Microblog Memes

High speed trains should actually not be the primary focus of the US when it commes to public transport, city/suburban systems are more important.

Don't get me wrong, the US absolutely needs high speed rail, but without a well functioning local public transport system at both ends you end up with something that conceptually is more like an airport than a european train station.

Without local public transport, travelers still need to go by car to and from the endpoints, just like a lot of airports, this means that stations will require a lot of expensive parking, that is essentially wasted space.

Now, the US will probably allways be car dependant to a higher degree than Europe, this is due to how cities have been built, unchecked urban sprawl with little mixed use zones with few central spots makes it hard to build good metro and bus lines, where do you put the stations, where will people connect?

I won't pretend to have the answers, I absolutely don't, but I know that regardless of how public transport is established in new and existing neighbourhoods there will be angry people, but lets just make sure that the happy people outnumber them

Heh. Their palanquin or litter would drop them off and go sit in an alley or street somewhere, probably. Like how carriages in later centuries would.

Well?

Where did they?

I think Chicago is the only other US city that comes close, their transit is fantastic!

At the same time, those towns are hella compact, such that 90+% of residents can walk to pretty much any retailer or store or other resource within 15-20 minutes. Yes, some people (farmers) live outside of town and there are some American-style housing in clumps outside of the town, but everyone mostly lives in tight clusters.

And even the tiny towns well away from other larger towns have busses that move people between towns on a fairly regular If infrequent basis (15-20 minutes apart). Only the larger population centres can afford to have public transport that comes every 5 minutes or so.

You also have to understand that in North America, a “significant separation between towns” is something like 100+km. In Germany, that term qualifies with as little as a 10km distance. It’s rare to find any population centre that is more than 20km away from its nearest neighbour.

I live in France, about 30 minutes from a major city. There is transit, but it's not good, and has very few stops near where I live. Grocery shopping has to be done by car or bike as there aren't any shops in the village. European cities are extremely well served by transit, but outside the metropolitan areas, cars are still king.

I enjoy when someone shows up to prove the meme true

Of course there is some parking, but there is no need for a dedicated car park for this market. Many of these people will have come on foot or by public transport, that isn't a lie at all. Public transport in Germany isn't exactly a model to follow imo (I was surprised, I expected it to be down to an art tbh), but like most of Europe the cities are walkable and at least have some form of public transport system.

There is no parking area just for the christmas market though, which is what the american assumed

I'd say that's the Striezelmarkt in Dresden (Germany's oldest Christmas market over 580 years old) but the big ones kinda all look like that.

By the way that's what they have to say about the posts topic on their website: "best accessibility: local public transport, on foot and by bike"

I believe that is Dresden.