Why are US Cities all Car Based?
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- Episode 1 of my new series call the Armchair Urbanist. If you have any ideas for an episode put them in the comments below!
My Twitter where I also shitpost: / alanthefisher
My Patreon, so that I can afford pizza to give me energy to edit these videos: / alanthefisher 
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Because blimps aren't a viable means of transport yet.
A Revival To Zeppelins Seems *Very* Viable To Be Honest
Usps might finally become useful
It's the "yet" that gets me.
@@indeepjable not really. Slow, low people capacity, expensive to operate, vulnerable to weather changes on the scale of minutes and seconds let alone the weather systems that typically bother planes, require pretty expansive new infrastructure to make feasible for passengers etc etc etc
And I say this as someone pretty obsessed with zeppelins and the Golden Age of Travel and all that good stuff
*Plays /Departure/* Hunter x Hunter's universe has Airships (they're blimps) as a common form or long distance transportation
Wow, that shot of Detroit was mindboggling. A tram adds so much to a city, even without it's function as transport.
A lot of tram lines don't produce anywhere near the ridership predicted. This might be related that they are modeled after the older lines that were closed in the 40s and 50s but still remembered without realizing that in the half century since the world has changed, folks mayB don't work downtown anymore, they don't shop there, and they moved out to the suburbs, mayB too that some of this had to do with the abandonment of the old line. Another design fallacy is choosing an abandoned or little used freight railway line and making it a 'tram', great, but you better do some traffic estimation, do folks live there, does it go where they are going, does it make any sense???? The Washington DC metro years ago awoke to the realization that ridership on many of its lines and stations was dependent on the ability of riders to park their cars at the stations so many of the stations have facilities for thousands of cars and that isn't enough. The car is about the best 'last mile' solution in many if not most cases. I know I was originally sold on the local 'bus' route to the station, but after repeatedly being left on the corner long after the scheduled arrival I started using my car and paying to park, not all that much more expensive plus I got a seat.
dimensions
I wrote more but got choked by Utube.
A tram actually detracts from a city. The overhead power lines form a web of visual pollution while on the ground the tracks make riding a bike more dangerous, and any attempt at street beautification with median trees usually has to get torn out because the median gets reserved for tram use. I don't see how anybody could like trams or light rail. We really need to be considering cable cars instead.
@@dlwatib do you have any studies to confirm that statement? Because some of the world's most popular cities as well as some of the more bike-friendly ones also have tram lines. Amsterdam is an obvious example, but there's also Bordeaux, Lyon, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Helsinki... Bordeaux also shows the technology exists to abolish those overhead wires in some key central areas. There are no shortcuts or schemes that will work no matter what, that goes for trams, too, but in my experience, trams neither are a block to success, and when done right, can even help to attract new business and new more sustainable mobility habits.
So you *can* have shit in Detroit.
Interesting video to watch as a German. I kid you not though, our country is still car maniac as fuck. I live close to Bochum with half the population and my city was definitively build for cars first. Can we get an F in chat fot it's tram lost in the 70's? But the crazy thing is that even this city has 30 buslines and access to S-Bahn, regional trains and HSR to Hamburg, Berlin and even Vienna.
So whenever I feel bad about it, I just watch this video, lol. Great memes, too.
Cars. Are. Awesome.
@liam Anderson they are also smarter to allow people who don't want a car
the ability to comfortably live.
@liam Anderson If they realised cars were the future, then how come they have one of the best passenger rail networks on the planet?
@@coastaku1954 Depends of the person and preferences. I like cars and think they're awesome, but cars can cause more pollution than trams.
Pollution from vehicles' exhausts can cause cancer and deaths.
@@automation7295 I do love cars, but they don’t work in urban environments. Too big, too loud, too polluting, too unnecessary
In most countries and in the US especially city planners wanted to fight congested streets by building wider streets. This leads however to even more congested streets. In Europe many countries faced this problem at its peak by taking away space for cars. Amsterdam is a famous example, but also all European cities (also those neutral in WW2) subsidize their public transportation. In America building free roads has somehow a less socialistic appeal than subsidizing public transport.
Well, a road benefits many different types of user...single occupant vehicles, families, freight, mass transit. Whereas a public transit railroad can be used only by the people riding it. You can't run freight etc on it. So, between that and the fact that things are much denser in Europe because it became densely populated before cars were invented, thus making it a lot cheaper to build public transit trains (your lines are a lot shorter), that would be why public transit is more extensive there.
Large cities are generally more in favor of building transit because stuff is closer together here than it would be in small towns, and you can find mass transit systems in every major city in the USA.
@@neutrino78x Actually, American cities were also quite dense before the widespread adoption of the automobile. In fact, the United States used to be one of the top countries when it came to public transportation.
Also, freight can be used on tracks. Freight trains can be used on commuter train lines and the New York metro uses retired metro trains to move garbage on its system. I also believe that Dresden, Germany has cargo trams that move car parts to its volkswagen factory and the London underground used to have specialized trains that carried the mail.
@@intrepidurbanite995 SOME were, yes. Los Angeles was not. San Francisco was. San Jose was not. Seattle was not. New York City was.
@@neutrino78x I think it is still possible for American cities to create decent public transportation systems. There can still be a focus on densifying routes that are conducive to public transportation usage.
@@intrepidurbanite995 oh yeah, of course it's possible. Most major cities have a transit network. I grew up here in Silicon Valley and believe it or not, I don't know how to drive. I get around on Light Rail and buses. Only about half the people in the City of New York have a driver license.
But no one should be "disappointed" that we don't have a HSR network in the USA or think it somehow makes us a 3rd world country or something like that, when we're much more spread out than Europe. San Jose and New York are a LOT farther apart than London and Paris.
The distance from San Jose to New York is comparable to that between London and Athens. And it takes about the same amount of time to go from London to Athens on a train as it does to go from San Jose to New York. So most people just use a jet aircraft to make that trip, in both cases. :)
Right now jet aircraft only contribute about 2% of the CO2 pollution in the world. That can probably be eliminated in the future by moving to hydrogen as an aircraft fuel, or a cleaner burning artificial hydrocarbon, or maybe even ammonia (since it is a liquid at room temperature).
NASA's predecessor, NACA, did tests in the 50s with running jet aircraft off pure hydrogen.
www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/portal/apps/naca/#c31
Not only was the same engine that normally runs off jet fuel able to operate using hydrogen as a fuel, but it actually ran better. The problem is storing it on the aircraft safely. And of course, generating it should be done with zero emission power plants -- nuclear, solar, wind, etc.
The oil and automotive industries had a huge influence on Congress, and the Federal government poured billions into highways. They invested very little into railroads for upgrades and modernization. At the same time, I understand that General Motors bought up many of the urban streetcar lines and substituted buses.
Because the federal government reaps huge revenues from fuel taxes. Public transportation is a money pit and actually benefits from those fuel taxes as well. Road infrastructure spending should be much higher given how vital it is to the national economy.
@@kilobyte8321 Lol, do you even know what you are talking about? The government actually loses a lot of money on infrastructure for cars, a lot more than it would potentially lose on public transport. For a certain part, that is ok. Transport can cost money if it makes people get a job.
However, because cars are never going to be as effective as public transport or bikes, a lot of infrastructure has to be created in order to make space for these cars, which results in less places within a certain amount of space that generates money (a house, shop etc.). Just google 'cars vs public transport space' and you will see a bunch of photo's that show how much space cars actually take compared to other modes of transport. Cars are not effective, except in areas with little people. They are expensive, dangerous and bad for liveliness. Yes, gas tax earns back a part of the costs for infrasturcture creation, but definitely not everything.
@@Marchanthof sure, but you have completely neglected to mention how “parking space minimums” regulation (that exist in just about every major US city) have basically manufactured the problems we have with giant parking lots wasting space.
@@ethan-gw1cz Correct. I usually count parking spaces with infrastructure, but you are definitely right on that. Without parking spaces, less people will take their car somewhere and thus less infrastructure is needed. The quality of an area with less parking is also higher. Less infrastructure can also mean people will prefer different modes of transport so less parking is needed. It works 2 ways. A mall next to a big train station will need less parking, and this train line will also reduce the need for car infrastructure.
Bus transit today at least is much cheaper to build and more flexible to manage though it does take more drivers per passenger to operate. Bus transit would have been fine to transition to but general problem is lack of funding and people in power denying that transit is the solution instead of 20 lane highway
Enjoyed the light comedic approach and can't wait for more episodes!
I hate car centric idiocy in America. I am sick to death of road rage, taxes, maintenance cost, car payments, gas , congestion. Go to Hell auto industry. Bring on high speed rail, commuter trains, trams, buses, subways, bicycles. Cars and trucks are like roaches. Metal coffin death traps. Hopefully the car and highway system will go away forever into the scrap heap. I will fight against them in whatever way I can.
Buuuuuttt. . . We had rail-centric cities in the period 1865 to 1920, and there were gobs of books and news magazine articles railing against the monopoly and crushing financial and social costs .
I suggest you read Noris's book, the Octopus.
@@franzzrilich9041 the auto and oil ponzi scheme barons are a million times more oppressive than the rail barons ever were. Complete enslavement by bondage to car ownership, endless unsightly parking lots, etc. What a mess.
I think it’s unfair to blame the train companies. They were competing against massive government subsidies for highways and mortgages for houses in sprawling suburbs. Many of the dense neighborhoods they had rail and trolley lines through were carved up by interstates. The free market railroads didn’t stand a chance against this huge government intervention.
I worked in firms with lots of technical reports dating back to the period when highways came into use. The Interstate Commerce Commission was a federal agency that regulated railroads. They made it impossible to improve railroads, because of an irrational hatred of railroads caused by decades of anti-railroad editorial stances in newspapers. This hatred was institutionalized in Congress and influences most ICC decisions.
One aircraft firm I had worked at got into the field of building diesel powered aluminum streamlined rail sets in the 1920's. A rail set was a ten to twenty car consist that always ran as a unit, and was not broken up between trips. They were passenger outfits with tapered end cars.
The ICC passed regulations against aluminum rail sets. We saw the light, and pulled out of the market.
However, the vast majority of people who lived in cities did hate living in the cities, and wanted to live in small towns and to own cars. This antipathy came about from the utterly unspeakably incompetent and corrupt manner in which cities have been run for the past two hundred years.
Stockholm, Sweden has 2 391 990 people living in it's metropolitan area and has 800-900 buss lines destinct 7 metro line, 8 commuter lines, 5 tram lines and even 4 commuter ferry lines. Which makes it extremely easy to live without a car even in many low residential suburbs there they have at least a bus line going towards or through them
sydney is similar
same across the sea in the Baltic states.
You can imagine my surprise when I moved out of a city of light rails, bike lanes, and many buses to a city with no light rails or bike lanes and very few buses that hardly cover half of the city. Hell, there are literally no sidewalks.
Cities like Chicago and NYC can be easily fixed but Los Angeles and Houston are forever doomed
Not los angeles. That city is aucctually improving. Houston isnt.
Doesn't Chicago have shootouts in their public transit while people are pushed to the rails by the homeless or thugs in NYC? Looks like USA aggressive cultural dynamics can't make trains work.
@@uzin0s256
Improving by having more drug addicts, homeless, and crimes than you're right.
This video misses the biggest reason - because it is illegal or prohibitively expensive to build mix use walkable neighborhoods.
1. Zoning - by segregating commercial and residential areas with large blocks of land, most people must live far away from places of business. They practically need a car to go to work or shop.
2. Minimum parking requirements - this act as a iron flattening out cities. Buildings cannot be built without a minimum amount of parking that is based on the area of the indoor space. This makes buildings shorter and smaller because they will eventually reach a cap on how much parking they have. It also means buildings are farther apart so walking is made a hassle.
3. Set backs, floor area ratios, minimum lot sizes, house alteration restrictions, etc etc. These laws make it difficult to build more units that can house more people. So even in areas that are walkable, they can't accomodate more people, forcing them to be further away from their desired location.
4. Massive subsidies for car infrastructure. The Federal Government practically subsidizes highway construction in the States, without this, they wouldn't be able to afford such large highway systems, and have money to support suburban infrastructure as well. Without this funding, states and cities would need to be more prudent with their infrastructure spending - which favors density (economies of scale) rather than low density car dependent suburbia.
All those rules were made up thanks to the reasons provided in the video...
BoHum, Germany 😆 nice video :)
btw bochum still is one of the cities with the highest rates of car ownership in all of germany :( 508 cars for 1000 inhabitants!
which makes the comparison even worst lol
@@alanthefisher i feel like it makes the comparison better
car enthusiasts vs car enthusiasts*
You're an adult when you realize that Roger Rabbit was a movie about general motors killing the light rail transit
More reasons to hate GM.... as if i needed any more though.
@@killman369547 GM did not kill Los Angeles Red Car Lines. The lines were losing passengers and vast hordes of people were moving into California, and building freeways was slow and costly due to the geology. The politicians needed a lot of road lanes, and so they let the Red Car lines fade away.
Also, most Interurban and trolley car rail lines were dying out after WWI, and were intensely unpopular with the public.
In 1935 FDR introduced a law divorcing light electric passenger rail systems from their electric utility owners.
Almost immediately, these systems largely died out over a few months.
You should read the transcripts of the committee hearings and debates surrounding the legislation.
And the demolition of minority neighborhoods for freeways.
how is no one watching this, this is great
Because it's obvious.
@@LMB222 not to everyone
i didn't realise why the federal government would spend this much
until i realised that the us was rich
They're too comfy with their cars
3:30 I dont think you give the old rail companies enough credit. Yes mismanagement and bankruptcy are certainly the main cause, but consider that in their darkest hour they had to compete with the newly built/being built interstate system, a giant network of high-speed, high quality (then atleast) and most importantly, FREE highways that connected a car owner to every possible destination, and perhaps more importantly, everywhere in between.
The Interurban systems were built up 1888 to 1915.
The onset of WWI began a scale back in mileage of Interurban mileage.
The Interurbans used immense amounts of copper in their electrical supplies.
Copper was in very short supply in WWI.
Also, Ford Model T's were being made in huge numbers.
So were Moidel TT pickup trucks.
The government's military production program placed immense pressures on factories to use just-in-time constant deliveries of small amounts of parts.
Model TT pickups were key in pushing output of war goods.
There also were a lot of Army Model B Liberty trucks cranked out.
Most of the trucks made in the US were used to move industrial production to a high rate not before seen.
Railroads are normally not practical to move output unless a boxcar is loaded to its weight limit.
Rural highways began to be concrete paved.
Only a single lane would be paved.
The lanes were reserved for supply trucks.
After the war, a second, then third lane would be concreted.
Then, in a few places, a second set of lanes was created, thirty feet to the side, in intensely rural areas.
In between would be a grassy median strip.
Then the triple eight-foot wide lanes were re-organized as double sets of twelve-foot lanes.
This all happened by the mid 1920's.
However, these divided highways, such as SR 18 and US 20 in Ohio, had grade crossings and driveways for houses and businesses along the sides.
After the war ended, it was universally clear that we need freight express roads, with grade separations, for continuous supply of factories, with constant supplies of small quantities of parts; an approach that only trucks could supply.
The push was to build a national network of limited access roads.
The original Constitution even had a provision that permitted Congress to build and run a system of national post-roads.
But due to Depression, WWII, and Korea, that decision was pushed off to the mid 1950's.
The original designers of the Interstate system had intended to avoid running the Interstates through cities, for several reasons.
The biggest reason was the awareness that Interstates would divide up cities.
This was a constant complaint about the extensive use of railroads, many of which were in cuttings or on embankments.
Railroad corridors were thus called "great Chinese walls."
Originally, cities would be given funds to build access roads to the rural-based Interstates.
However, the big cities had noticed as far back as the 1890s that its wealthier citizens were fleeing their clutches.
In the 1890s a lot of people used Interurbans to commute to cities from new estates built out in the country.
Originally restricted to the very wealthy, a big hunk of blue collar workers, with well-paying jobs, left the cities, too.
When mass produced cars emerged, they switched to cars.
By the end of WWI, the now worn out Interurban cars were used mostly by immigrants, the poor, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, the aged, and the very young.
While fares were noticeably lower than for standard steam trains, it clearly was cheaper to use a Model T.
Further, many a Model TT chassis had been converted to mini-bus shuttles called Jitneys, which began the bus industry.
In the elections of 1920, a number of political candidates began to use coded language to indicate that they favored elimination of Interurbans,
The main arguments were that Interurbas, which were operated by electric power companies, were not paying road taxes, while those who owned cars were paying road raxes.
Further, Interurbans were the size of steam railroad passenger cars and blocked traffic on streets in cities.
It was not until the Interurban car lines reached the countryside that they could buy up land and run across the countryside, linking cities together.
Eventually, Franklin Roosevelt ran for President, his platform including buzz phrases calling for removal of Interurbans.
This resulted in a 1935 law that forbade electric power companies from owning Interurban and trolley lines.
The result was the almost immediate collapse of the wornout Interurban system.
No local government wanted to save them, as they were a constant source of spectacular automobile accidents.
By the way, rural family newspapers ran social commentaries about the family car, and it was usually depicted in cartoons.
In these cartoons, the family car was thought of affectionately in the same terms as the horse that used to pull the buggy to the county seat and local Interurban station.
It’s hard to compete against free highways built mostly with other people’s tax money.
The US is obviously in an awful place for public transit, but ironically the amount of freight transported by rail is actually lower in Europe than in the US...
US has much more raw resource extraction than Europe, much of US rail freight is bulk raw resource hauled long distance. EU has many more ports so distance to barge is far less than the states. Freight trains are smaller in EU ( no unit trains) and share the tracks with passenger trains
I love this! I've been watching the youtuber Not Just Bikes, and he's got a much more cynical viewpoint about NA urban planning to say the least. Great to see someone talk about it from a more positive and hopeful perspective!
I can be cynical too, but I generally try to leave videos on a high note or with a question.
TBH once NJB shows how the dutch do it I get the cynicism american cities are so much worse
One can't help but be cynical when discovering the real history of public transit in the USA
The cynicism is deserved when talking to North Americans about any alternative to car driving and experiencing knee-jerk criticism over it. Comment sections like these and NJB are some of the very few RUclips comment sections where I can say that people seem more open-minded than in face-to-face conversation LOL
@@machtmann2881 usually when I talk to people about the magical wonderland tokyos public transport is they seem on board no problem. The less boomers we have controlling politics the better the support for world class public transport, green space, and cities built for people and not cars will become.
Most train roads in Europe actually already existed before WW2. Yes, they invested in high speed rail after the war, but many Europeans use these only rarely.
Never thought I'd hear an American talk about Bochum..
Anyways, what strikes me odd the most about the state of, say, light rail in the US is that "suburbia" would've been the perfect opportunity to implement S-Bahn/commuter rail systems or U-Bahn/Metro systems but this opportunity was just wasted..
No, suburbia were purposely build for cars and only cars.
>See video titled "Why are US Cities Based?"
>Wait what?
>Clicked!
>"Car Based"
>Oh.
You got a new sub from Not Just Bikes Recommendation. Good shit!
@@hrsmp it's an expression here
I've gotten kind of fixated on Robert Moses after reading The Power Broker. I think there's a fair case to lay a lot of America's car-centric urban design on him. I mean, the 2nd Ave subway in New York was proposed in the 20s and it's STILL a work in progress.
Moses consulted on road layouts with a lot of other cities in the US and even around the world, and many urban planners enthusiastically adopted his model. Maybe he's worth a segment? (Just sayin...)
I would say there isn’t anything wrong with a car, but it’s terrible if the car or any mode of transportation is the only option.
It’s actually very anti-capitalistic to limit consumer options to a car, because it takes away the competitiveness and variety of choice.
It’s a monopoly that the government is seriously to blame for because they made it illegal to build almost anywhere besides single family housing.
Government is a tool for the auto industry. They use government to make sure everyone depends on them, creating a transportation monopoly.
@@pedrob3953 Yup.
Very well said.
But, as demonstrated by California, any attempt by any US government to build alternatives to highways leads to massive waste and corruption.
I suggest that readers capable of spending a month in a major library with a Federal Documents Repository scour the stacks for the many exhaustive studies on passenger rail economics.
Some of the individual reports run twenty to thirty volumes.
These studies provide statistical evidence that passenger rail does not make sense.
@@pedrob3953 The Ohio Turnpike is a toll road and is better kept than the other expressways in Ohio. Its intense usage tends to suborn the idea that because highways are paid for largely by fuel taxes and license fees that highways are unfairly subsidized.
Car based? More like car cringe
You forgot two facts, the Arab Oil Embargos of 1956 and 1967. We Americans remember the oil embargo of 1973 and the oil crisis of 1979 but when the Arab Oil Embargo of 1956 and 1967 occured, the US was still a net oil EXPORTER so the oil embargo did not affect the USA. On the other hand these earlier oil embargos forced the Europeans to think in terms of alternatives to oil and that meant high taxes on oil for high taxes on oil made Europeans to support other means of transportation. Even today, Europe has high taxes on oil for three reasons, First, to make the use of oil in automobiles more expensive, second, to make alternatives to driving an automobile competitive to driving an automobile and third to provide revenue to built and support alternatives to driving.
Europeans refused to ban automobiles, for there is a place for such vehicles but at the same time provided alternatives to having to drive to work, shop and school.
Great video. Greetings from Essen, the bigger city next to Bochum. Beside we have a great public transport network compared to most American cities, a lot of people are always complaining about it. Too expensive, the schedule could more frequent and so on. The loudest are often car owners who take bus, trams and trains not very often...
NYC is the only place in the United States where at least half the population doesn’t own a car (52.4 Percent).
God that 70s SNCF with the synth made me nostalgic.
(Even though I was born in the 2000s)
Your points around the decline of the railroads misses out the role of the government - in New York CIty, the dual contracts surrendered the ability of the railroads to set their own fares, and were signed shortly before the Great War and massive wartime inflation meant they weren't able to cover their own costs from the nickel fare - which covered basically all forms of transit including the streetcar. The streetcars were deliberately forced into bankruptcy by Mayor Hanlan, who refused to allow them to raise the fare and refused to give them any form of financial assistance. The Streeetcars were seized by the city by LaGuardia who then ripped them up.
In ICC restricted the ability of the railroads to change their passenger and freight rates, which had the same effect so they had to cut spending - and we all know how well that turned out.
If the government isn't willing to actually fund a thing, then it's probably not a good idea to have them own and be responsible for paying for the thing. It's the lack of money in public transit that caused the decline, it's always the money. The money is the most important reason. It's the money. The money went into roads, because it had a positive financial feedback loop.
car based more like car cringe
You're putting up with this, because the entire political cycle - from election to election - is much shorter in the US than elsewhere. It has advantages, sure, but discourages forward thinking in politicians.
Why bother building a dinky when the construction takes so long that your successor will cut the ribbon?
that's not really true, in the us, your term is 4 or 8 years no matter what (unless you die). in most european countries (and canada) your term could be any amount of time, mostly due to snap elections and no true term limits.
@@cononodapotato6920 yes, 4 or 8 years. That's very short.
Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris for 18 years. Konrad Adenauer was mayor of Cologne for 16 years. Both became presidents.
Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada three times, together for 15.5 years.
There are countless other examples of mayor's and PMs who served for 20 or 30 years.
02:46 S Y N T H W A V E
Lazerhawk - King of the Streets
It's crazy, I'm a Wichitan that's lately been on an urban planning kick and just found your channel on this video. I really hope to see our city fix it's transit woes you highlighted.
Living in North America is an absolute hellish nightmare for a person like me who is too visually impaired to drive and i would leave.... if i had the money.
I am visually impaired and live in a small town with a hospital, and a lot of grocery stores. You can bike ride around town.
Virtually all American cities had a rapid transit system once upon a time, quite simply people abandoned them for the convenience of the automobile beginning in the nineteen twenties, ww2 prolonged the life of many of these redundant transit systems which unlike highways and air lines, recieve no government financial support thus all cost associated with continued operations and maintenance were doomed by dwindling revenue due to reduced patronage of mass transit.
It's interesting how building roads for peoples induvidual freedom creates less freedom
3:17 if car travel hadn't taken over we'd be so ahead on transportation technology and would have world class public transit
I have a feeling that if people did less driving and more walking, or even standing, the obesity rate could drop a little.
Props to you for getting a clip of the Northeast Regional in Hyde Park!!!
0:45 These vehicles arn´t serving only Bochum but also 3+ nabouring city with more than 500.000 inhabitans. So over 800.000 in total. The comparision isn´t perfectly fair. Maybe Dresden or Hannover would be a better comparison based on the metroarea or Bielefeld on the city alone. These cities are more standalone compared to Bochum.
You ignore the period of the 20s and 30s and what happened to the very extensive trolley and interurban lines that we had then. Trolley lines were franchised by the cities and had to pay a fee for this privilege and often were forced to do street maintenance on the entire street not just on the area of their tracks, also the fare structure was regulated and fare increases were hard to come by even when revenues fell short of needs. When bus companies started to compete, they got free use of these streets and were also free of much of the regulation. During the depression years of the '30s revenues decline even more since folks were either out of work entirely or working for smaller wages, at the same time many of these transit systems were unionized and started having to pay higher wages. The period of WW2 was golden for these systems as ridership increased greatly but wage and price controls again thwarted any rationalization of the fare structure, remember too that while wages couldn't be increased there was a lot of labor shortages and the way to deal with that was to increase benefits such as healthcare, longer vacations, etc. rather than pay. By the end of the war the systems were often a pile of junk due to limited maintenance and heavy use of the war years and the neglect of the 20s and 30s. At this time GM and Firestone started to buy up many systems and convert them to bus operation.
Yes. You are correct. Also, in 1934-5 FDR had a law passed that effectively closed down most inter-urban and trolley systems. The feeling in those days, as expressed in public journals, was that the emerging freeways and bigger buses would solve most problems. I suggest you look up plans by Frank Lloyd Wright for a coast-to-coast low-density suburb with lots of personal gyrocopters in use.
Oh, the GM Firestone thing dealt with the California Red Car Lines. Rider usage was declining, and there were no politicians who wanted to do anything about the decline, which GM took advantage of by replacing Red Cars with buses.
low key waiting for this channel to blow up
Car based transportation implies the existence of car cringe transportation
Superb info Alan as we all know our transportation system is poor to say the least. Nice look man.
Aero FPV thanks, and at least we live in the Northeast where it does exist ha.
I'd really like to find out a good place to find facts about just how much dosh has been invested into roads over the last century compared to rail. There's something lacking when I ever talk to people who think money is wasted on rail because "it doesn't turn a profit" and "even with more money, rail ridership is still so low." And I think what that is, is a lack of understanding that rail and roads are not on an equal footing to begin with. Roads return on investment *because* we have already had so many years and dollars of _previous investment._ Of *course* rail can't compete with roads if you've been putting money into making better, bigger, and more roads for decades and giving short shrift to the competition. Someone's got a serious head start; new rail investment necessarily has to play catch-up and has to "make a profit" from the get-go. But I'd bet if you had the numbers in front of you, very few roads ever make a profit.
I feel like if I had some impressive and concrete comparisons, I could make that point in a way that only the most Boomer-mindset suburbanism diehard could ignore.
Er, you can get statistics and studies at major university libraries with colleges of engineering, and departments of economics and public administration.
Back in the 1800's, railroads received astonishing subsidies from state and federal sources, and into the early 60's the post office subsidized some passenger traffic by sorting mail in postal cars.
When ZIP code and mechanical sorting came about, they dropped the post office sorting cars.
Technically, you could re-introduce such cars with modern totally automated mail-sorting postal cars.
Erm uhhh umm er uh
Oh yeah let me just pop on down to the nearest university and do a bunch of research.
Car based? more like car cringe
I disagree with your dislike of car centered American cities.
I am from Europe so I have a good perspective of the other side of the spectrum and I fully prefer the wat American cities are build than the crowded European cities.
wrong
Not based
You like concrete deserts?
I think another factor for the rise of the car after WW II was appealing to the independent American spirit. The age-old spirit that drove Americans to expand West was personified in these new automobiles, that could take their owner anywhere they wanted to go, when they wanted to go. No longer was someone beholden to train schedules, or rail lines, or such.
Look at it this way, you had tens of thousands of American GIs coming home, who had probably moved around Europe in jeeps or trucks - when not on foot, that is. They weren't always beholden to train lines, schedules, and freight schedules. So when they came home, many of them wanted to continue to enjoy that freedom of movement.
Then again, just my take on the matter.
The Nazis saw what the US had done domestically (Eugenics) and were so inspired by it they just couldn't wait to replicate it back home, only this time on a larger and more destructive scale.
The US saw what the Nazis had done domestically (Autobahn) and were so inspired by it they just couldn't wait to replicate it back home, only this time on a larger and more destructive scale.
Life is full of these horrible ironies.
Cities at the time were very dirty, the smog was unbearable in many cases. One extreme case was the Great Smog of London. Heating was the main source of the smog at the time.
When the car was mass-produced and became affordable, it allowed people to escape from the cities to cleaner suburbs and still be able to work to the city center, where the city jobs were located, by commuting.
Housing in cities was also very expensive due to overcrowding and location values as well as pure speculation on land values, you could get "more" house for the same money in the suburbs. There you could raise your children in peace.
Statistics show that the percentage of those using trains is still decreasing compared to car usage and airplane usage.
A study of movies and magazines after WWI would show that automobiles were a very powerful force. You should watch old episodes of The Naked City and Playhouse 90 to sense why people fled from the cities.
Funny, the bike advocate groups here want more asphalt, especially for bike lanes. It's so much smoother, more durable than bricks that are constantly settling, and are the favourite place to put in new electricity cables, telephone cables, sewage... because they are so easily broken up...
But asphalt is usually black, I admit. Perhaps colouring the asphalt top layer is an option? They use it already extensively for cycle lanes in the Netherlands, I could see it work elsewhere, too...
The new street cars are cool because they are slammed like a 1949 Mercury hotrod. Lower that chassis, hid all the wheels and make the side panels, doors less noticeable, like the tram was floating on anti grav generators. Slammed looks cool but please do not chop those tops, we love our head room.
In that Detroit shot, if they take out the second lane on both sides and put in bike lanes, then that would be a nice street.
They need to figure out a way to tax bicyclists or charge them toll to pay for it.
@@kilobyte8321 think of it as an incentive to not kill the planet and to have a quieter (and safer) city
@@kilobyte8321 we already pay for the streets lmao. If we’re already paying for it, we deserve our lanes too!
@@dudeman4184 No you're not. Tax cyclists and start paying your fair share, deadbeats!
@@kilobyte8321 Bicycles will be taxed based on annual kilometers traveled. You will have to have an odometer and report your mileage annually in kilometers. The DoT will hire 80,000 additional inspectors to enforce this.
Good video. I look forward to future episodes!
This is great content. This is the youtube I like.
Maybe refer to the neglected pedestrians and bicycle users and compare with other countries.
Also the impact of low density housing and restrictive planning regulations in the USA.
Just to prevent misunderstanding: American cities weren't built for the automobile. They were bulldozed for it. Although now it's also being built for car with all the car-centric suburban wastelands and big box stores.
With freedom comes responsibility. You want to live "urban", you get what you ask for. The roads were not designed for that population and the politicians refused to update them over time.
Subscribed to your channel and hit bell button. Nice content, greetings from Russia.
Great Video! I live in Wichita KS and you are correct. There is no safe way to commute in Wichita. Cars have proven to be the most dangerous part of living in our cities, the stats are in. My niece and her best friend were hit by a truck 3 months ago and myself a few weeks ago. All families have been affected by car accidents. If you are outside a car, then you are in danger! If you are inside a car, then you are in danger! We have granted every last bit of public space in our cities, to the car. I believe history will someday reflect that mass adoption of the automobile was humanity's greatest mistake. It has and continues to kill millions of people, both those who use it and those who don't. It contributes to countless amounts of pollution, air land, and water, that has tipped off a mass extinction. We\they have developed our culture around the car, our belief system cannot see any other way and we are all heavily invested. Our cities economies are and were built by fossil fuels, (car juice). Over the years big petrol has infiltrated our governing systems, siphoning billions from tax payers to build car-centric infrastructure and even bailouts while CEO bonuses increase. Car Culture is toxic and unsustainable. Our cities are going broke because of the maintenance and upgrades needed to support this car-centricity. The weight is killing our Infrastructure (city) and the pollution is killing all life. Let us save the world by ditching the car. Micro mobility solves most of the issues humanity faces today. There are other ways to live, find the truth and lead with love.
You should do a piece on how the federal and state funding of transportation and stipulations attached to the money has caused this homogeneous build out across the nation. Causing cities to have very little control over their infrastructure. Also our government isn’t afraid to build bridges to nowhere but we won’t build public transit systems to nowhere
Actually, bridges to nowhere are rare. The problem is that people use cars every day, and are increasingly moving to lower density rural areas where passenger rail makes no sense.
I think I'm not first on this thing but, _"American cities wasn't built for cars, it was bulldozed for cars"_ thanks for attention.
my guess before watching - because capitalists have to be rich at the expense of the rest of humanity
Why is your year zero well into the Industrial Revolution? People settled the west without cars….and they didn’t build massive, dense urban centers. They traveled long distances from their homes, into the towns to trade and shop, often traveling hours or days by horse and wagon to do so. How is it a surprise that when available, those people replaced their horse and wagon with cars and as population grew there was infill housing between the town center and the settlements of people far outside the town center?
As a middle-age man who doesn't drive, my options for relocating were limited. Luckily, I recently was able to "make the jump" from NYC to a much smaller metro by being able to afford to live right in the City Center and rely on public transit.
I misread the title as "why are all US cars based?" LOL😆
Belgium did the same as in the US. Before WW2, they had the densest rail network of the world. After WW2 it only went downhill...
When you bring Bochum as a good example for car alternatives, you are in real trouble - because that's one of the most car-centric cities we have to offer (with the whole Ruhr area not much better).
yeah but Bochum is way way less car centric the most of the us
Bergen, Norway: ~70 bus lines, with varying levels of service, a light rail service that's being built out now, and a heavy rail station.
Population: ~270 000.
But this comparison is not fair, as Bergen is on the middle of the mountains, and so it's more difficult and expensive to build transit.
You know your title isn't correct, at least I hope you do, right?
Your cities WERE NOT BUILT FOR THE CAR. That fact doesn't register by most people in the whole of North America. Rail has always been the driving force. Like everywhere else in the world with a somewhat thriving economy, though Australia is the exception.
Cars are cool, but there are times that I wish I can just take the train without having to drive for hours to reach my destination. It’s fun once or often to drive along the twisty mountain passes, but getting stuck in traffic on a 12-lane highway spanning a football field wide is really frustrating.
Detroit Big 3, but the biggest culprit is General Motors aka GM, ofc.
*Why was America “horse centric” before widespread use of cars?*
The music at 0:05 is perfect because the trumpets sound like car horns at the start.
i don't live in germany i haven't even been there but according to my google earth knowledge bochum is not a good place for comparison because it is in the middle of the biggest metropolitan area (ruhr) in germany.
Because most of the people who work in a city live in the suburbs
Car based? More like car cringe ☠️
Noice!
I am German, and needed a while for finding out, "Bohom" is supposed to mean "Bochum".
This is an older video, but yes it was my mistake not to pronounce it correctly
the reason why about 60% of people in nyc or 16% of people in manhattan have a car is because it is so inconvenient and expensive to maintain. people end up using the subway here.
is 60% a good thing or bad thing
@@yukko_parra for the Usa its good
@@TheStarswearee wait now i think about it...
that is also good for sydney
(most, if not all families have a car)
When mentioning Bochum in a comparison, you have to take into account what Bochum actually is.
It's located in the Ruhr Valley, a strip of cities close by another. It's essentially a big agglomeration, where one city/town ends, the next one begins. Also, the Ruhr Valley was large a coal mining and heavy industry area. Therefore, the cash and demand were there. Besides of the heavy industries, cars were another branch of the economy after WW2 with plenty of employees. For example, Opel had a factory in Bochum.
The reason why Bochum got an underground light rail in the first place was due to an autocentric urban planning policy. The cars were Nr. 1, the leading doctrines were "car-friendly city" and "free ride for free citizens".
Conventional trams were seen as a relic and as an unnecessary obstacle for the car traffic, which needed to be removed from the streets.
In the 60s, a big project was started to replace the old trams by new, preferably underground, light rails in the entire metropolitan area between the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. The public transit was supposed to be moved underground to make more space for cars on the streets. This was fueled by a new act which enabled co-funding of any rail-bound public transport project replacing conventional street-bound trams by the federal government. The funding rates were reaching up to 90% of the total costs.
Because of this, most of the formerly big and dense tram networks were scrapped, but they couldn't be adequately replaced by light rail, not even remotely. Only a fraction of the initially planned lines were build, the total project was simply too big and too expensive. What was once abandoned, didn't come back again. The Rhine-Ruhr area once had hundreds of kilometers of interneconnected tramways, essentially forming one big network. What exists nowadays are just tiny and sad remains of something that was once great.
In 1989, after the fall of the Wall and the German reunification, the funds for light rails replacing trams were cut. Neither could the construction of the once planned new and big light rail network be continued, nor did the counties have enough funds to maintain existing tunnels.
Also, the former heavy industry is dead by now, coal is no more, factories, steelworks and smithies were closing one after another and the cities are broke, which also adds to the problem. They are trying to help themselves by focusing on tourism and modern branches of the economy, but it will surely take some time until the decline will be overcome.
Back to the topic, nowadays, the tunnels have 30, 40, 50 years and need maintenance, but the cities like Bochum cannot afford it.
Some other cities, like the neighboring Essen, started planing new, convential tram lines serving the same traffic corridors as the underground light rails.
That's because it's cheaper, both to build and to maintain, more accessible (think low floor trams and no necessity to go several meters down to reach the platform), a higher perceived safety (underground stations are often considered as less safe and bearing a potentially higher risk of getting in contact with criminality), faster to build, can connect larger areas much better than subways thanks to the smaller station distance and lower station build costs and much more.
New city districts can get a quick and high capacity transit connection being built much faster than it would be in the case of an underground line.
Also, trams can help reshaping urban landscapes and revitalizing city districts which in such former industrial cities were often dying a horrible death due to cars and big malls leading to the demise of smaller shops and little interest of people to spend their time in public spaces which were full of life decades ago.
The Ruhr Valley is pretty much Germany's version of the Rust Belt but smaller than the US
I think it's not only about they need car because they don't have public transportation, it's even about culture of "proper man" who must have a car. Here in Europe, older poeople have this mentality too, I am Czech, so I am used to live with trains and trams, but old people consider me not a real man because I am 30 and I still don't have a car and they don't understand that it's not about money, I can have a car, but I don't need it, so why put half of my salary to car? I see like car people live, they really spend too much money for their cars, they very often have even 2 or 3 cars in one family because man has a car, wife has a car and kids must have car too after 18 years old and they constantly complain that they can't afford vacation or electricity is too expensive or something, while me, without car, can go for 2 vacations per year by airplane and I can stay in real hotel, that's just because I don't pay stupid car. People think that tickets for trains or public transportation generaly are expensive, but it looks like that only for first look, when you calculate all costs connected to your car.....let's say that it's like 3 or 4 time more than people pay for trains per year and people with cars don't even own those cars, they permanently pay leasing for their entire lives, while I am completely free, when I lose job or something, I don't have to pay anything, just a rent of some apartment and food, they live in constant fear from not having enough of money for their leasings and mortages while I can save money for my pension.
I hope that our planned fast trains will be finally reality soon, I am waiting for that since my childhood, but now, it looks like they will really build it, finally. But even standard 160 km/h in train is very fast, if it's really going that speed, which is unfortunately that often, that's why we need completely new tracks, because it's overloaded.
When I travel to bigger cities in surrounding countries, I always go by train in 1st class with restaurant wagon, people think that I am stupid because they can be there faster by car, but I will have a lunch, beer or coffee, available toilet or I can just sleep, while they are in traffic jams for hours.
That`s would be very interesting video about history of US rail network and companies - maybe, even long like feature film.
Have you ever thought about it? =)
A lot of folks, including my parents, were essentially forced to move into the suburbs by corrupt city governments, lousy public schools, crime, and filth. It's still there. Today the transportation problem isn't folks getting into the city to work or shop or party, rather the suburb they live in is on the other side of the city than the suburb they work in. Yeah, the business left as well. Transit went from the trolley lines people wanted, to using busses because the cities charged the trolley lines franchise fees and other costs for their tracks on city streets. Bus lines got away free. As folks left the always late and always overcrowded bus for the comfort of their car, the bus lines died and the cities took them over, so now routes and service are no longer related to revenue and the traffic needs that represents, but rather various social goals that reduce transit use even further. Europeans live in their cities for the most part and the cities are generally clean with good transit, mostly based on tram lines and subways. Urban schools are good, crime is under control, and the garbage is collected. Unlike NYC and LA and SanFran, and Chicago. As a reformed city planner, I realize that the 'BIG MOVE BACK INTO THE CITIES' just isn't going to happen any time soon, cities just need to clean up their act and do the right thing.
Yep. Cities are litteral garbage. Much rather would live in a clean suburb.
No one wants to do a "big move back into the cities". Their litteral hellholes and no one wants to do it.
Cities are only good for the oppurtunity they provide. other than that, its litterally just another circle of hell.
@@honkhonk8009 and so are the suburbs
i didn't realise the cbd was so bad in most cities
in sydney, I'd love going out to the cbd to have a fun time...
i didn't think it was not advised in other cities...
the more you know
@@anchorbubba @Honk Honk and so is the country side. Basically everywhere in the US except where The Rich (TM) live
At the same time, the Cold War was in full swing, and with it came a constant strategic need to decentralize U.S. infrastructure to prevent sabotage. It's subtle, but everywhere you look you will see public buildings and transportation designed to operate even when disconnected from the grid and/or built to take a carpet bombing to the face. It's why the internet was designed to work with any two random computers and someone who knew how to connect them, why old telephone stations are built like bunkers, and why cars, despite being less cost effective than trains, eventually won out. The U.S. military understood that a highway was harder to shut down with a bomb than a railroad (thanks to extensive WW2 testing), as each car could drive around the hole, which would be easier to fill in to begin with, or take another route, even one that barely existed at all. For a nation facing an existential threat, cars were the lifeblood that wouldn't get blocked by blowing a few key stations.
Also, when you mentioned the shift away from cars and back to trains in the 90s, you know what else happened in that decade? The USSR broke up, and the strategy implemented against them was no longer needed.
Actually, while sabotage by Soviet operatives armed with suitcase nukes was a real threat, up until the mid-1960's the main threat to U.S. cities came from Soviet long-range bombers armed with Nagasaki-type atom bombs.
Regrettably, this threat still exists. North Korea, ad ran are threats, and there still are suitcase nukes and suitcase anthrax and chemical warfare bombs.
@@franzzrilich9041 I wasn't talking about suitcase nukes, or nukes in general, at all, and I'm not sure where you got that from. When I said bomb, I was thinking a few sticks of dynamite, something that would mangle a railroad track and put a crater in a road but not cause widespread devastation. Small, conventional explosives, in the right place, detonated at the right time, could utterly paralyze a heavily centralized country, allowing for it's enemies to launch their nuclear arsenal without getting attacked in turn. It's a way to get around Mutually Assured Destruction.
Nukes are the flashy stuff, the weapons that everyone talks about, but they are not the meat of the conflict. The real fighting took place in the shadows, the political backrooms, and the hearts and minds of the people. Being decentralized makes you better able to survive that kind of conflict, as every hidden blow struck can only do so much.
Edit: There's actually a highway near my house that demonstrates my point perfectly. Most of the time, there's no traffic, but when a crash occurs it'll back up for miles. Despite that, however, the traffic does not stop. The crash rarely covers all four lanes, so each individual car can go to the lane that isn't currently blocked. Or, more creatively, get up onto the shoulder, take the nearest exit, and use the back roads to bypass the crash entirely. It's slow, but it still functions even as the road is cleared.
Train crashes are far less common, but if one does the entire rail is out of commission for days. In addition, it's frequently the only rail going in that direction, so if you're headed that way you're out of luck unless you want to take a massive detour. And if that crash happens in the middle of a track switching junction, the entire region can be knocked offline. Trains, for all their wonderful efficiency, are oh so easy to break, and when a malicious party might break them on purpose, the smart choice is to go with something more redundant.
@@Quantumironturtle I am old enough to remember that people were moving--in part--from cities because of the threat of Soviet bombers with nuclear bombs, and the response in Cleveland with multiple red-and-white radar domes and Nike missile interceptors tipped with nukes that would detonate over Lake Erie.
Even in our suburb we had a NORAD microwave relay tower the size of a skyscraper to relay orders from Washington to Nebraska.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Press ran maps showing a double chain of microwave towers every twenty miles going from Washington to Omaha, and interconnecting lines of towers going north to south between the east-west lines.
Then a fantastically-deep bomb-proof concrete bunker was built by Western Electric, in Medina County, to intercept several buried, cross-country NORAD communication cables.
I was a Civil Defense Cadet, and eventually moved to an isolated small town in Ohio to go to college at, only to find that Bowling Green, Ohio was a prepared site for one of eleven regional national headquarters in the event the cities were destroyed.
Later, as a technical writer, I got into one of several multi-year studies about what might happen if a war broke out with the Soviet Union.
We were told scenarios that were similar to what we see, today, in Ukraine; The Soviets having poor logistical support and badly-
designed, badly-built tanks.
Also, several defected former Soviet officers told us about the suitcase nukes.
Civil Defense told us that there were no plans to heroically dig out the urban ruins--the decision was first raised in WWII. We were shown lots of footage of German and British cities.
So, when you said a "few bombs," I thought you were being poetically under-stated. I should point out that a lot of U.S. underground infrastructure would stop functioning in a nuclear war.
A friend and wife recently left Boston, where he had taught for several decades, for Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where they live in a large log cabin with standard and fall-back utilities.
@@Quantumironturtle Because of my background as a former military technical writer and having lived through the early years of the Cold War, I had presumed you were intentionally raising the topic of WMD sabotage attacks. From a logistical POV, WMD would make more sense. After the Cold War ended, the Russians told us they had at least 80+ suitcase nukes in one collection, which collection had been dispersed throughout the U.S..
@@franzzrilich9041 I see. That is quite a lot of hands on experience. I am not old enough to remember the war directly, so a lot of what I know about it comes from the book "The Ugly American," a brutal critique of the utter failure of America's espionage and diplomatic corps when compared to the USSR. Written as a series of short stories, it shows their spies, diplomats, and propaganda artists running circles around ours throughout Southeast Asia and Africa, thanks to being better trained, more driven, and not so consumed by their own egos they can't understand the locals perspective. One that stands out is an incident where American foreign aid rice was being stamped with labels saying, "Gifted by the USSR," but since it was in the local language, which none of the Americans could read, they had no idea.
I thought that translated into a general failure of our counter espionage as a whole, thus making it easy for them to wreak havoc on our back lines, to the point that if they hadn't folded under economic pressure they probably would have won. They might still win, since their propaganda machine is now self perpetuating and fueling a major political faction 30+ years later.
In truth, I think we mostly agree here, and are looking at different parts of the bigger picture. You focused on the economic side, me on the covert side. In any case, my main point relative to the video was that America using cars is partially/primarily a military decision, not an economic one, so any arguments for trains based on the economy are going to fall flat, since that's not why we did that.
Consumerism is the reason that america exist.
2:33 When you realize that 2x2 rail infrastructure has 2-3 times the capacity as this monstrosity and uses only a third of the space.
Bear in mind that if you plan to build a 125-mph passenger rail line from Cleveland to Cincinnati through Columbus, that your right of way will be reqired to be verrrry wide, due to noise complaints the Interstates get.
Why are US... Money, its always money
You glance over the problem the railroads had. A big problem for the NE railroads was the requirement to provide commuter services that were costly to operate, produced little revenue, and either used expensive rail time on tracks needed for profitable freight operations or required that little used lines be kept open only for commuter use. Likewise long distance trains operated at low passenger levels on routes that simply couldn't compete with airlines. It might be noted that both Penn Station and Grand Central paid very significant real estate taxes to NYC while the tracks out to the suburbs did the same for these locations. A laugh that I have is that the New Haven in one of its communities was pestered to clean up its rather derelict station to some of its former glory, it did so and promptly had an unpleasant visit from the tax assessor. Following this the RR sent out the wrecking ball and promptly replaced it with one in a house trailer on wheels, not subject to tax. Notice also that almost every major rail corridor is paralleled by an interstate highway or turnpike. All of these, like the airports, are paid for with public funds while the RRs have to maintain their own track, signals, etc. Yes, they are paid for with taxes on fuel, license fees, and other charges but there is no multimillion dollar upfront expense to build the line in the first place. You sell services and from that revenue you pay to use the facility, you don't build the facility and hope they come.
Conrail was more than a little shaky at first, it had to deal with a lot of long term neglect on the lines it had, it had to decide relatively quickly as to what to keep and what to close and remember that it had to coordinate more than a half dozen separate lines into one system where each had different computer systems, rate structures, signal systems, union agreements, the list goes on and on. Rather amazingly it was quite successful and eventually even became moderately profitable. Eventually it was sold to two very strong railway systems that are generally well managed and solvent. Amtrak is another issue, its map is largely created by congress basically designed to run through as many congressional districts as possible to win needed support there so we see cho-chos running in places where the train crew frequently outnumbers the passengers, some trains lose hundreds of dollars per rider. Most of its routes run on private freight railways and it pays a per mile rental for track rights but congress demanded that railroads give preference to pass. trains and there is a penalty for any delays. The only line that makes any money is the NE corridor and yes that probably covers operating cost but does not cover capital costs or needed repairs and improvements in track system, structures, or signaling. The rail lines it is operating on were laid out mostly before the Civil War reflecting a time when 30 mph was considered fast, it can never achieve true high speed operation on this line but hey, two hours NY to DC ain't that bad. A lot of high speed bragging is about how high you can piss on the fence, not about serious issues that really attract riders. Worldwide I don't know of any regular trains or train systems that are profitable, both the French TGV and the Japanese Bullets are heavily subsidized by the state but our congress only nickels and dimes Amtrak, just enough to keep it cho-choing along. By the way, I am a train fan and have been a rider on NE corridor many times, rode commuter trains into DC for many years. Rode the Broadway Limited, the Capital, the Coast Starlight, and almost every narrow gauge in the US. I've ridden the Eurostar, the TGV, the Italian HS line and the train over the River Kwai in Thailand. Oh, and the wine train in CA! There is nothing quite equal to having dinner in a train dining car moving along at 60 mph in beautiful country. did that on the Super Chief. International First Class on the old Pan Am and any dinner on the old Cunard QE2 do come very close.
Meanwhile me traveling in cormftable suburban tram to my sub-urb house
Same problem in Canada but we have double the transit ridership then US and better service still very car dependent we have a big downtown highway! In Toronto horrible separates waterfront from downtown
Robert Moses 😡😡😡
The biggest problem I see is that Amtrak was set up as a single passenger rail company for the whole of the 'lower 48'. A country like Japan, albeit smaller, has their passenger network broken up among six companies, and their rail network actually WORKS. I'm thinking that if Amtrak were to be broken up into 7-8 regional companies (Conrail still overseeing freight) then each company could be freed up to focus on their own sector of America, and not have to worry about what is happening thousands of miles away.
Of course, this would take an Act of Congress, and I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. (Not to mention that politicians will no longer have those juicy multi-hundred million dollar subsidies to make themselves look good to voters at the next photo-op.)
The short answer to this question is that America is sparsely populated so there is no need to build dense settlements. Americans also like privacy and huge houses like you said in the video. But I think the major cities still could have much better public transportation. It's just terrible even in places like NYC and Boston where it is very dense.
No it's not moron, less than a fifth of us live in rural areas, the rest of us are city slickers. I can almost guarantee you haven't left civilization recently
I think its because cars are able to get to more destinations. Trains are very limited with their destinations.
then get bus lines, taxi lines, and/or get an uber
Well, that wasn't an issue when train tracks in the United States were literally everywhere. Now much of them tracks are gone, replaced with roads.
@@alicorn3924 expensive
@@rallycobra5738 the benefits outweigh the cost, mainly the thing about efficiency since you usually have more people in busses than cars
@@alicorn3924 yeah but cars are better they give you more personal freedom and while i agree that we need good public transportation cars should be what most strive to use
Amtrak is the only company that can loose money on liquor devices.
I live in Wichita, Kansas. It is hell for anyone who would require a halfway decent public transit system, and even worse for someone who appreciates good urban planning
Car based? More like car cringe!
It is an incredibly interesting subject. It might be the most crucial aspect of the 20th century. It is impossible to even scratch the surface with a 10 minute video or a few posts.
From talking to many conservative Americans, I also heard sentiment along the lines of, "Ew! I don't wanna live in the city and ride public transit, because that's what poor people do! I, as a responsible American, live in the suburbs, own a car, and drive it to work every day!" And these are the same people that now shout, "I love working from home because now I can stay in my suburb safely away from everything, including ethnic cuisine, public transit, and racial diversity, that makes me uncomfortable and I don't have to drive an hour into the city to go to work!"
When I was using public transportation, I had to dress up like a character from the movie Serpico, in order to not be killed by locals. I also had very long hair and beard.
i live in wichita and can confirm the bus lines. at least we got new buses this year