this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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I live in a state with what would be considered nationally to have very robust public transit—and it fucking sucks. After years of relying on it and on a bike to get around I just want to own a car.
It’s very much baked into American culture but there is no reality where the us builds trains or runs busses out to national parks or every single rural town. Cars are an unfortunate necessity for this country.
When I say good, I mean good by the rest of the world's standards, not good by the US' standards. I'm talking 3-5 minute peak frequencies between even medium cities (NL) or even 30 minute frequencies to small towns (I want to say the swiss even have this to small towns). I'm talking protected bike paths that don't put your life on the line, not bike lanes that are considered good because they actually exist at all. I mean cities that have been been reformed (this one will take a while, I know) so that they're human-centric and it would never occur to you that you need a car.
It sucks, in all likelihood, because the US has spent 70 years making policy choices that puts cars over all other considerations. I find it difficult to express to you how big that gap is; it's something I've come to appreciate via exchange students. We're so ridiculously car dependent that there's all kinds of infra that we ought to have that just seems unreasonable from where we are now. That's not something you can walk back overnight, but it can be done.
Most public transit in my state goes where you don't want to go and takes 3 times as long to get there. I remember a while back when the tax renewal came up there was a story in the local paper about a woman who was using the bus to get to work and it took 2 hours for what was a 15 minute drive even in traffic.