What I cannot understand is how so many of my fellow Americans actually like it this way. And I get that a lot of it is ignorance and status quo bias, but you don’t have to visit, or even know about, the places with great transportation infrastructure to know that ours sucks.
You’re only options to get anywhere are drive or fly and both suck and are expensive, uncomfortable and inconvenient. I mean, I’ve never visited any of the world’s great transportation areas. I’ve never experienced that first hand, but I’ve sure as hell driven around the US and I absolutely fucking hate it. Traffic, asshole drivers, crumbling infrastructure yet somehow also constant road construction, getting anywhere in this country is a pain in the ass.
What I cannot understand is how so many of my fellow Americans actually like it this way.
Racism.
Many Americans would rather die than have black people have nice things. If you build a good bus system, black people will use it. They won’t suffer for being “lesser” like they “deserve”.
That’s it. Conservatism demands out groups to punch down at.
Even the ones that aren’t specifically opposed to black people in their neighborhood, few and far between amongst that subset, would be against some other non WASP demographic even if it’s just the poor and unhoused
Traveled around the world a lot… The US isn’t anywhere near the best as you say. It’s also not the worst. It’s just heavily car oriented and fuck-everything-else oriented (except maybe air travel but… TSA).
I can say that living in a big city with mobile phone payments on every form of public transport, and a highly reliable on-time system that’s always clean and free of people you would worry about being alone with… Is a beautiful thing. And seriously reduces the friction for all kinds of things like…going to work. The countries like this usually don’t have much traffic and therefore deliveries and other legitimate uses of the road are frequently unobstructed. But on the other hand, these places can be extremely dense and the people live on top of each other.
There are many regions of the US denser than areas in europe with good transportation. People try to explain away the US system by pointing out a few low density areas and say “see these 3 big empty areas in the center? All these differences are necessary” but its sort of a outlier situation run amok. Most of the US IS comparable to europe or asia and we’ve once again let ourselves be content with “American Exceptionalism” by another name.
The reality is just the US developed much of its infrastructure (1940s-1960s) with car companies basically calling the shots during that era and a lot of places in the US still are struggling to overcome 60+ years of laws and budgets more or less written by the car manufacturers themselves after their WW2 high where their competitors overseas all got bombed to hell.
What I cannot understand is how so many of my fellow Americans actually like it this way. And I get that a lot of it is ignorance and status quo bias, but you don’t have to visit, or even know about, the places with great transportation infrastructure to know that ours sucks.
You’re only options to get anywhere are drive or fly and both suck and are expensive, uncomfortable and inconvenient. I mean, I’ve never visited any of the world’s great transportation areas. I’ve never experienced that first hand, but I’ve sure as hell driven around the US and I absolutely fucking hate it. Traffic, asshole drivers, crumbling infrastructure yet somehow also constant road construction, getting anywhere in this country is a pain in the ass.
Racism.
Many Americans would rather die than have black people have nice things. If you build a good bus system, black people will use it. They won’t suffer for being “lesser” like they “deserve”.
That’s it. Conservatism demands out groups to punch down at.
At which point do we just call it what it is, racism?
Even the ones that aren’t specifically opposed to black people in their neighborhood, few and far between amongst that subset, would be against some other non WASP demographic even if it’s just the poor and unhoused
Is it racism?
Narrator: It was racism.
Traveled around the world a lot… The US isn’t anywhere near the best as you say. It’s also not the worst. It’s just heavily car oriented and fuck-everything-else oriented (except maybe air travel but… TSA).
I can say that living in a big city with mobile phone payments on every form of public transport, and a highly reliable on-time system that’s always clean and free of people you would worry about being alone with… Is a beautiful thing. And seriously reduces the friction for all kinds of things like…going to work. The countries like this usually don’t have much traffic and therefore deliveries and other legitimate uses of the road are frequently unobstructed. But on the other hand, these places can be extremely dense and the people live on top of each other.
There are many regions of the US denser than areas in europe with good transportation. People try to explain away the US system by pointing out a few low density areas and say “see these 3 big empty areas in the center? All these differences are necessary” but its sort of a outlier situation run amok. Most of the US IS comparable to europe or asia and we’ve once again let ourselves be content with “American Exceptionalism” by another name.
The reality is just the US developed much of its infrastructure (1940s-1960s) with car companies basically calling the shots during that era and a lot of places in the US still are struggling to overcome 60+ years of laws and budgets more or less written by the car manufacturers themselves after their WW2 high where their competitors overseas all got bombed to hell.
The reality is the USA had public transport systems that were criminally dismantled by the car cartels.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a documentary.
“But what is the alternative? The state enacting laws preventing corporations to run amok? But that would be communism!”