the very famous and accessible car the Ford Model T came into production in 1908. Less than a generation apart most people wanted cars. There is also a lot of classism and pride that comes with car owner ship in the US. But the major point is there is a cultural difference between Europe and the US. The US loves cars because that is a major part of the US history. As trains are a huge part of European culture.
It would be wise for America to heed Europe's example. If gas were as expensive in America as it is in Europe this country would implode. That's not a great position to put ourselves in if we want to carry on long term. Americans in the last few decades have been all about taking from the future to enrich the present. It's extremely foolish.
@@altriish6683 why is it that Europe is so much better in this way? What happens if there is a natural disaster or trains breakdown? Americans are never going to give up their cars. So why would government invest in a product people won’t use?
@@jeaninetungsten8865 well you got to also take some realities in, the US has alot lower population density and its geography is vastly different from Europes. So if did the reverse, Europe would definitely be more car centric. While the US would be more public transport centric.
Europe is "Well Designed" because major population centers are closer together, such as Lisbon to Madrid to Paris to Brussels to Frankfurt, etc. California was supposed to have a high speed rail line that would go between the two major metropolitan centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles, but even those are alternatively either slightly over 1 hour flight, or 7 to 8-ish hour drive, depending on travel habits. The HSR would need to be cost effective to be a happy alternative between the two, as it would be slower than a plane, but faster than driving. Political area maps are also misleading, as geographically the US is quite diverse in its landscape. California to someplace across the country like New York would entail crossing at least 3 mountain ranges, desert, farmland, with some major cities being very few and far between at that. Europe on the other hand, especially in the Northern main continent, is generally open and flat, perfect for rails and high speed trains. Places like the mountains between Switzerland and Italy, or Spain and France, are likely the biggest challenges geographically for constructing railway. Furthermore, States would want to be well aware of who is paying for the maintenance of the infrastructure. This is important, since some states have threatened use of force against another to resolve disputes, such as Toledo almost being part of Michigan, or New York staking claim of the entire river that marked the state border, including the piers/docks that protruded into it from the opposite side. Simple solution: Make it Federal, though having multiple Eminent Domain cases and Environmental Impact Evaluations from the National level will not be popular, just look at the Keystone Pipeline to see how that unfolded. Lastly is how useful would it be to most people. The majority Americans don't need to travel or commute such distances on a regular basis, most likely for business trips, which their company is paying for and paying them to be on, or while on vacation (which Europeans get more PTO), but that is paid out of pocket and very limited in time. If someone has just 2 weeks off, they will not want to spend 4 days on a train one way, just to end up with 6 days where they wanted to be, then for another 4 day travel back, a reason why a 6 hour flight across country is still marketable. TL;DR: It isn't just about design, Europe and US are quite different, not easy to compare.
One important thing to mention, as a difference, comparing Europe and US is that most, if not all, European cities are founded in times when there was no such thing as mass transportation, starting from a small center, and gradually expanding, so most of European cities are walkable to-from work, groceries, schools, health points etc. You also can hardly fit a parking space in downtown Rome, unless you want to tear down something important for whole civilization, and having some streets narrower than a car. Bar few western EU countries, most of cities in Europe are safe to walk day and night (and for good part those not in EU), so walking from and to problem is only passing by many of shops that have things you want to buy. America is built on plans of industrial and post-industrial thinking, it doesn't have cozy metropolitan cities, but capital-effective areas. It's not really a thing of catching up with one or another, Europe has had consistent development of transportation strategies for thousands of years, and it didn't listen much to i.e. Chinese solutions, but had to live through to get what works for them, and adjust it for short distances within rather small countries, terrain and climate.
Someone gets it! I'm not saying America should not fix its transportation problems but everyone seems to forget that we are still a very young country compared to Europe. There are houses over there that are older than the whole US!
Exactly. It is also worth comparing population density, since some parts of the US are vastly more dense than others. To say that the entire US has bad public transport is true, but it implies that it is a problem that can and should be fixed across the nation. However, this isn't viable in a large portion of the western US (like South Dakota or Montana or Wyoming). There just aren't enough people (close enough to each other) to justify it. (Yes, I know he said that if the US fixed public transport where most people are, then it's probably fine, but he said that at the end, meaning that everything before that had the implied idea that public transport needed to be fixed everywhere). Also, the parking spot thing got to me. Like yeah, of course the US needs more parking spots. It has a way higher percentage of its residents using cars. If 1000 kids (teenagers) are driving to school every day, they are going to need 1000 parking spots. But what about on weekends or during the summer? Those spots don't just disappear when they aren't in use. And, now those 1000 kids need somewhere else to park, whether it be at a park, beach, or restaurant.
Well, it depends on which city you are. And if you live outside of a city, is lot more complicated. I live in Catalonia and if you live in Barcelona or really near, public transport options are fantastic, but the farther from Barcelona, the harder is to use public transport. I have to use car everyday because I spend only 30 minutes compared to 90 or more (up to 150 at night) by public transport.
I think your video is very cool and 'well designed'! I fully agree that public transportation, within cities and between cities, is very important. Here in Europe, we are doing better on that than in the US for sure. I, therefore, agree with your conclusion. However, some maps and data you show does not really match the statements that you make. Some examples: - The map you start with is the the exact same map Interrail uses and is meant to give a general overview on the existing popular routes within Europe. This map is a bit outdated however, and many important links are missing. Some examples are the LGV-Est in France, the Lyon-Milan route. To really make your point impressive, a map like OpenRailwayMap showing all passenger lines in Europe would make way more impact, as the Interrail one only shows about 10 per cent of all rail and misses a lot of existing high-speed routes as well. Compared to the US, it does not even look that dense, while that is your main point here. - Despite having a smaller focus on cars than the US, Europe still has A LOT of highways that are not shown on your road-network map. In fact, I believe you used the TEN-T or Trans-European map, which only shows the important corridors across Europe and also includes rail I believe. Type in 'highway map Europe' on Google and you get a way better result. - You use the argument of Europe being larger than the US. This is totally fine of course. However, if you do that, then the overview of most congested cities would include 6 (!) of the 10 most congested cities being in Europe, despite being it in the east. Taking just Western Europe as example is also fine, but then the US is of course a lot bigger. Now, land size is still no argument against public transportation, I agree on that, but people that are against the opinion you bring up might use this as an argument against you. Overall, I think we are going the right way in Europe. More high-speed rail is being built, more operators are riding these routes and cities are getting rid of cars. Therefore, I do agree on you conclusion. I just noticed that the images you use do not always support or only partly support your claims, which gives people who disagree with you reasons to criticize you, which is not needed because your points in general are very good! :)
It’s not just the matter of selectively including Eastern Europe in land size. It’s also not factoring in population density when talking about the USAs gaps. Ofc Wyoming, Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, etc don’t have high functioning public transportation networks because those would operate on extreme losses. If Poland or Spain had worse transit than Wyoming they’d be considered undeveloped countries.
I was really confused when he showed the top ranking of most congested cities which showed no American cities and then went on to say that American cities are more congested. He also randomly pointed out large the US is as if that's an excuse instead of US density and distance between major cities that people actually travel between.
Also he oddly avoided areas of transit that US exceeds at. Like it's incredibly effecient freight rail network where 28 percent of it's freight movement by ton-miles. Or how (according to the first source I could find) 26 million children are moved between school and home via bus everyday which is like moving double Belgium's population in a bus everyday.
Outside of the major cities where the vast majority of poor people live, public transit is not viewed as important or desirable in the US. Perhaps because we are not taxed to death.
@@carpzero1 It is not viewed as important or desirable because of the low density. In a car dependent suburb, I would prefer to drive as well because it is impossible to set up a good functioning public transport system. In higher density places with good public transport, I would not even want to drive on the majority of my trips. Fact is that somewhat higher density places that are walkable and have good public transport, are among the most desirable places, even in the US. In these places, housing prices go sky high because there is a big lack of demand for these types of neighbourhoods.
0:26 you should look at those "large areas with no amtrak" with a population density map. I understand our public transport sucks in comparison but the middle of the US especially the upper Midwest has such few people living there mass public transport would make no sense , economically and physically. Most Americans live on either the East or west coast where you find the most public transport. So yes it still needs improving but until the middle of the country grows more there's not much demand for huge public transport infrastructure in the middle of the country.
Dude, as I european I lived in Wisconsin Dells for 4 months. I was shocked there was literally to none public transport. There was an amtrack pasing throught the city every Thursday! There was no alternative other than a car to get anywhere outside the city. I found this so absurd. Then I took a bus from Chicago to New york which took 24 hours!!! Indeed the train was 3 hours faster but was so expensive it was not worth it. For the same distance in Europe, lets say Amsterdam Rome, it takes me 15 hours with the train, on first class and was still cheaper than the bus I took in the USA. American can be one of the best coutries in the world to live in if you have money, but its the worst to live in if you are the average joe.
I want to give some clarification because a lot of people misunderstood what I said in the video and I missaid some things as well.
1. The map at the beginning of the video is of "Mass transit railway lines" that go between nations, which I then compared to mass transit railway lines that go between US states. The map also includes ferry routes, which I know is a bit confusing because I didn't state that in the video so apologies for that. Here's an interactive map so you can click around for yourself: www.eurail.com/en/plan-your-trip/railway-map
2. I do switch between talking about the European Union and Europe a few times throughout the video which might have been a bit confusing as well.
3. When I say that the "EU's" road network is not nearly as congested as the US' it's true, and I think people got confused because they thought I meant Europe, which would have contradicted my statement because European nations are in the list I show. I do know that I said Europe instead of the EU once when showing the list however so that's a mistake, sorry for that.
4. The fuel prices I showed were from 2021 because I felt they were more accurate long-term since prices have gone insane recently.
Need to update that gasoline prices, in Norway 1 liter cost 2.7 dollars,
It's just the Eurail/Interrail Map. It doesn't show every major railway line in Europe, especially in eastern and southeastern Europe. The other map, you showed, with the high speed railways is more accurate.
The purpose of this map is to show popular routes across Europe to popular destinations and major cities, e.g. London - Penzance is not an important railway line in Europe.
Well, you said each yellow line represents a rail line and there most certainly is not a physical rail link between Great Britain and Ireland and there aren’t two links between the UK and France
Saying that Europe is less congested with showing that Europe has 7 of the the most congested cities. America 0. Then you follow by saying it’s weird how the place with more roads has more congestion. Except the table you showed previously counters that.
A few issues here:
Europe has double the population density of America. The denser areas of America actually do have much better public transit than the rest of the country.
America has the largest rail network in the world, and it used to provide excellent passenger service. It could do so again if more local public transit was available from stations on that network.
Los Angeles did tear up its street car tracks a century ago, but it’s currently building out its heavy rail subway and light rail streetcar network again. These trains will serve as arteries, with bus routes from train stations serving as capillaries in a circulatory system of public transit. Many other American cities are currently building out similar networks.
Freedom of travel in the EU isn’t totally a good thing. Sure, rich Northern and Western Europeans can vacation easier and poor Southern and Eastern Europeans can go get jobs easier. But Southern and Eastern European countries suffer brain drain and get stuck with low value added manufacturing, resource exports, and tourism industries. Meanwhile most of the wealth flows straight back to banks in Northern and Western European countries. The system benefits the rich far more than it benefits the poor.
For those who didn’t know: The first map isn’t actually all of Europes train tracks, just the most major ones. There are 99% more
i think that everybody knows that. In USA there is also more than 6 train tracks
@@justpenguincz there really arent that many active ones.
@@iggiewalsh2237 i live at the italian-austrian border and over that 1 track we have 6 more train tracks, ad for every italian region and ur already 120 more or less added for 1 country
So the train tracks on the first map are over half of the train tracks in Europe?
@@idkactually8565 actually no they are around 1/5 or 1/4 of them if we use a mountainous region as example
The rail network at the start is not actually the rail network, it shows most major cities and to which major cities they are connected to. The actual railways are waaaay more complex
yea and the map at 0:33 right after the usa map also doesnt show every single rail in Europe not even close
@@smarty265 only shows the ones that go across countries i belive
@@smarty265 he literally said those are high speed ones
@@timontoth2728 Yeah but it was not up to additions made in recent years
@@timontoth2728 Not quite, the map represents lines between major connected cities from different countries. Those rails cross more cities in their paths. The don t represent the path of the rails themselves. Moreover, Italy's or France's rails would literally fill the map with no visible gaps if they are drown with such thick lines.
I am living in Hannover, Germany. I once read that our public transport company guaranteed that in the city nobody has to walk more than 250m to reach a bus or tram. You can reach every part of the city with those in a short and efficient timespan. Most of the time we do not appreciate this system but if we visit other countries we realise what we have at home and well the system works.
Yes, exciting journeys with cultural enrichers evereday. What a fun!
@@podunkman2709 Get off your high horse
I visited Hannover this summer and I gotta say it is a lovely city!
It works untill you want to take a train to a country next to your neighbours.
@@Snibble Never had a issue with that. I took a train direct to Vienna and Amsterdam several times. You can travel to several major and smaller Cities.
The thought of not having a car growing up in Kansas is almost insane to me. Now that I live in Prague, I personally think that great public transportation is far FAR better in almost every way possible. Hands down. So cheap, so efficient, I don't have to worry about leaving my car and getting an uber when I get wasted on a night out, and honestly, I think it contributes a lot to my mental health, you feel far more connected with people. You don't feel isolated! If I were a city planner back in the states I would put a MASSIVE focus on public transportation in cities, it'd be a no brainer.
Why is the internet talking about europe as if europe is a country again?
It's as if a train filled with Stew Pead passengers crashed on youtube.
@@FriendlyCroock because everyone asumes that western Europe and scandanavia in the same as eastern Europe and the balkans
Like yeah the Public transport is really cheap... Here in Ústecký kraj in the litle town of Bílina, The bus cost only 2 czech crowns...which for any american out here is 0,080 dollar.
@@leonardo718 you're right but chill out bro
I don’t think the maps used (at least of europe), both for rail and highway systems, reflect the real life situation very well. In both cases you show the official international routes in both cases. On top of that there are thousands of extra lines in every country, this is the same with highway networks. The rail network in europe is much more comprehensive in comparison to this map..
These are just main arteries for the continents.
I think he was refering more to high-speed rail as opposed to just normal rail
The map for the US probably shows the same, railways between states and across the country. I'm sure they have plenty more, smaller railways.
Man, he just showed straight lines. You must've realized it's just schematics.
The train rail example is very bad. There are like 20 different types of rail roads which makes inter capital travel insanely slow
Just a small correction. At 5:58 you claim that EU citizens are able to move freely to other schengen EU countries and stay up to 3 months. THIS IS FALSE. You are allowed to stay INDEFINITELY in other schengen countries as a EU citizen. You can buy/rent a home and work in the other nation without even notifying anyone and it's your RIGHT as a EU citizen to live in another schengen EU nation indefinitely.
You also need no passport
Depends on the country i think.
German foreign office:
Since the entry into force of the Freedom of Movement Act/EU on 1 January 2005, EU citizens are no longer required to apply for a residence permit after entering Germany. However, they need to register, like everyone else, with their local residents registration office
No this video is correct:
EU citizens with a valid identity card or passport may:
-enter another EU Member State without requiring an exit or entry visa. Family members who are not nationals of a Member State do not require either an exit or entry visa if they possess a valid residence card;
- live in another Member State for up to 3 months without any conditions or formalities;
- live in another Member State for longer than 3 months subject to certain conditions, depending on their status in the host country:
---- those who are employed or self-employed do not need to meet any other conditions,
---- students and other people not working for payment, such as those in retirement, must have sufficient resources for themselves and their family, so as not to be a burden on the host -country’s social assistance system, and comprehensive sickness insurance cover;
- have to register with the relevant authorities if living in the country longer than 3 months. Their family members, if not EU citizens, require a residence card valid for 5 years;
- be entitled to permanent residence if they have lived legally in another Member State for a continuous period of 5 years. This also applies to their accompanying family members;
- have the right to be treated on an equal footing with nationals of the host country. However, host authorities are not obliged to grant benefits to EU citizens not working for payment during the first 3 months of their stay.
Freedom of movement only applies to people who work or are self-employed, those that aren't like retirees or students have rules like mentioned in the video.
It’s mostly very easy to travel. No passport required for most countries if you’re an european citizen
@@mrpotifar no passport required, BUT, a travel document is required as you must present one IF asked for it by that member state's authorities. (Which almost never happens in my experience). An id card inside of Schengen is also considered a travel document (so that's where ne 'no passport' comes from).
I worked as an immigration officer for a couple of years. Rules might have changed in the meantime though, or my memory is failing me.
I was born and raised in the UK but moved to The USA at 22. I had never felt more isolated! In England I could easily look up bus timetables, many of which would take me exactly where I needed to go, use the bike lanes or cycle tracks to go to the town centre or take a train for the day to the next city over and it would be quick and cheap.
Here in the USA I felt I HAD to have a car and learn to drive, its near impossible to function in society without one and that’s terribly sad.
EDIT: for context, my town in the UK has less than 40,000 people and is about an hour and a half away by car from any large city, and we STILL had good public transport for nearby towns, villages and cities. Low population density isn't an excuse if it makes sense for people to use it!
UK is also insanely smaller, the bus and train ticket prices much higher, and there isn't as many places to go. Quick and cheap? You haven't been to UK recently. Bus pass prices are significantly better in the US, and the buses were nowhere near cheap. The drivers will also pass you by even if you're at the stop. US doesn't do that. They have specific times at each stop unless its completely empty.
UK mass transit is neither fast nor cheap.
@@luzhang2982 sure the us is a big country, but density wise it’s not that different, and even then, cities in Europe are as big as cities in the US, the cities in the us are designed around cars, that’s just a fact.
@@luzhang2982 but it's not larger than individual states, let alone particular agglomerations. The problem is that the US cities are built for cars, designed for cars, and everything else is distant second. With people actively campaigning against public transport, because they think it would bring crime and people of color from "inner cities".
GO BACK TO EUROPE
@@joaquinelorrieta4203 No, the population density is incredibly varied in the US, and overall the population density of the UK is much greater.
There's also vast swaths of the US that literally have only one person per thousand km sq
Im from switzerland. Here most people go to school with a bike, which saves money and is good for the environnement. The people that live further away take the bus or train. What always amazes me is that theres always a bus-/ trainstation no matter where u live. Its so practical especially for students.
And on top of that, your flag is a big plus!
@@NymNion Pepepains
@@NymNion docYell YOU'RE NOT FUNNY
We're so sorry for our streamer
@@FranXiT fancy meeting you here flushE
The map for European railways and road networks are missing a lot of detail. The Autobahn network alone can equal any US area for density. And the French, Swiss or Italians aren't that far behind either.
yes and no Germany is behind the rail infrastructure they promised to build if for example the Gotthard base tunnel was finished but they didn't
@@SimpWhiper Because of incompetence and political mismanagement, Germany is notoriously known to have an overall issue in making new infrastructure projects and not halting it for some unknown reason up along the way, the do extremely with construction in other countries until it’s back in Germany, their rail schedules are laughable at best, but still better than a lot of places, and have u forgotten what happened to the BrandenBurg Airport that was felt abandoned for years
What the hell even is that "road network" map? like pull out an actual map for both, they both have equally the same amount of roads
That’s a good point. A more useful comparison for this video would net the fact Europe tends to build lots of highways for freight and interregional travel outside cities and less often within them. USA tends to force concrete spaghetti through historic urban neighbourhoods and everything along the route rots.
@@Racko. In German even corruption is done with precision lmao
The incredible thing is that Europe has all of these projects going on in a net of different countries, cultures and plans.
Which shows that unity doesn’t help anything with life quality.
I mean the US has projects that span states, cultures and local goverments. Its not that different the US is just a bit more centralized.
@@trent6319 you don’t get it, really. Europeans from different countries speak different languages that can’t be understood among them, and you find that by just walking a few meters across country border locations. There’s nothing comparable to that in the US
@@trent6319 The US doesn't have culture.
@@lsfornells i mean yeah there's only the two large languages in the US which does make it simpler
Dutchie here, manager project control for mostly infrastructure. When you ask what can still be improved, realistically it'll mostly be incremental additions with the current technological limitations (which is usual in a historic context I know). For instance, we're redesigning a street in a major city centre at the moment. We want to untangle cyclists and pedestrians by offering the cyclists an alternative. Problem is, the best alternative is also used by lorries to supply the city-centre shops making it a bit less safe. We'll widen the street of course, remove parking spaces (always a huge protest) but the best alternative would be to have specific supply-raillines underground in urban centres. But those are mega projects and not feasible at the moment.
When it comes to international traintravel, we're getting there. Last march I traveled to Austria from the Netherlands by train and it was just as fast as with a regular car (and cheaper). But one hiccup and you're screwed with transfers. More reliable trains and schedules would see more people taking PT as a viable alternative.
As a fervent cyclist without a car, thank you for your efforts!
As a fellow dutchie, what city haha?
And how about making public transit in the netherlands cheaper its not really a cheaper option than a car
How much was a one way train ticket to Austria from the Netherlands?
@@sergeantmajor_gross one way depended on the day you were traveling. On the weekends it was about 70 euro, during the week it was less than 50. Also depended on when you booked. If I was quicker it'd be cheaper
It always amazed me how the train was invented in the UK and had an important role in US history, yet here in Spain it never became a thing in its early days because Spain is the second most montainous country in Europe apart from Switzerland, but nowadays it has as many highspeed railways as France
Spain didn't have much of an economy for a very long time, after the new world gold and silver dried up and the stupidity of the Franco regime. It still has serious lack of development outside of the main urban centers and large swaths of it are virtually empty. Having access to the EU markets and free movement of people plus pretty good education system has greatly accelerated Spain, but it still lacks basic industry and probably never will have those industries due to specialization of economies.
@@joseph1150 yeah, Spain was doing great until the 2008 recession
@@no_soy_rubio It has some fundamental weaknesses due to not having a robust construction industry, weak industrial base, and leans too heavily on foreign markets and tourism. It's relatively decent growth over the last couple decades is largely a result of playing catchup and having access to the more developed parts of the EU as neighbors and close partners. It's true potential as a country is nowhere near realized given its large unemployment level and under utilized expanses.
Austria is the most mountainous country. 78% are mountains. Compared with the size, austria has double the amout of mountains than switzerland (only 45% and half the size)
I am from Belgium and i live in a minor city, the proof that our transit system works is that i can buy a train ticket right to Amsterdam for 10 euros and be in amsterdam 3 hours later. Also your map of highways in europe is too simplified.
Yeah true and the map of trains lines as well.
10 euro's? Must be some sort of deal because NS is extremely expensive, it would cost me 20e for a single ticket to get to Amsterdam, and I live only about an hour from Amsterdam. That would be 40 euro's just to sit in a train for 2 hours.... Europe may be "well designed" but it's extremely expensive to use public transport. A cheap car will save you allot of time and money.
That is crazy i live in the netherlands and it cost me 50 euro to just go to amsterdam and back.
@@MasthaX I can't wait for some "European transport pass" to be a thing, imagine having a titre de transport valable everywhere in Europe. even with a high price tag it would need to be subsidies, but considering how expensive cars are for the entire society, I think it would be worth the collective cost.
Well yes, but it's not a huge achievement if you consider that the entire BeNeLux is just a bit larger area than the Transdanubia part of Hungary(which is also considered a small country). So yes, cheap and efficient, but in that particular case, it's nothing to marvel about.
I am from Slovakia and the tram shown at 1:45 is actually the one I use on my daily commute to work!
Btw, the railway line through the middle of Slovakia does not really exist as depicted. You can travel this route without changing trains, but not through mountainous Slovakia as shown. These trains go through Czech republic instead.
Czech there for the Škoda tram comment. Upvote you have from me!
@@decimusdecius7858Ty vole 😁
As far as I know those lines only show the connections between two cities and don't necessarily describe the actual rail line (I mean, trains don't really go only in straight lines, do they...)
Hostel??😱
@@solok4150 forget Hostel, Slovakia is beautiful small country, rich in both history and natural wonders ;)
The problem with Europe's public transportation systems (Italian here) is that, even if they are not always perfect (maintenance and punctuality), they are just the better alternative, compared to the car, in cities.... but that ONLY applies to medium-large cities. The moment you strive just a little further away from the downtown areas, you NEED to have a car. There are the occasional buses here and there and the local train lines are good enough, but they can't physically cover all of the areas that need to be served.
So, if you live in a city and do most of your business there (work, family and friends), you don't need a car at all, but if you live in the countryside or even in smaller towns... good luck surviving without a car.
In other words, the majority of your population can get by without a car, which means that you experience significantly less traffic when you, someone who needs to drive, uses the road.
Of course!!
They want you to NOT having a car.
I understand your point, however i live in a town of about 30.000 residents. I have acces to 8 trains every hour going in 2 directions (4 one way, 4 the other) and many busses giong to various smaller towns (of which multiple are basically some houses along a street). You can also rent a bike at the train station. I do have to be clear that this is the netherlands, however it is in the more remote part. The closest bigger city being Leeuwarden (just less than 95.000 residents). My point is mostly that if done correctly public transport will be able to get you basically anywhere you need to go.
Edit: i want to make clear that im not trying to bash your opinion, im just giving you my opinion. I hope everyone who sees this has a nice day
@@robinboonstra107 sorry but this simply cannot work for Italy. Cities in the Po Valley are all very well connected because we live a densely populated *flat* area but as soon as you go either North to the Alps or South to the Apennines everything changes dramatically: they're so scarsely populated montanous areas that comparing them to the Netherlands simply does not make sense. For example: I live in a town of 32.000 inhabintants in Lombardy, I do not use my car at all here, but I use it to go to my holiday house in the Maritime Alps... there are buses to my village of 800 inhabitants there, but only 3 times a day... it is 20 km of curves and 600 m altitude difference from the nearest town on the coast... having a more frequent bus service would simply not be financially viable.
@@mimmiblu6138 but you still do have coverage even to a tiny village such as that so with proper planning you could make the trip without a car. That's all that's needed and sounds great to me actually
Yes! Lived in Belgium for ages. Stayed above a shop in city Center. Could do all my shopping in the street and had a tram stop in front of my appartement. Bike lanes everywhere and very safe so I could cycle out at night to wherever I wanted and always felt safe (single female). My cousin who still lives there has started learning to drive this year (he is 45 and never missed a car before)
The thing is: The train lines in Europa were less DESIGNED than developed in very small iterations. The various countries made their train tracks where knew it would be intelligent, and they were connected then. The towns were first, the train came later, when people already knew where they would be interesting to use.
Europa 😂 that's Jupiter's moon
@@অজানাপাখি-ষ৬গ Depends on the language. In a number of European countries Europe is spelled Europa: Spanish, Polish, German, Norwegian, to name a few.
@@karolinaj5045 And Dutch...
@@karolinaj5045 and Portuguese
In the us it was for the most part the other way around the train lines were designed and towns developed around them to support the infrastructure the lines were not made for connecting towns they were made for connecting the east coast to the west coast and a few mines/farms
honestly, my biggest issue about Europe and specifically France (I'm french) and Italy (studied there), is that although large towns and cities are incredibly well connected it becomes an insane hassle to go to most smaller villages and towns as they might fall off the grid. For that reason and pretty much that reason only I would consider buying a car whilst living in Europe, and that pretty much points out the achilles heel of this system. Unless covering essentially 100% of the towns and villages, there will always be at least one person incentivized to buying a car. It shouldn't be a hassle to have to live in the countryside, and it definitely shouldn't be a hassle to visit your family living in the countryside.
I have noticed that this is an issue mostly in the larger European countries, like Germany/France/Spain. In the Netherlands, even the smaller villages and towns are accessible via bus. Sure, one might have to walk for 20 mins extra apart from the bus, but at least it is accessible. The geographic size of the larger countries + the fact that Netherlands is flat making transportation easy is the difference, I suppose.
Is car rental (incl. sharing) out of the question? I mean, car ownership could be problematic for those living in an urban setting with limited parking space, but free floating car sharing has been a life saver in many instances.
@@SV-mc1jq Netherlands is completely different they do it alot better, the tram is a big thing in the dam plus the city is designed for biking really or walking but your gov push biking and public transport more than cars, but by pushing people to walk and cycle in the city centre you don't need as much public transport like London. Count how many buses go past you in a hour in London 😂so to me cos alot of people bike or walk in Amsterdam that would mesn you can focus on the public transport which goes to the outer villages making it a better service than other places in Europe
Having cars in the countryside is no issue whatsoever. There’s space. Barely anyone lives there. Many jobs and occupations in rural areas require you to operate a vehicle anyway, as you’re literally working the land and we do that with heavy equipment nowadays.
In the future when you can simply rent self-driving cars for a couple days, this will sort itself out.
2:16 Tokyo, I remember before traveling I saw some people on youtube saying how the transport system was maze-like and confusing… but when this Madrid-native arrived, had no problem at all either underground or on the surface, being used to conmute bus-train-metro since young age, Tokyo and Osaka felt like home, with kanji characters on top 😇
i am from a town with just busses..... and i still managed London, Paris, New Yorck and Philadelphia!
i was 2019 in Tokyo and it was very easy to understand.
but some said they made it new over the years. years ago ( or maybe centuries?) even for the people of Tokyo it was very confusing.
@@abyssandchill4545 that seems very unlike Japan but definitely nice nonetheless
Tokyo is pretty easy to navigate the only thing that sucks are all the different companies. It's like 30 different companies and in a lot of cases you need to pay again when you transfer to another line ran by a different company.
we Madrid natives grew up getting lost in Nuevos Ministerios and Chamartin xd
By just quick glance at the map provided of railway's of Europe, there's a hug amount of missing lines. From my travels I can say about 13 country's:
1) Spain: North Pontevedra-Santiago was built already10years ago / some missing in north / Valencia in south is not correct.
2) Italy: Bologna-Venezia has line connecting them (without goin to Verona) this summer had.
3) Croatia: had way more lines
4) Bosnia: I saw A lines- but didnt use them myself
5) Montenegro: had some extra lines-and interesting mix of Soviet and Italian trains on them.
6) Slovaks: had more too
7) Netherland: so many lines that you wouldnt be able to see grey color in this map there
8) Poland: There 1/10 on this map, bet trains like to take 5min on arrival, especially in Wroclaw and Warsaw
9) Lithuanians: had some more line I saw, but havent use them, but there should be line to Klaipeda
10) Latvia: There is 4 missing branches that span a country
11) There's Line between Parnu And Tallinn missing.
* Bonus: *Poland , Lithuania, Latvia , Estonia building new highspeed line - not marked on map at all.
12) Finland: There was a line form Helsinki to Ravoniemi(arctic circle) already 8 years ago
13) Oh!... And the Swiss...
Point is ... If I could see these - probably this map doesnt have even half of whats there in Europe. And it wasn't good source.
Switzerland is entirely covered
No shit. Theres probably more lines in london than the entire US
This was nice... never get tired of watching drone footage of European cities.
Noij eht ria ecrof.
@@MrMessiah2013
I’d wait until after NATO’s pet-project in Ukraine.
@@sergpie Yep, deffinetly NATO invaded ukraine
@@sergpie Legit... look at the destruction NATO is bringing to Ukraine. Those damn NATO people... 🙄
I wish there was more tree coverage though.There's hardly any green in these shots of European cities.
I've been a helicopter pilot for 9 years throughout Europe. I've never gone to my job (the airport) with my car. I've always used trains, buses and in the worse case scenario a taxi/Uber. Now I live in Mallorca and go to work with a bike.
@Backroad Runners yes, I'll take the anything, thanks
@Backroad Runners bad day bud?
@Backroad Runners I'd say yes by the looks of it
@Name Avarege Fat USA Citizen:
@Name post wall women- classic
2:00 that is NOT the European road network, that is a TEN-T corridor map (Trans European Network - Transport) which is actually representing the international corridors of which many are, in fact, railways and river transport routes. You can clearly see that in the example of Croatia/Hungary on so called 'Mediterranean corridor' (railway Rijeka - Zagreb - Koprivnica - Gyekenes - Budapest) and 'Rhine-Danube' corridor that is a river corridor that lies on those two rivers.
I wanted to highlight exactly the same fact. They need to be precise if they want to convince people
@ I do agree that all of the information provided in the video needs to be checked, however I do not deny that EU transport system is generally better than the US one. Partially due to economy differences of course, where EU gives a lot of subsidies payed from taxes in order to make public transport affordable, while US with lower taxes does not interfere the market as much. And of course, I am not talking about the infrastructure that is being funded from the national budget of both unions, but the subsidies to local bus companies to connect rural places where their service is often not profitable, completely free travelling with train for everyone under the age of 19 (in my country, Croatia, at least), affordable tram tickets (1 USD for a 60 minute ride in any direction!), free public mechanical and electric bikes (also in my city, Koprivnica), free buses that connect suburban areas and the frequently visited city locations (hospital, university, malls...) and lots of other measures I probably missed out.
but the US map is also only the interstate route map i think
@@Illuminat-ve5ue Yeah maybe, but the european map way off the reality. Take France for example, the country has more than 100 motorways over 10000 km. However on the map, it is like the country only has 5 or 6 of them...
@@dkundih you have fallen into the "US- low taxes, not meddling vs EU- high taxes, protectionism" fallacy. The major difference is not the total amount of taxation but prioritizing the subsidized industries.
I'm European and I visited Texas recently, I have to say the difference in infrastructure is startling, and the lack of walkability throughout the cities also, in Europe every city is walkable, you can't do anything in the US without a car :/// I drive a car, but I still go to work by bus and by foot every day because it's cheaper, more eco friendly and more convenient (parking and gas are expensive! :'))
@examplenameyoutube Certain parts of the USA are walkable, just not the suburbs or outside of the metro. You can walk around cities and use pretty decent public transit like NYC, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle (I would add san franscisco too but idk if you wanna walk around there LMAO) but cities such as those can be walkable. I'm from Chicago and currently do not own a car, I had one then sold it once I realized I really did not need it.
Geography is always a major factor. Here in Southern Italy there is very little public transportation but they are building the second- SECOND- tunnel under Monte Bianco, in the north. Southern Europe is largely forgotten about, when it comes to national infrastructure.
Sounds more like Italy is thrashing south Italy than that Europe is responsible for it. I think you guys get a lot of money from the EU. Well deserved of-course, but should be well spent as well.
@@ruevyvlogs3631 North Italian here. That's exactly the case. Italy has immense potential and is treated and managed like garbage by those who should administer us and our money. It's a shame.
@@Finkiu Swiss is very much a train country without it really being suitable for trains.
(Southern) Italy is notorious all across Europe for corruption. Even in Venice, they made EU money for the dam system "disappear", only to get a second fund with which they actually installed the system.
I wouldn't be surprised there was actual money provided for a rail system and then it simply vanished into a politician's or the maffia's pocket, or was used for another project like you say.
@@ruevyvlogs3631 Switzerland is way richer than Spain, so it can spend alot more money in making the terrain suitable for trains. Plus, it collaborates with neighboring countries because it's relatively small and thus has alot of transit traffic.
Spain, like France, or Germany, is HUGE. Big countries often take on personal projects and only cooperate when the rail is extended abroad like Eurostar or Thalys. This also limits funding.
One comment about the US Amtrak map in the beginning. Some of those greens lines are currently cargo only. As in, Wyoming has no passenger rail. On another note, those red splotches, and they should include Wyoming as well, are incredibly large and unpopulated, for the most part. As a European you cannot imagine how few people are in some of these areas. Take for instance, Wyoming. Wyoming is roughly (I'm sure someone will correct me) the same size as Poland, or about 8 times the size of Belgium. Poland has about 38million people, Belgium has about 11million people, Wyoming has 600,000 people. If you put the United States on Europe you can cover from Madrid and Dublin to Ukraine and Turkey and well into Russia almost to Kazakhstan and down into Syria. The distances are enormous compared to what people in Europe think is a long distance. The US needs to work on regional rail. Just as nobody in Europe wants to take the train from Lisbon to Vilnius, nobody in the US want to take a train from Sacramento to Raleigh.
Thanks for this reply. Its amazing how ignorant Europeans are. Its like they cant take account any other extraneous variables and must only come to the conclusion that we arent doing it because we just arent as smart and sophisticated as Europe.
Regional train is ideal for the States, the issue is, just with anything America, politics! The red tape issues and etc makes it hard to accomplish anything.
A REALLY high speed train would actually make a lot of sense to travel between Chicago and the east coast for example. It's far easier to zoom at 400 km/h without having to pass all the controls at an airport, so in the end it could be as fast as taking the plane. But cheaper. And way better for the planet.
We honestly could’ve been had way more rail lines dedicated to passenger rail but most rail lines in America carry cargo.
but we can also travel at the night train in Europe. So we can sleep from one city to an another one.
I’m an American that lived in Europe; Germany specifically, for 7 years in the 90s. Seeing the overall public transportation system there compared to the US really made me envious.
I think the US is still far behind Europe in every aspect of public transport, most glaringly the rail system.
Yes - let’s put commuter rail in places with low population density, like Wyoming.
@@snorfallupagus6014 ye some people some how don’t understand oh hey america has a smaller way way wayy more spread out population than Europe and the cities we do have a re far denser making it difficult to build rails and other infrastructure through them
@@snorfallupagus6014 lol no one is saying to start with Wyoming what are you talking about. We could build up and re-invest in corridors first where the majority of Americans live. IE large metros and their surrounding suburbs.
@@andrewpropson8464 We already have public transit of some kind where most Americans live (IE in most US metros). All it will take is continuing/increasing our investment. It is not impossible and there is no need for extra excuses when we are already so far behind the rest of the developed world. Where is the famous "can-do" American attitude?!
We need more transit options. More transit options = more freedom. Especially this will help our fellow Americans who cant drive. (Elderly, disabled etc) and those who are too poor to maintain/own a car.
@@snorfallupagus6014 being Fr there are areas where it could be better. I live in east PA and it’s p dense but only a couple cities are connected with rail. Last time a passenger train stopped at the local train station was decades ago and it supports a county of 150000 ppl. Shit j don’t make sense
Unfurnately trams weren‘t removed only in America but also in some cities in Europe. For example, I am from Kiel in Germany and our tram system also got removed many years ago. And now politicians think about adding a new one because it’s way better for the climate than driving with a car or bus. So why did they even remove it then?
And: Great video haha, I love seeing what people of other counties think about Europe.
Because nobody lives there
Do, erase and redo.😅
In my city had cobblestones during many centuries...all had been pull up in 1950 for modern bitumen and now since 20 years they redo cobblestone because its pretty , clean and cheap in longtime.
I think one of the most important factors is that of gradual historical development, with initial reliance on much slower modes of transportation, as opposed to almost immediately motorized cities. You can find a microcosm of such difference in Russia - west of the Ural mountains, where cities are mostly medieval, you see a large network of convenient roads (rail included). Once you go to the mostly post-18th century Eastern Russia, it's the same problems that the USA infrastructure faces.
Yeah people act like it just so dumb that US cities and the US in general is so car centric.. it should be no surprise since alot of the boom and buildup of the US happened after the car was invented.
Not in this case. In Soviet times, no one had a car at all, they were available only to officials. Accordingly, public transport developed. Nowadays, almost everyone has a car, but at the same time, urban infrastructure is being reduced due to the fact that cities do not have their own money.
The US is older than the train, so your argument makes no sense. In fact, given that US cities are younger and more grid based than European ones, it would have been a lot easier to implement a railroad network in the US than in the EU.
@@allasar And yet they've failed miserably. It's not about ease. They didn't because their focus was on cars
World War 2 and soviet rule/city planning straight up ruined most of the cities in my home country Estonia. The city councils are working hard and spending millions in urban planning to fix that but it takes time and even more money. But in general, the cities are not very pedestrian and cycler friendly.
The European rail and highway maps were both too oversimplified to make any conclusions. Europe also isn't a single country, so not everything said is true for all of it. The main point still stands though
Yeah. Take Switzerland in these maps as an example. Only a tiny fraction of highways and roads they have were shown on the maps.
I was thinking the same… the moving paths that were paved later, where the ones that “happened” (people started using it, it wasn’t really planned). US simply planned too much, square routes and stuff that is super inefficient…
@F. A. I'm an EU citizen...
@F. A. Europe isn't a single country, full stop. EU does have many qualities that make it much closer to a single country than Europe as a whole, but it's important to keep those two distinct since many European countries don't belong in the EU and one dastardly kingdom decided to even leave
I think its also important to note that a lot of european countries are trying to retain or redevelop communities within cities/towns. So you can live in a town center above a shop and easily do a food shop, get to work, school, meet friends etc without having to drive out to an industrial estate, or drive in from a suburb.
Also having just retail on a high street is no longer working so a lot of places are diversifying and finding solutions to make it more attractive, pedestrian friendly and enticing to live and visit.
However in the US whenever I've been it always felt like everything was so far apart! You had to drive ages to get to anything from your hotel, house, apartment. We were the silly europeans trying to walk to a restaurant or shop on a basically non existant pavement.
Another note living in Germany you can make a fairly accurate guess as to who the Americans are... the ones with the massive 4x4 gas guzzlers, that don't fit in our small streets, parking spaces etc. Its amusing.
They’re allowed to bring their cars over?
@@MustacheDLuffy When they go to find a rental there are usually a couple larger cars to choose from. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they were only there to rent out to Americans...
@@MustacheDLuffy There are many American military personnel in Europe that bring their cars from America for free.
@@Kraken9911 That’s military personnel. Maybe you can tell they’re Americans by their uniforms
@@aromanticdisgr-ace4083 is it because they have more money? Not every person likes bigger cars
It's well designed because its smaller than the US and was developed almost a thousand years ago for walking and horse traffic. Shops are closer to home, schools, hospitals, etc. The US is designed for automobile traffic.
I lived on campus at Stanford as a foreign student from Spain and I felt like in prison. Without a car I was disabled: I couldn’t reach a a bar, a restaurant to meet friends, or even a supermarket to buy groceries. There was no Uber at the time. The bike helped, but even with it, distances were huge.
Whenever I took public transportation in the area it was mainly weirdos or very poor people on it. Sometimes it was scary. It’s a complete strange feeling for a European university student.
This isnt about the you brodie or the people you were lipsing, videos about the design of europe
the poor prince had to take the bus along with poor people? truly scandalous
Te falta calle bro
Oh no, you can't have a car? Your life must be very tough. Bruh I highly doubt you even have friends with that mindset or feeling bad just by taking a bus with common humans in it, you felt disable without a car in a campus? Have you ever walked more than 25 minutes a day in your life like a normal person or ride a bike more than 15 minutes? Mueve tu trasero príncipe, los españoles siempre demostrando como son patéticos 💀
@@bernardogabriel6200 nah it’s just bizarre that public transport in the US is a working class thing, in countries with actual functioning public transport systems it’s used by everyone. Reliance on cars for everything is unhealthy, to say the least.
Great vid! I'm from The Netherlands, 26y/o and i don't have a car. Not even a licence, and it barely effects me. We go to work by bike, we go on vacation by train/bus and we take this all for granted. Gas is about $2.5 per liter now by the way😂
Autoloze Zondag pt 2; electric boogaloo
@Fergie Nee niet iedereen. Maar zeker weten een hoger percentage dan Amerikanen:)
Who cares about the price of gas when you don't need it!
Yo hoe gaat tie kerel,
Bikes are the best :)
In Sweden, long distance rail is often weirdly expensive and most times it's cheaper to fly
It's the same in the UK, its normally cheaper to fly for example London to Edinburgh than get a train.
@@richardc316 Agreed, I would use rail a lot more often if it wasn't just cheaper to drive or fly long distance.
Same in Norway. Some of our tracks only were built because the nazis were extracting minerals during ww2… we have terrible railway systems and doesn’t go to half of northern norway
@@richardc316 Oh man. Once flew to UK for 20 pounds and expected the train ticket to not be far away from that. It was 50 pounds for 3 hour ride with 3 different trains, absolutely horrible.
@@richardc316 in italy the train is A LOT more cheaper than flying
From Finland: public transport works only in bigger cities and smaller cities and towns it is much more easier to just own a car to even move around the town if you don't live at the center. As a teen it took me 2km walk to get to the nearest buss station. My town does have a railway going through but not for people. So the system doesn't function like it should and I never learned to use public transport bc there wasn't any to use
Greetings from Viipuri.
Yes you understand finland has a much closer in terms of density of america so you guys look much more similar to us in terms of transportation thank you i love the fins
@@andrewpropson8464 Population density in the USA is almost 3 times higher that in Finland. I lived 7 years in the Bay Area where there density is very high, still the public transport was very poor (Bart, train and busses). All very slow, dirty, expensive and inconvenient. If you compare to smaller Helsinki metropolitan are that has only 1/3 of the population the public transportation and bicycle trails are so much better. In the bay Area you could not even ride the bicycle from Oakland to SF. In Helsinki area you can drive from any place to any other place using only dedicated bicycle roads. Even smaller cities in Finland such as Tampere, Turku, Oulu and Lahti have good public transportation. The guy that wrote the original note lived in the countryside and that why there was no public transportation. 80% of Finns have a good access to public transportation. 95% of Finns have an access to good bicycle roads.
@@jaska145 i live in Wisconsin. The population is almost the same as Finland’s population and the land is the same size.
@@jaska145 i know someone who moved to Wyoming. Hmm i wonder how dance there population is. America is a very big place and a lot of places are way under populated and a lot of places like the north east and south west are over populated,
You didn't mention something very important to smaller cities, I live in Oxford, England and there's a really good bus network. The City Centre is pedestrianised so you really don't need a car. A similar thing is happening in London with the Ultra Low Emissions Zone in the centre to stop polluting cars.
Speaking as an urban planner, I recommend reading The Life & Death of Great American Cities (by Jane Jacobs) and also Cities for People (by Jan Gehl) these are extremely valuable pieces of knowledge for subjects like this.
In Europe there is one outlier when it comes to urban planning designing and that's Belgium, it's basically all road with houses built against every street possible, low density and relying too much on cars like the US. It will be an interesting case to see how this develops.
Nearly all architects and urban planners in Europe are starting to realise the importance of providing spaces for PEOPLE, not cars.
...but the US is _mostly_ rural not urban. That's why cars make sense.
In cities and towns the US actually has public transit. The impression is that it's only cars.
BTW Book (American Cities) I see lots of new mixed-use developments with small community parks and other such spaces all over the US, even in small towns and cities. Very nice. :)
The US is still planned mostly for cars instead of for people, sadly. The fact that a big part of US is rural doesn't excuse the way cities are designed. There's been some progress in recent years, mostly in places like California but it still pales in comparison to pretty much any EU country, at least from what i've seen. The amount of soulless parking lots, the grid street outline, the stroads, the missing middle housing, the very scarce and usually not very safe bike infrastructure is hige and it's all the effect of generational car-centric planning. I, living in pretty much the suburbs of not too wealthy EU country, have access to busses, trams, intercity rail, top notch bike routes etc within walking distance and it just gives more freedom to people of different social status and of all ages. Kids living in the suburbs in the US are mostly limited to their own neighbourhood and places their parents can drive them to until they get their own driving licenses and become one more car on the road contributing to the traffic. Yes, some US cities started paying a bit more attention to things like communication and walkability but it's still nowhere near european standards
Hmm i agree and disagree. You kinda forget that living outside the city gives you your own space. In Ireland we do similar to Belgium, housing dotted everywhere. But people love having their own space and garden. Try getting Irish people into apartments - not happening. Apartments are essentially viewed here as something for students and people in their early 20s. When you 'grow up' you buy your own house with garden. Me personally I live in an apartment, but that's the general view in Ireland. The attitude needs to change here, more public transit, more green spaces in cities, larger more liveable apartments (the apartments in Ireland are oftenlike chicken houses, tiny).
@@mryan4452 Same here, in Poland. Most of adults want to have house (country or suburban) at the age of 30. However, the problem is low wages and the ability to accumulate (18% tax on interest on the account!). Those who can take out a mortgage pay it off for 25-30 years, and the banks force them with expensive compulsory insurance (banking market in my country is the wild west).
@@GreyDeathVaccine My biggest shock as a foreigner (EU) in Poland... No houses available in the city, almost everything is taken up by appartments. Small appartments at that. And being unable to secure a loan because prices are insane and the way loans are structured (wibor 3m/6m) is also mindblowing. I couldn't believe my ears when not a single bank offered a fixed rate loan, I mean they do but even then after 3-5 years it switches to 3M/6M floating rates. So still renting in Sopot and nowadays even being unable to save much due to inflation.
My parents lived in the US for a while. They came back to Europe because the weren't adapting well to the country. They kept saying it was because things were too different there. Fun fact: whenever I asked what exactly was that different, the first thing coming to their minds was "the roads were too big" 😭 No but seriously, they explained to me that basically, if you don't have a car in the US, you're f*cked, you cannot go anywhere. That felt so weird to them, even though they did have a car themselves. I cannot barely imagine living in such a place. I now study in Paris and I still don't have a driver licence because having a car in that city just doesn't make any sense so meh why bother?
I am 21 and don't have a driving license nor a car. College was always easily accessible with either a bike or public transport and even now with a job I still make use of the great public transport here in the Netherlands. When I was 18 I made a roadtrip through the US with some friends and it felt weird. Places only accesible by car which make those places really isolated from the world. For example even a small town nearby where i live has 2 bus stops while having a population of just 400 people. It felt just odd and weird and also very unorganized in the US. It's a great country, but some things could better.
Question, would you recommend going to Paris by car or train? Train rides are kinda expensive ( 135 euros if you dont buy a ticket like 6 months before) and going by car would just be around 60 euros for fuel expenses, although i imagine going by car would be hell in such a big city?
Also whatever you may study I wish you all the best and good luck with it. :)
( your daily positve message on RUclips lmao )
You don't even have a driver's license yet? I wouldn't brag about that especially to women. That's the difference between boys and men
@@highlymedicated2438 would only be "'bragging" if i even had the intention to get something from this girl. which i dont. i am just saying something as an reply to point out my personal facts and as to the reason why i dont have it. because it aint necessary. So your comment which i assume is you thinking i somehow simp over this random girl in youtube make no sense at all. Mind your own bussiness or get to know the difference between simping and just an normal comment. That's the difference between boys and men mate.
@@damianflr think about parking-costs as well
@@damianflr flights are usually cheaper
i think the good thing about europe, (i can only speak of denmark) is that the public spaces like bars resturants and even normal shopping is all very close by normally at the center. then the city if it is big has a few grocery shops scattered around the outskirts. this makes it much easier to go shopping and you feel all the more connected, together with public transport that takes you trait to the city center and out again if you wish to do so. the lovely thing here is that it is a choice to have a car, not a nessecity. you can easily get around. and of course its way more beautiful in europe (just not as much in denmark, its flat as fuck here)
You have Tivoli and Legoland :-)
Well, flat terrain is good for bikes, in my city (cuz t'he ground inclination) If you had to go in summer from t'he city center to my House in bike... xD
I'm from Denmark... I'd love to have a gas guzzler, but only for fun. Wouldn't use it for regular day commute.
With the public transport actually working, I'd still like to have a car in some cases, but with electric vehicles getting ranges that actually make sense...
I don't see a need for a V6 or 8 to make the everyday work. And petrol is kinda expensive.
I could, however, see it as a fun thing to rent once in a while.
I have 2 gasguzzlers in the netherlands, i only use them for travel and rally's.
A RS6 bi-turbo and a challenger str8.
Use public transit 99% of the time, cars have no place in cities really.
That works too, the problem with EV is that they’re still cars, and aren’t really that much better than gas guzzlers that elon musk wants ppl to believe
I’m Norwegian, but I’m visiting Denmark often (Also looking into moving there). Compared to Norway u have a much better public transport system. One thing I don’t to be quite interesting is how u find pedestrian/bicycle roads on the countryside, which is unusual most of the time here. Also ur cities feels a lot more pedestrian friendly, but to be fair our cities are on average smaller
I think one of the main causes is that u have a higher population density to support the system (Norway has about 15 per km^2, u got 137). We often live in quite spread our. Sadly I think most of Norwegians will keep being dependent on cars, unless they live in a city. Luckily we have a hight number of electrical vehicles already (I always have a small culture shock when I don’t see that many teslas in the road)
I'm from the USA and my family has 6 cars XD
It is kind of needed in the US when you travel long distances imo. I also thought about why one needed a truck or big vehicle. I went for a long solo trip once, across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. My 2.0 L sedan was struggling on highways, there was not enough pull on the straight loooong slowly elevating highways in New Mexico or Arizona...let alone Colorado. It was barely managed, the other trucks / SUVs were just passing me without an effort.
I'm from the Netherlands and I could probably say we have some of the best infrastructure even within the EU. But as you said, nothing is perfect, it is in fact not very cheap at all to use the national railway lines.
They're thinking about changing that soon but I'm not sure yet. For now, even with the super expensive gas prices (it went up to €2,30 per liter), going from one side of the country to the other is cheaper by car if you go with more than 2 people.
Either way the citizens will pay it one way or another if they change.
I'm from France, and when i saw "30dollars" from paris to amsterdam i was like "more like 80e just to go from paris to amsterdam lol"...
But i agree with the fact that netherland is freaking expensive for everything compare to france, despite having more or less the same "life level"
I live in the Netherlands currently and think you have great train lines, but the bus lines are still bit poor in some cities, if they could improve that then it would be the perfection. And have to say that going by bike everywhere is not always duable, weather is fucking rainy or cold most of the time. In Spain is the other way around, less train lines but lot of buses in the city.
@@BenitoCarmela Tbh, i dunno where you went in France, because in most "major cities" there are a bus every like 5 to 10mins, i'm not living in such a big city (Valence in France) but there's more than 30 bus lines + something around 25 to 30 "express bus lines" (those lines are mostly used by students) and it's covering more than 50 to 60 KM around Valence, I think it's pretty big and it's the same for most "common/big agglomeration".
But i do agree with the fact that "small towns" doesn't have that much bus lines
@@osuprogression2182 I haven't been in France so much, I was comparing the Netherlands and Spain because I lived in both.
I live in Manchester in the north east of England. A few years ago an American friend from Florida came to visit us. One evening we went for a meal with friends in Liverpool about 30 miles away. We went on public transport, which I always do when I go out because it's easier, you don't have to trouble with finding parking and I can drink! We walked from my house to a local tram stop (10 mins). Went by tram to Victoria Station (15 mins) and got a train to Liverpool (about 35 minutes). The Liverpool train station is in the centre of town and we walked from there to the restaurant. We had a great time, had a bit too much too eat and drink, walked back to the station and did the same journey in reverse. We got the last tram home and it was packed with people who'd been out in Manchester and it was loud, friendly and there was a bit of singing. My friend told me she'd had a wonderful evening and one of the highlights for her had been the trams and trains. She said she had never in her life used public transport. Apart from private cars she had only ever been in a taxi.
Well that's because, the size in US makes public transportation rather infeasible, for large swathes of the US. For like in Manchester you might be within walking distance to shops or your local pub.
In the US on the other hand, you could easily see a good 20 or so miles (32km) to your nearest store.
traveled around Europe for a bit. The idea you couldn't visit a city without a car is alien to me
Personally, I live in germany and have basically no problem getting around, even if I'm too young to drive.
There's sidewalks on basically every even remotely majorly used road, and the ones that don't usually are used to give access to homes and other roads that do. Sidewalks never just end seemingly randomly, and major ones also have spaces on the road (which are often colored red) specifically for people on a bike.
And that's not even mentioning other ways to get around, like trains.
While the trains barely manage to arrive on time, it's quite a well structured system.
Major stations are able to bring you to as an example the underground trains or buses.
Basically every town, even a very small one, gets a train station.
It's not hard to basically get anywhere that you'd wanna go to.
When you leave the big cities it becomes very hard to get anywhere without a car. And when you do wait at an remote train station it is not uncommon that the train is just missing (so you have to wait an 30-60min for the next one). This problem occurs because the Deutsche Bahn was privaticed (That means it has to earn money like a usual company). Because of that the Deutsche Bahn save money everywhere (for example train tracks) and now the infrastructure is not working properly anymore).
Pov: Deutsche Bahn
Dein Englisch ist echt gut! Muss aber dennoch Lukas W. rechtgeben. Since the Deutsche Bahn is heavily privatized they do not really fulfill the their service as intended in the German constitution.
@@lukasw9067 Deutsche Bahn is mostly responsible for inter city travel. Travelling between cities on a smaller scale (or travelling in cities) is the responsibility of the regional train associations.
Also why does everybody think that Deutsche Bahn being privatized is the root of the problem? If politicians cared about public transport they would fund it well enough. But they don't. I really don't see what would change if Deutsche Bahn was owned by the state again. It would just be owned by people who don't care about it and I doubt politicians wouldn't try to save money.
@@ducklingscap897 Yeah your right, its not the only reason for the problem but a part.
Hi, Dutch man here. Seeing the bike lane map made me really appreciate the fact that there are so many bike paths here. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to grab the car to get to work or to the city center.
Thank you for making this video.
It helps that the Netherlands is so flat. My country Greece might be all beaches and islands but it’s incredibly mountainous. So difficult to use bikes in such an extend.
Guy from flanders here it is also very useful that our countries streets are always very lit up at night
@@kataclysmad1065 Actually, both Switzerland and Norway are developing bike infrastructure FAST. Electric bicycles really flatten the mountains :)
There aren't very many countries where you can bike from south to North without ever needing to leave a bike lane
2:03 NOPE those are highways of "european interest" actual highway network is FAR more dense, like 3-4 times more
Yeah we have more than 3 highways in France
@@AuxenceF And rail network is ridiculous too. I am slovak and there are much more railways than on the first pic.
Yea you only need to take a look at the Autobahn network in the Ruhr area to notice how far off the map in the video really is :D
The map labeled as "EU Road Network" here is actually a map of european rail corridors (EU-TEN-Rail) which is a plan of high speed and cargo rail routes connecting major cities and sea ports.
Im from Finland. I have to say Helsinki-Tallin and Helsinki-Stockholm ferry routes are very important for Finland. It comnects Finland to other countries. We don't have trains we could take to other countries.
To be fair to the US, we can see that most of the European rail lines are within the EU, and none of them extend to Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, which contain a large part of the European landmass (particularly European Russia). Also, Europe does have the advantage over the US of being more dense. There are many more destinations for railroads, trams, and buses because population centres are close together and the cities are pretty centralized. In the US, there is a high degree of urban sprawl which makes public transportation harder. However, I still agree with your points and that the US needs to invest more in public transportation.
Well, the maps only depict high speed rail. And I guess there's little to no of such kind in 3 countries - Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. But almost any other country has.
All of the rail lines connect to all three coutries at multiple places, it's just not cool to go there nowadays 🙂 and these are of course not part of EU...
@@Honzicek22 The maps only shows high speed rail lines.
The dense point was imo the most important, I live in one of the “big red” areas on his Amtrak map, there’s simply no reason to run rail through it. We don’t have the population, and because of that, the traffic issues urban USA deals with, we don’t. Our roads are empty, you could go 45 mins without seeing another car. Public transportation is important for urban centers and the suburbs that surround them. But a lot of the US is empty, and investments in that kinda infrastructure wouldn’t be worth the cost for some of us.
I agree with you. Nevertheless I'd argue that it is actually the other way round. The urban sprawl in the US is a direct result of bad city planning / no public transport options available and not the main hindrance to good city planning.
Travelling international by train in Europe is not cheap. It's mist of the times cheaper (and faster) to go by plane.
Yep, definitely true
Planes face serious competition to High Speed rail in European nations, so they basically have to sell you tickets also near the price of a restaurant meal especially with low cost airlines like Ryannair
we all pay (even poorer people) for these cheap plane tickets. "free" market my ass
RyanAir 12€ is amazing though ngl (that was eon ago)
It is cheap if you plan the trip in time and buy the tickets months before. However I disagree regarding the plane. Planes are cheap if you don't have bags, moreover, while train stations in big cities are nearby the center, airports are almost always outside the city, which make you lose time and money.
It's pretty indicative (and hilarious) of the public transit systems in the US that the only public transit you showcased was in New York City. Because outside of NYC, there's very few cities that actually have even passable public transit.
Not really. Chicago, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, Boston, and Washington DC just to name a few others. Sure they’re nowhere near european standards in most respects but they have great coverage
@@gio160 There’s no use replying to individuals who have superiority complexes. This channel harbors the closed-minded, as can be seen with the constant US-bashing on every video. Pure ignorance is not worth valuable time.
@@kronk9418 well the problem already seen mentioning there was hes listing major us cities, capitals of states or the country and within the colonies area which is far more developed compared to state infrastructure like Wyoming or Montana fir example
I studied NYC public transport, it simply have the best underground in the world with the Parisian one.
But it’s also the only city in North America which have a good public transportation, compared to nearly all European city...
One of the reasons is that big places in Europe where build hundred and hundred years before cars, so they often don’t have enough place for parking and lot of cars..
USA built their cities when cars already existed, or simply expanded without verticalizing which favored the car.
For NYC it was geographically necessary to verticalise, in case of the river and sea. And of course a huge increase in population.
@@9000k4
If you actually think people want transit in rural Montana, I’m sorry for you, because you somehow missed the entire point of my comment. Public transit in rural areas cannot work in the modern day US. People are advocating for transit in cities that people LIVE IN which SHOULD have better transit. Like for example: Miami, Atlanta, Houston, LA, and mostly other medium sized sunbelt cities. That’s where people want transit.
That isn’t me saying these cities with ‘good transit’ by US standards are great either. NJT has horrible rail coverage of southern NJ, SEPTA’s workers get paid jack and they have plenty more lines they could operate with if they electrified them or brought some Diesel engines, The NYC subway practically runs on signaling from the 1920s, CTA can be unreliable at times, and metra’s scheduling on some lines is so awful you might as well just drive. Also, all of the listed systems get don’t get much funding to begin with (besides the MTA)
Maybe that’s too much to expect from an OBF comment section, however.
One thing people fail to understand about the US railroad is that it was not designed with public transport in mind after a certain point. It's very heavily designed around freight, so much so that increasing public transport via train would likely be more of a detriment to the economy than a benefit. Even as it stands they charge a significant amount to ride the train in the US because you are directly competing with freight.
The USA's freight system is actually really really impressive. But at the sacrifice of public transportation.
The bad thing of public transportation in Europe is that it isn't usually as great in rural areas. So many people need to take their car to the cities to work and they have to face the obstacle of car restrictions the city councils impose.
Yeah, but still better than extremely spread out suburbs.
I guess that’d depend where; there are tiny little hamlets and towns in Italy that are serviced by regional trains, that are generally an hour at most to the nearest high-speed station. Barring extremely rough terrain and isolated, high-elevation comunes, even the rural networks in most European countries fare better than some urban networks in America. I live in San Diego and on Sundays, Broadway will have no buses running on it after 11:30pm. Broadway. In a downtown. Of a city of 3.4+ million…
@Furnizorul Koala in a village with less than 300 people you don't get any busses driving through for you to get to the store and back.
So you NEED a car, and you know what? That sucks so much when the car registration tax is 180%.
@@missa2855 I think you actually hate village life, you just haven't admitted it yet.
Amenities are where people are. You either put up with the people, or go without amenities.
While true, in comparison I would point out that while "not great" in the rural outback of Sweden where I grew up, in contrast to the USA public transportation still did exist. I was able to live with 20km to get to the closest town larger than 500 people (and closest town with a grocery store...), and still technically not need a car. It was inconvenient, so most people around there would indeed have a car, but not as inconvenient as there being no public transport at all. For example, I could hop on the 55km bus ride to the county capital, go on an absolute pub crawl with my mates, and no-one needs to find a driver to get home, because there's a bus. :P
(Caribbean) Dutchie here :) I love traveling to the motherland because I can finally do away with the car and enjoy public transport and bikes. If only you could make it cheaper to love around, that would greatly encourage people to move around and visit other lovely places, stimulating local economies.
In my pov, Netherlands, France, UK, Austria, Switzerland and Germany are the countries that are insanely well designed in Europe tbh!
Western European countries are mostly well designed than eastern European countries.
@@Spideclips *cough cough* Northern Europe *Cough cough*
Scandinavia too. Spain has done a lot to catch up as well.
@@GregVidua never went to Scandinavia but would surely go there someday
Austria is not and from my experience germany neither but i havent been there a lot
Ive lived in Ireland which (although it is in Europe) has a system based on highways and cars much like the US. I moved to Vienna recently and I have to say I've never felt so unencumbered and free to do and go as I please. It's so much better than having a car. I will probably not buy one as long as I live here. And I guarantee that anyone who moves to somewhere with a transportation system as good as this will agree whether you think you will or not
A pretty unexpected shot of the bookstore I work at in Bratislava at 1:45 :-)
😃😂
I am coming for you my bro
@@eftbro9963 Cool, see you there
The fact that a Madrid to Barcelona very high speed train can cost 10€, traveling at 300km/h, and arriving in around 2 hours while by car is around 4, is just amazing… Something I really appreciate as Spaniard, and European of course.
The problem is that's an outlier. I flew from Dublin to Bucharest a dew days ago in 3 hours plus 3 hours getting to / waiting at Dublin Airport for total of €29 (that cost is inclusive of €4 bus ticket direct to airport). Would be great if more trains were like your example.
@@mryan4452 but that’s flying, not by train. Train stations over here (for the most part) are in the city center, which makes it much easier.
@@redsbricks5993 as I said, that's an outlier example. In most cases airplanes (due to low cost carriers) or car is cheaper and / or quicker. Sure there are outlier examples such as Madrid to Barcelona, but they are the exception rather than the norm.
@@mryan4452
Then why not make that the norm for the rest of Europe? Sounds like something worth aspiring to.
@@navilluscire2567 for some reason that I don't understand trains are not particularly cost effective right now. I'd like it to be the norm trains are great. Maybe a low cost train company needs to get involved in train market and shake it up.
One more point: Having no alternative to cars makes your children and teens utterly dependend on parents, leaving them less freedom, sheltering them from being able to manage on their own, and perpetuating a culture of fear from leaving kids alone.
in the UK here, my kid takes the train to school every day
this is exactly how i’m feeling right now, i come back home from college every summer and it is just so boring when i don’t have a car, but i’m only at home for 3 months so it’s not seen as a necessity for i’ll just head back to college soon
Good point
@@Super_Trainspotter Adults in the US are very more controlling of kid. Allowing kids to enter a public train by themselves is a absolute no go for us.
@@baronvonjo1929 could you expand on this point? Is there a cultural reason for this? I concur with my fellow Brit above. While it can feel unnerving to let your children explore the world without you, their experiences will help them to become independent. It did me no harm.
Living here in the U.S, we are overly dependent on personal vehicles. The public transits we do have are often quite sketchy or just simply arent that great. Having a car is nice because you can be completely independent and just go wherever you need to. But at the same time, everything is so spread out and so far apart so that in itself, is inconvenient despite the fact we have our own personal vehicles. And its become a problem especially in big cities like LA where traffic is notoriously ridiculous due to the mass amounts of cars and people.
LA is an exception. Cities like Chicago, Washington and NYC do have good public transport, don't they ?
@@NarutoHugsMikasayes but it’s still sketchy
@@zacatack8679 why
I'm from Ukraine, but I lived in München for three months. I was amazed at how well-designed the public transport system was. I lived outside of the city (cheaper rent) and commuted by city train (S-Bahn) every day to the city center. The whole journey usually took only 40 min. What I found even more amazing, was how the whole system responded to the unexpected. Due to an incident, the trains I usually took to get home didn't work, but I was still able to go home using the bus and tram.
It is funny because for us (as a French) this is normal. Sometimes the comuns transports are in strike but actually it dosen't matter
Hope things get better soon and the war ends for Ukraine with a Russian defeat
@@hkchan1339 Thank you for support!👍
There's a trend of a deep voice and graphics being taken as gospel on RUclips, glad people can recognise this and is changing
The real advantage of public transport is that you stop worrying about how you get home. At some level of interconnected-ness you just are always 5 mins away from some transport option. When I went out with friends and ended up drunk somewhere in a town I've never been, I never worried about not getting home. And sometimes we randomly go on a train to other cities. Even when I was 14 I would go visit my grandma who lives across the border on my own. My parents weren't worried a bit. That's the real advantage: ease of mind when it comes to transportation. It's like a insurance, even if all other travel options fall away you always can rely on train
With good public transport, how would American local governments fill the void of revenue they're earning from the non-stop DUI's they catch daily?
Just like if there was no war on drugs, all that sweet "asset forfeiture" money would vanish.
America is designed the way it is because of pure greed from the top.
The disadvantage is that public transport almost universally runs at a lost with the costs getting harder and harder to recoup the further into rural territory you get.
The US has the most extensive river system on earth for cargo, an excellent cross continental road system and relies on air travel for Long distance travel. If we wanted more rail we’d have it. We just don’t need it
You know those places without railway lines in the US are, for the most part, completely unpopulated, large wildnerness areas, right? There's generally no reason for transit to run there. I'm a big fan of trains in general, just think that's worth pointing out.
Europe has no space for freeways. They have a billion people in less land in the US. They have no choice but to spring for more expensive train systems. Lou knee Thems just doing things for no reason and costing us a pretty penny.
There is no link between Lisbon and Madrid. Right now, Portugal is a railway island and that is largely exactly because there is a fundamental clash of interests between Portugal and Spain. While Spain wants Madrid to be a central hub for the entire peninsula, Portugal wants the quickest way possible to the more afluent northern european states, rather than wasting time going to the poorer and ill located Madrid. Thus no actual connection between Portugal and Spain exists right now!
Funny enough is Spain doesn’t even connect their population centers much outside of places like Madrid Barcelona and Zaragoza, so if you live in a rural area or population outside of the major cities, it’s going to be quite the hassle
Just build a railway to France.
And then, Fly off to Denmark.
You're lucky you got rid of them in 1640, now you'd be in a worse place than Galicia.
Okay but Madrid would still be the quickest way to get from Lisbon to the rest of Europe
@@pastvz2781 Not necessarily. You can go by Valladolid as well, and it's probably more straight forward
As for parkinglots, most US states have actual regulations on parkingspots per x square feet of commercial/industrial zones. That's why you see all these large empty parkinglots, it's mostly about regulations.
Unfortunately
They have minimum requirements, we have maximum limits.
Those parking lots can be demolished away and used for more buildings and housing and a single or several tram lines. It’s absolutely ridiculous seeing parking lots larger than the stores themselves due to these regulations, but ofc my comment is something car companies in the US don’t want to here because it’s their pockets that matter
@@Racko. it's not car companies. I often don't go to places where parking isn't freely available. We have an expectation here that parking is always easy to find.
@@Distress. Even if it's not car companies they still have influence over these regulations, so the massive roads and parking lots aren't really an accident, that's why it's easy to find
Great video and pointing out taxes fact was really smart :] I live in Prague that is in top 10 lists of public transport and I can only agree with that. I mostly walk everywhere or using public transport for longer distances. When you are drunk you call taxi and its at your place usually in two minutes at any time. I own car as well but using that only for trips out of cities or big shoppings so mostly 3x a week. I think that except things mentioned in the video that is also one thing that is different from US - that Europeans are use to walk. Vilages, small cities or major cities - there is pedestrian infrastructure everywhere. My wife lived in Texas for a year and she toldme that she missed just walking around but in US everything is so spaced out that is not possible nor fun. Also night walks are not safe but that was maybe just her experience.
At 0:50, that map is someone's fantasy of what high speed rail in the US could look like. I think the Acela line is like the only high speed rail line in the US lol, there might be another one but i dont remember.
Basic finnish train goes around 120miles per hour and he said it goes 150miles per hour so its not even fast☠️
I live in a rural region in Austria. I mean most of Austria is pretty rural. The big cities within 20km have 10-20k inhabitants wich still is kinda big from my perspective. And still, we, in a 800ppl village have bus routes and just 5km away there's a train station that easily connects us to pretty much anywhere.
And normally us folks from rural reagions don't like Vienna. Cuz Vienna is different. I mean nearly every fourth Austrian lives in the urbanized region of Vienna wich is kinda insane.
But omg. I love the public transport there. It's so convenient and easy to use. A big reason why I want to live there at some point.
In Wien sind viele Ausländer! Der meistens multikulturelle Stadt in Österreich
@@someoneanyone7196 und ?
@@someoneanyone7196 was willst du jetzt damit sagen?
It seems to be quite common for europeans that live in more rural areas that they don't enjoy their countrys capital. It's just different, way faster way of life in these bigger capital cities than smaller towns and villages. Me and my friends doesn't enjoy Helsinki either. Heard a lot from french people that Paris is just different, and same trend seems to be in most of the countries.
I think it's different in usa since theres so much more big cities, and their capital is small compared to their bigger cities. Could be same trend in rural areas versus biggest city in state thought, would like to hear from americans on this front, and why not from other europeans too.
@@Nakkiteline i live on the west coast of the us, and the opinions usually are about regions rather than individual cities. like there is a huge difference between southern and northern california, and east vs. west oregon and washington is like night and day. the differences are complete opposite in climate, demographic, political leaning, population density, primary occupations, etc. i feel like most states have that, where specific regions/ city groupings have massive differences compared to others parts of the state. i do know that certain cities like las vegas, nevada and austin, texas are outliers in general tho. Its not so much the capitals of the states, but its moreso wherever the population density is highest/most urbanized area that tends to be the outlier.
One major point which was not coverd, is that Europs citys largely existed BEFORE cars, and the cities of the USA, as well as Canada, Australis, New Zealand, etc were founded and developed after the automobile became common. Other than that, I think you covered the topic rather well.
That’s very true and definitely a factor but many European city’s were destroyed during ww2 and rebuilt on a human scale not on a car scale
Yeah, but not to that big of an extent to which you might think. Europe has increased in population from 450 to 750 milion since 1920 till today and US from 106 to 330 mil. Thus both Europe and US had to accomodate a quite significant population increase - and yet Europe took a completely different aproach to the same issue.
I can only speak for the US here. But US cities also existed before cars. Alot of them actually. Probably most of them, really. Even the westernmost cities like Seattle and Portland were founded by 1850s and 1860s. And sure, they only had 50 some years to develop before the automobile got popular (being loose here. Presuming 1908, when the Model T made it so cars became more common)
But that argument doesn't fly with eastern cities like NYC, Philadelphia, and Charleston who were around for atleast 200 years before the invention of the automobile. And yet their public transport today is OK at best (atleast for NYC and Philly. Charleston's is..... non-existent).
What's the cutoff for this point that you make?
I've never seen anyone else talk about this and I watch quite a few tubers so it'd be interesting to learn how this point actually matters in the scheme of things. Also, links to anyone who talks about this would be nice.
@@evanroberts7271 I agree, but they also had a desire to restore what was lost in simmilar fashion. I'm not excusing America's and my Canadian car-centric lifestyles, just pointing out that there are very real and entreched "Cultural world-view" factors which were not addressed in the video. I think Europe is a better model.
@@PotatoSmasher420 True, we went for subburbs and interstae highways.
I'm from Spain. I've studied in school, highscool, university, and worked in 3 different cities. I've never needed a car, nor I own one. Watching how the USA is designed seems distopic and
counterproductive to me.
Me too I’m in the UK
It would be really interesting to do a deeper comparison on this by picking an 'average' EU city and an 'average' US city. It just depends on the 4 or 5 parameters you choose for this but focused mostly on inner city transport.
Also, that car parks in the US take up more space than housing is absolutely insane!
It’s because the US has 5X more shopping malls…all with parking stalls. Expect this to change into mixed use space over time.
The US just has too many shopping malls and with e-commerce this will change pretty fast.
I live in an about 500K inhabitants French city (1 million with the suburbs). The city centre is car-free (pedestrians and bikes only, the only cars allowed are emergency services and deliveries). We have access to dozens of bus lines, 2 metro lines, a tramway line, free car-parks, free bike-parks and bikes-for-rent all with the same travel card (visitors can purchase a travel for 1.30€); we have several train stations, an international airport, motorways all around the city but none at all *through* the city (we wouldn't want them). Several people I know don't have a car, and we share one whenever we can...
...And in this city we consider we don't have very good infrastructures, as we're more than 5 hours of train away from Paris XD (no direct travel, we have to go to one of the train lines on this video first) (travelling to Paris by car just isn't done, you don't need a car in Paris either...)
...Hearing about how so much more complicated everything seems to be in the USA is crazy!
@@offrainc6455 It’s partly city planning (a big part) and population density. The US is a really big country with low population density. You don’t need a car in New York or Chicago and even small cities like Salt Lake City have good public transit, but most of the country is too spread out and designed for cars. LA and Phoenix are great examples of terrible city planning. Over time this will change... The US could triple its population and still not be crowded.
Love France BTW. I’m an engineer and used to work for a company with a factory in France. Always enjoyed my trips. I will say that the factory was in the Normandy region and you did need a car to get around that area since things were more spread out.
While looking at an "average" city makes sense in Europe, I don't think it would in the US - there is a very small number of really huge cities and a huge number of really small cities, so that an "average city" could be more an abstract thing than a representation of something real
@@offrainc6455 driving in US cities isn't all that bad. We tend to exaggerate and look only at LA or NYC but these are cities which have 5-6 million people compare that to the Midwest where the cities are 200k-600k proper the city isnt that bad to drive in and parking isn't that hard to find either
To all the Americans: we have highways. We have rail lines but we have a lot of motorways as well (especially the oh so praised Dutchies). Just go on Google Maps, turn the traffic-showing option on and you'll see those green strings covering our countries. In fact, if we didn't have those we'd have to move our freight by trains like you (which doesn't happen unluckily).
Europe has a lot of freight traffic by rail though. Just not as much as the US.
@@therealdutchidiot A lot is relative, and since a lot more is moved by trucks that pester our motorways and a lot more is moved by rail in the US, that makes our modal share FOR FREIGHT pale. I'd rather see them on rails than on tyres, they're also kinda frightening to drive by, especially on mountain highways, during rain or with strong winds. Plus, correctly managed freight transportation is much more profitable for rail companies than passengers', that could also be a way to lighten the (totally necessary) burden of rail companies on the State
@@Hastdupech8509 While the share of freight trucks in Europe is high, it's also high in the US. Their trucks are just a lot larger.
What Europe also does is shipping by ocean. That wouldn't work all that well in the US.
You also incorporated 50 states, which are basically countries, under one country and one language, Europe will NEVER accomplish this. You can also travel freely and live in any state, same with working or studying. I'm European, but this video seems biased in many parts
@@therealdutchidiot Yea, US has over 250,000KM of tracks and most are used for Freight considering those companies already own the tracks, BNSF and CSX for example own a bunch of tracks in the SouthWest and East Coat and are given priority on the tracks over Passenger rail, which can cause delays and lateness, interference when passenger trains. Germany on the other hand usually does a mixed traffic but passenger rail are still given the green light due to demand in European countries just being higher
Europe is very well designed for those living in large cities. If you are like me who are Norwegian and live in rural South-Western Norway, you don't have any options. On occation we can take the bus to the nearest large city (Stavanger). But that is only a couple of times a day, excluding weekends where you basically have no public transport what so ever. I have been to alot of rural areas over much of Europe, and it is the same situation. If you live only like 10 minutes or more outside one of the large cities, you almost certainly need a car
Still you can take the train from Oslo to Ankara relatively easily in Europe and it really doesn't cost much.
@@direnius it's cheaper to fly.
@@Distress. That is true. Still there is a network that allows for train travels between the two and it has been in place for almost a century now.
@@direnius Why does it matter to me how well designed a train ride from Oslo to Ankara is, when Oslo itself is 8 hours car trip away? Which is my point. Europe is well designed for those living in a big city
Have you thought of Petitioning for better schedules and services on weekends in your area? Maybe make that part of any candidate's priorities in local elections. It sounds like atleast part of the problem could be solved through reforms.
As a German I wanna say one thing. (The following accounts for Germany, not all of Europe)
The Big Problem about public transport in Germany is that the tickets are too expensive, not unaffordably expensive, but still on the long run more expensive than owning and maintaining a small car.
I used to own a 1994 Ford Fiesta, and no matter how hard I tried and wanted to go public transport, it was either no possible in my area, or later when I moved to a town, driving my Car was still cheaper than getting a Train or Bus ticket.
And that's a massive issue, if driving your Car is cheaper or just slightly more expensive than choosing public transport, most people are gonna choose the comfort and flexibility of a car over rail or bus.
Again, not for all of Europe, looking at the Netherlands I always feel like they are 20 years ahead of everyone, their public transport is superb, their cycling paths are amazing.
Whenever I visit the Netherlands, I don't even think about using a car
How is public transport not affordable in germany? i just locked up the price for monthy public Flatrate in berlin (wich is 88€, wich is 95 in US dollars) We can take me as an example, i have a very low income of 1600€ a month, 700€ goes to my rent and another 100€ for internet and radio. 88€ for transportation is not much. owning and maintaing a car is much more then 88 bucks a months here.
My argument no longer fits, since there's now a new Ticket that lets you use all trains, trams and busses in German for 49€ (InterCityExpress not included)
The "Deutschlandticket" and it is a very good thing to exist which I got immediately.
Before, owning and fueling my car was a rough estimate of 120€ per month (1994 Ford Fiesta Petrol 1.1l engine/ that includes tax, insurance and fuel, maintenance not included in my calculation)
And it was about the same for a monthly ticket to get from 1 city to the other, which my first comment was based off of.
And I am fairly sure that if it's literally the same price, people will choose the flexibility of a car, over the unreliability of public transport.
Germans know that already but German Railways run so unreliable that it became a meme, too many canceled or delayed trains, and it's looking only mildly better for busses)
tho again, with the introduction of the 49€ ticket, the whole price question changed and my point is no longer relevant.
3:05 also worth mentioning is this is from 2021, the difference in price got even bigger recently
Great video, we need more like this to feel more proud of the things we have here in Europe. Economic growth is just a number, living is an other thing and life quality matters a lot more than the GDP. A lot of people dismiss the EU because it grows very slowly but to be honest I think we are on the right track to make a better, smarter world here.
well spoken. Totally agree with you
Not to mention that GDP is, and almost always was, a lie. As with most indicators, they're only useful when nobody uses them to direct their activity. It's always been easily manipulated too.
We need to learn how to do more with less, and how to build stable lives. The eternal-growth culture ("sustainable growth" only to people who don't understand exponential growth) is a problem. Moving away from that doesn't _have_ to mean that people get poorer.
@@LuaanTi You can use the MPI: Multi-dimensional Poverty Index.
Its a shame that some of the politicians in some of our countries try make Europe look like a bad deal. A lot of things we dont even think about in day to day life are good because of the EU. And with how things are going at the moment we might need each other soon. So for all people that have some of those anti-EU politicians, please, look up what EU does for you and ignore the fools 👍
@@suicidalbanananana Bro all anti-Eu politicians are nearly always populist who try to create a debate around the Eu so that they get more votes
One big difference between Europe and the USA that limits the feasibility of rail lines as transportation to some areas is population density. The USA has a lot more areas, particularly out in the Great Plains states, where there are large areas with very low population densities, which would not as very feasible when it comes to laying out a public transport network. Places like Wyoming, South Dakota, and so on are so sparsely populated and spread out overall that public transport really wouldn’t do a great job of servicing the area, which makes cars necessary. Europe is much more urbanized overall with notably larger shares of the population living in cities, especially in Western Europe
While it is true that the population density is low across much of the US, most places were still served by private intercity rail into the 1960s and 70s, even South Dakota and Wyoming. Comparing apples to apples, my home state of Wisconsin has a population density twice as high as Finland, yet we have just 8 daily intercity passenger rail round trips and a very limited number of intercity buses. According to wikipedia, Finland has 260 daily intercity passenger rail round trips and I'm sure a bunch more intercity buses than we have. Also, if the federal government is willing to build multiple interstate highways through South Dakota and Wyoming, there's really no reason they couldn't build passenger rail too.
They have roads. Freeways go through no man's land all over the central and western US. We just use our money to build roads, but it's not as if we couldn't afford to build interstate passenger rail networks. We mostly choose not to
@@altriish6683 it would be ecomically unviable, you don't build a interstate rail network just so maybe 10 people would use it on a given day, and waste millions to maintain it.
Passenger Rail, looks nice but Reality says you need population density to keep it. If you want to simply burn and waste money, then there are other things you can use that money for.
I have seen this same argument used as a reason why Spain has the largest high speed rail system of the continent. I don't think it's true in either case.
@@altriish6683 all of three interstates go through Wyoming and that's almost entirely for transport and Yellowstone. Not to mention that interstate roads are easy and cheap to maintain compared to highspeed rail
As a person from Europe that studied for years in the neighbouring country I can confidentally say that the train delays are the worst... The trains I was taking are considered top priority trains as they go through sometimes even four countries, yet the delays for them are more usual than them going on time. But still, it's amazing to have such opportunities.
7:18 uhmmm, even if as a European citizen I love our public transportation network, unfortunately a rail travel from Paris to Amsterdam is way more expensive than 30$. It’s actually about 150$, and at it’s cheeper it’s about 100$. Sometimes even flights are cheeper :(
As a British born Canadian raised living in Europe in mid adulthood i can definitely state that European and Japanese public transportation systems need to be replicated all over the planet
Just because you like something doesn’t mean others do. If you like public transport so much why you didn’t just stay in Britain then? 🤷♂️
@@williams6206 u not that smart huh? He said he was born in Canada and now lives in the uk. Nobody eishes to live in america if they previously come from a european first world country
It’s population density that’s key, not raw size, along with lack of domestic oil production. Europe pre 1973 was as car dependent as the US
To clarify, it's the density inside cities that matter. Spain is like western US in many ways and just as empty in between cities, but the cities themselves are quite dense.
@@sciencecw But can you fly over Spain for 6 hours and see nothing below but dirt, mountains and farmland?
I’m European, Portuguese living in uk. And the increased costs of personal transport is not supplanted by good public transport. It just pushes poorer people to not have cars and lower working families to spend loads on fuel. I don’t know how it is in America but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Europe
Not very far into the video so I won't comment on the whole yet, but it seems like the map you used at 0:51 is actually a map of potential future high-speed rail. :)
exactly. In Portugal we dont have high speed. Nor any international rail conection that gets directly from Lisbon to any other country. To get from lisbon to madrid you need 1 day and 3 trains. With the same time you can get to Poitiers, France, by car. And those 3 trains belong to 2 rail operators, so you need to buy 2 tickets from 2 countries taht are colectivelly more expensive than gas.
For instance, if you need to travel from Lisbon to anywhere else out of Portugal, rail is just out of question. And if you force yourself to go by train, it also depends on the amount of people. If you travel in a group of 2-5, going by car is just so much cheaper, because the costs of the train tickets, while cheaper than gas for 1 travel, 5 tickets are much more expensive. And dont get me started on the fact that cities outside os Lisbon/Porto dont have public transportation, so, you get out of the train and what?
a ticket Lisbon-Faro can be 36€ and take up to 5 hours. By car used to cost 40€ and its 2 hours. Even if the price of gas doubled, it would still be cheaper to go by car as a family of 4.
European passenger rail is not that good, and the conections between countries are simply terrible. If you dont live in central europe nor border germany, rails conections are even worse.
@@Duck-wc9de I was referring to the 'United States High-Speed Rail System' map, which is a hypothetical map, and not a depiction of the US railway network. The European rail map seems to be perfectly accurate, at least from what I can tell, though I can't speak for the on-the-ground situation, or Portugal for that matter.
I use European rail very frequently and across many countries - mostly in Western Europe - and can't say I've had bad experiences, though using Benelux and DACH railways help of course. :)
Oh look "modern looking" colors! Gotta please the people living in the 21st century! Definitely aesthetics over information.
As many have pointed out, both the rail and road networks in Europe are much more complex. Also, in the densely populated German Ruhr-Valley, you can take the subway or „S-Bahn“ (city train I guess) to all the surrounding cities. It takes me like 20 minutes to reach 5 different cities with +100k people.
And in Germany, we usually get a semester ticket (*as students), with which we can take all public transport option within our state
Still, in Europe, over the last 30 years cargo transport has been shifting from rail to street. Especially in Germany, the Deutsche Bahn now transports only half of what it was transporting 30 years ago, even though total cargo has increased. Since Germany is at the center of the EU this leads to issues on west-east-conneting roads, as they are jammed with all that trucks transporting goods all over the EU (Mostly from east to west, since many companies outsource manual labor to east Europe for the cheap labor wages there)
Geograph?
There are no words for the incompetence of the DB Netz.
@@snextpvp3882 Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post should have never privatized. That was a big mistake.
Our politicians are dumb as heck
In the EU it is ridiculously difficult to park a car in a big city. All parking lots are taken practically 24/7 so you have to be planning your transportation in advance and know on which time and day of the week you can find a parking lot. (From my experience in Warsaw Poland). Also parking almost everywhere is paid.
That’s the point. Use public. Or suffer. Or plan ahead. And pay ofcourse. This way there are a lot less cars in center of cities and it’s wonderfull.
Yes because european cities can't afford to have too many people driving in the city, it's very densely populated.
So...that's a good thing, right?
There is one thing i would like to say about this: "I bardzo kurwa dobrze."
Why were you parking a car withing a fricking city in the first place? A city is for shops, for people, for jobs, etc. Not for spending government money on giving your car parking space, so that actually profitable buildings can't be placed there
I dont quite know where u got the maps or what does it strictly represents but the highway map of europe is highly dubious, and that map of yellow lines representing railnetwork is again more like a visual representation than an actual map
yeah right? I think it's a map of trans European highways but there's no way that France or Italy have so few.
That "highway" map of Europe represents the Trans-European Transport Network and includes not only roads but also rail, airports and even water infrastructure. So it represents planned corridors that the EU considers important, it's clearly NOT a representation of highways in Europe.
absolutely! the map he has chosen is the EU TEN-T network map, which is used to coordinate investments and improvements to EU transports (roads but also railways, airports, seaports...) - it's definitely useful, but VERY different from the map of highways in the EU (which i would say its even more widespread and dense than the US one)
@@gabriele7381 makes sense then
@@gabriele7381 yeah a lot of highways are missing like the Milano Bari
A lot of these generalisations of "Europe" simply do not apply to an Italian reality. It's very difficult to bike, public transport sucks, and without a car you are basically stuck relying on a faulty system... Lucky Dutch I guess....
Yeah, same thing here in Finland, useful public transport pretty much doesn't exist, if you live in the less inhabited areas. And because Finland has the lowest population density of EU, we have a lot of those areas. And due to high taxes and the gas prices skyrocketing, (currently around 2.6€/L) many people living in these areas are really struggling financially.
Your comment was refreshingly honest.
Agree but we dutch have stupidly high fuel prices
Yeah same in Greece specifically Athens it is easier to have a car than to use public transportation for example a 15-20 min trip by car can be a 40+ min trip by public transport.
finally some honesty and no EUROPE IS PERFECT comments
5:00 This is also a consequence of the fact that the land in Europe has been divided up and appropriated hundreds of years ago, before the Renaissance. So there is simply no space left for _parking lots._ All in all, it demonstrates the obvious superiority of an organic long-term development forced to a large extent by nature over the man-made fast one.
There was no space for parking lots in many American cities either, but they simply knocked down half of the buildings or more to make them.
@@etierik Also, parking lots have been built in Europe. They are underground.
I'm from the UK, here it doesn't matter if you use private or public transport, it's expensive af. On the railways the infrastructure was set up for the demands of Victorian Britain, and modernising it is extremely difficult. But there's something great about taking a train from the centre of one city to the centre of another - much better than taking a plane to the outskirts of somewhere to the outskirts of somewhere else
In Germany, using a train is insanley expensive
USA, grew up with cars not trains. People from Europe can’t seem to understand this. Europe is also much older than the US. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and the very famous and accessible car the Ford Model T came into production in 1908. Less than a generation apart most people wanted cars. There is also a lot of classism and pride that comes with car owner ship in the US. But the major point is there is a cultural difference between Europe and the US. The US loves cars because that is a major part of the US history. As trains are a huge part of European culture.
That is strange, I thought trains build america. 🙄
It would be wise for America to heed Europe's example. If gas were as expensive in America as it is in Europe this country would implode. That's not a great position to put ourselves in if we want to carry on long term. Americans in the last few decades have been all about taking from the future to enrich the present. It's extremely foolish.
@@altriish6683 why is it that Europe is so much better in this way? What happens if there is a natural disaster or trains breakdown? Americans are never going to give up their cars. So why would government invest in a product people won’t use?
@@jeaninetungsten8865 well you got to also take some realities in, the US has alot lower population density and its geography is vastly different from Europes.
So if did the reverse, Europe would definitely be more car centric. While the US would be more public transport centric.
Europe is "Well Designed" because major population centers are closer together, such as Lisbon to Madrid to Paris to Brussels to Frankfurt, etc. California was supposed to have a high speed rail line that would go between the two major metropolitan centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles, but even those are alternatively either slightly over 1 hour flight, or 7 to 8-ish hour drive, depending on travel habits. The HSR would need to be cost effective to be a happy alternative between the two, as it would be slower than a plane, but faster than driving.
Political area maps are also misleading, as geographically the US is quite diverse in its landscape. California to someplace across the country like New York would entail crossing at least 3 mountain ranges, desert, farmland, with some major cities being very few and far between at that. Europe on the other hand, especially in the Northern main continent, is generally open and flat, perfect for rails and high speed trains. Places like the mountains between Switzerland and Italy, or Spain and France, are likely the biggest challenges geographically for constructing railway.
Furthermore, States would want to be well aware of who is paying for the maintenance of the infrastructure. This is important, since some states have threatened use of force against another to resolve disputes, such as Toledo almost being part of Michigan, or New York staking claim of the entire river that marked the state border, including the piers/docks that protruded into it from the opposite side. Simple solution: Make it Federal, though having multiple Eminent Domain cases and Environmental Impact Evaluations from the National level will not be popular, just look at the Keystone Pipeline to see how that unfolded.
Lastly is how useful would it be to most people. The majority Americans don't need to travel or commute such distances on a regular basis, most likely for business trips, which their company is paying for and paying them to be on, or while on vacation (which Europeans get more PTO), but that is paid out of pocket and very limited in time. If someone has just 2 weeks off, they will not want to spend 4 days on a train one way, just to end up with 6 days where they wanted to be, then for another 4 day travel back, a reason why a 6 hour flight across country is still marketable.
TL;DR: It isn't just about design, Europe and US are quite different, not easy to compare.
One important thing to mention, as a difference, comparing Europe and US is that most, if not all, European cities are founded in times when there was no such thing as mass transportation, starting from a small center, and gradually expanding, so most of European cities are walkable to-from work, groceries, schools, health points etc. You also can hardly fit a parking space in downtown Rome, unless you want to tear down something important for whole civilization, and having some streets narrower than a car. Bar few western EU countries, most of cities in Europe are safe to walk day and night (and for good part those not in EU), so walking from and to problem is only passing by many of shops that have things you want to buy. America is built on plans of industrial and post-industrial thinking, it doesn't have cozy metropolitan cities, but capital-effective areas. It's not really a thing of catching up with one or another, Europe has had consistent development of transportation strategies for thousands of years, and it didn't listen much to i.e. Chinese solutions, but had to live through to get what works for them, and adjust it for short distances within rather small countries, terrain and climate.
Someone gets it! I'm not saying America should not fix its transportation problems but everyone seems to forget that we are still a very young country compared to Europe. There are houses over there that are older than the whole US!
Exactly. It is also worth comparing population density, since some parts of the US are vastly more dense than others.
To say that the entire US has bad public transport is true, but it implies that it is a problem that can and should be fixed across the nation. However, this isn't viable in a large portion of the western US (like South Dakota or Montana or Wyoming). There just aren't enough people (close enough to each other) to justify it. (Yes, I know he said that if the US fixed public transport where most people are, then it's probably fine, but he said that at the end, meaning that everything before that had the implied idea that public transport needed to be fixed everywhere).
Also, the parking spot thing got to me. Like yeah, of course the US needs more parking spots. It has a way higher percentage of its residents using cars. If 1000 kids (teenagers) are driving to school every day, they are going to need 1000 parking spots. But what about on weekends or during the summer? Those spots don't just disappear when they aren't in use. And, now those 1000 kids need somewhere else to park, whether it be at a park, beach, or restaurant.
these videos make me really apreciate that i live in eu and not in usa
Well, it depends on which city you are. And if you live outside of a city, is lot more complicated. I live in Catalonia and if you live in Barcelona or really near, public transport options are fantastic, but the farther from Barcelona, the harder is to use public transport. I have to use car everyday because I spend only 30 minutes compared to 90 or more (up to 150 at night) by public transport.
I think your video is very cool and 'well designed'!
I fully agree that public transportation, within cities and between cities, is very important. Here in Europe, we are doing better on that than in the US for sure. I, therefore, agree with your conclusion. However, some maps and data you show does not really match the statements that you make. Some examples:
- The map you start with is the the exact same map Interrail uses and is meant to give a general overview on the existing popular routes within Europe. This map is a bit outdated however, and many important links are missing. Some examples are the LGV-Est in France, the Lyon-Milan route. To really make your point impressive, a map like OpenRailwayMap showing all passenger lines in Europe would make way more impact, as the Interrail one only shows about 10 per cent of all rail and misses a lot of existing high-speed routes as well. Compared to the US, it does not even look that dense, while that is your main point here.
- Despite having a smaller focus on cars than the US, Europe still has A LOT of highways that are not shown on your road-network map. In fact, I believe you used the TEN-T or Trans-European map, which only shows the important corridors across Europe and also includes rail I believe. Type in 'highway map Europe' on Google and you get a way better result.
- You use the argument of Europe being larger than the US. This is totally fine of course. However, if you do that, then the overview of most congested cities would include 6 (!) of the 10 most congested cities being in Europe, despite being it in the east. Taking just Western Europe as example is also fine, but then the US is of course a lot bigger. Now, land size is still no argument against public transportation, I agree on that, but people that are against the opinion you bring up might use this as an argument against you.
Overall, I think we are going the right way in Europe. More high-speed rail is being built, more operators are riding these routes and cities are getting rid of cars. Therefore, I do agree on you conclusion. I just noticed that the images you use do not always support or only partly support your claims, which gives people who disagree with you reasons to criticize you, which is not needed because your points in general are very good! :)
It’s not just the matter of selectively including Eastern Europe in land size. It’s also not factoring in population density when talking about the USAs gaps. Ofc Wyoming, Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, etc don’t have high functioning public transportation networks because those would operate on extreme losses.
If Poland or Spain had worse transit than Wyoming they’d be considered undeveloped countries.
I was really confused when he showed the top ranking of most congested cities which showed no American cities and then went on to say that American cities are more congested. He also randomly pointed out large the US is as if that's an excuse instead of US density and distance between major cities that people actually travel between.
Also he oddly avoided areas of transit that US exceeds at. Like it's incredibly effecient freight rail network where 28 percent of it's freight movement by ton-miles. Or how (according to the first source I could find) 26 million children are moved between school and home via bus everyday which is like moving double Belgium's population in a bus everyday.
Outside of the major cities where the vast majority of poor people live, public transit is not viewed as important or desirable in the US. Perhaps because we are not taxed to death.
@@carpzero1 It is not viewed as important or desirable because of the low density. In a car dependent suburb, I would prefer to drive as well because it is impossible to set up a good functioning public transport system. In higher density places with good public transport, I would not even want to drive on the majority of my trips.
Fact is that somewhat higher density places that are walkable and have good public transport, are among the most desirable places, even in the US. In these places, housing prices go sky high because there is a big lack of demand for these types of neighbourhoods.
0:26 you should look at those "large areas with no amtrak" with a population density map. I understand our public transport sucks in comparison but the middle of the US especially the upper Midwest has such few people living there mass public transport would make no sense , economically and physically. Most Americans live on either the East or west coast where you find the most public transport. So yes it still needs improving but until the middle of the country grows more there's not much demand for huge public transport infrastructure in the middle of the country.
Ikr… most of those areas are in places that no one is in a rush to visit
He may as well do one of these on "Why Northern African Railway Design is so Terrible"...and then just casually fail to mention the Sahara desert.
Dude, as I european I lived in Wisconsin Dells for 4 months. I was shocked there was literally to none public transport. There was an amtrack pasing throught the city every Thursday! There was no alternative other than a car to get anywhere outside the city. I found this so absurd. Then I took a bus from Chicago to New york which took 24 hours!!! Indeed the train was 3 hours faster but was so expensive it was not worth it. For the same distance in Europe, lets say Amsterdam Rome, it takes me 15 hours with the train, on first class and was still cheaper than the bus I took in the USA. American can be one of the best coutries in the world to live in if you have money, but its the worst to live in if you are the average joe.
@@ferentcristian6455 for like 50 more bucks yoy could have just flown in a plane had a 2 hour flight
@@biohazardlnfS yes, but the closest airport was in Madison. I didnt had a car to get there. Was relying on public transport.