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I love the idea of trains, and not because I'm some train loving dork (although I probably am). Let me blear, I don't want to ban cars - I want to do to cars what cars did to horses (everyone is allowed to own a horse, but most people don't have a need for one... of course, hobbyists are totally allowed to have a horse and participate in horse-related events, etc). Let me just give you a laundry list of things that suck right now:
- When you're driving, you can't do anything, you have to drive (and don't tell me about self-driving cars please)
- Cars are resource intensive - every car guzzles gas OR requires a mineral-intensive battery. They require heavy infrastructure (moderately dense charging ports/gas stations/etc), bla bla bla
- Car traffic is inherently prone to traffic jams - it's been modeled using Self-organized Criticality/sandpile model and surprise surprise, traffic jams are just a natural side-effect of car-based transport. (Hence why California has one billion highway lanes and you still waste hours on commute time)
- Somewhere between 30k and 40k people die in automobile-related deaths per year (Now I need a bit more data on this... but I feel trains are a shit-load safer, although their failures are more of a spectacle). This puts automobile-related deaths in at least the top 10 or 15 causes of death in the US.
- related to the commuting thing... cars are kind of slow (over moderate to long distance, probably averaging a little less than 60 mph), compared to a train that can even go 120 mph (imagine something going 250 mph - for reference, an airliner goes around 500 mph)
- ... building on this, say you have a great job offer, but it is one or two hundred miles away... and all you have is a car, greyhound, or slow-ass Amtrak, well, MOVING is a big demotivator for taking that job. What if it didn't take forever to get there, and you didn't have to worry about parking, traffic, and gas - you could just get there in half-an-hour?
- When you drive, you have to (A) worry about where to park, and (B) you have to consider how much you, say, drink (or imbibe in any other substance). If you're intoxicated, you shouldn't drive, and that might make your plans for the night... less fun.
- Cars are expensive - you have to pay for registration, gas, maintenance, insurance, parking, you have to buy the damn thing. Sheesh!
Now don't get me wrong - cars CAN be convenient. If you NEED to be somewhere at a SPECIFIC time (maybe catching a plane... although trains would highly reduce the frequency of needing a plane), then a car is great. They afford a flexibity. However, they don't need to be necessary. Obviously what I'm proposing is... high-speed rail, commuter rail, and a wonderful bus system. And in those places where this infrastructure wouldn't be as useful (say bumf*ck nowhere), keep your car! As I said, cars/trucks/whatever have their place, and if not every single one of America's 200 million or so adults are driving an automobile, most of the problems automobiles pose are gone.
Why Rail?
In my complaints above, I've kind of covered why rail would be great, but I'll be more direct. Pretty much all of the problems I outline are gone (and if you DO end up commuting by car, if the majority of people are on public transportation... then the traffic problem dissolves :). Now what problems does this directly solve?
- Social justice: A HUGE problem (which I outline in my history post) in inner city communities is that jobs are basically gone; the result is a vicious cycle, where people don't have enough wealth to get out, because they don't have jobs, and so on (there's more to it, but that's the basics). Well, here is a way to expand the radius of where one can work. This is not a SOLUTION, but it is part of a solution.
- Solving the "Housing Crisis": Imagine Mopolis and Broomberg are about 120 miles apart - about a two hour drive. The housing crisis happens because today, Mopolis is booming and Broomberg is out-of-fashion. Everyone wants and builds a house in Mopolis, the housing price goes up ("housing crisis" ahhhhhh) ... but then tomorrow, Broomberg is booming, and Mopolis is not. Now everyone wants and builds a house in Broomberg, and so the housing price goes up there... and there is a glut of houses in Mopolis. This REALLY sucks for people in Mopolis, because they have to (A) sell their house in Mopolis cheaper than they bought it (the price has collapsed now that everyone is trying to sell their Mopolis house), and (B) have to buy an over-priced house in Broomberg - this can be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wealth for families. Ahhh shit.
- But what if you could just take a 200 mph train from city A to city B? That's about a 40 minute ride! Well now there isn't really a "housing crisis", because people in city A can keep their house and work in city B... and this is great, because the tax base in city A doesn't evaporate! So even though city A isn't booming, it can still do alright. Furthermore, individuals don't have to lose tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in wealth, due to stupid real estate market dynamics. This also helps stop cities from suddenly dying (like what happened to Detroit).
- Lost money, Labor and life hours: Cars eat up an ass load of time. I really hate driving. You can't do anything while driving. You have to deal with parking. Bla bla bla. Well in this system, you don't have that. Go on the train, read a book, watch a movie on your phone, whatever. Also, since you get to work so much faster, workers have more time to live their lives. Imagine working 8 hours a day, sleeping 8 hours a day... and having a two hour commute (car). Now imagine you just have a one hour commute (train) - an extra hour for your hobby, sleep, doing nothing, cooking, hanging with friends and family. Now imagine you save thousands of dollars anually not paying for a car. Wow!
- The Environment: Cars (and airplanes) are terrible for the environment. Either you're burning gasoline, or you've got a battery with war minerals mined by small children. Ughhhh, please no. Give me a damn train.
The way this would work is (A) a high-speed rail (HSR) would take you long distance (think freeway travel). Connecting to the HSR stations are commuter rail networks, either for cities or multi-county areas, so you could then take the commuter train to whatever neighborhood you want to get to in a town/region. Then there would be (likely this would be more prevalent in cities than more sparse areas, where cars make more sense, but idk) a bus system, which circulates within a neighborhood. This gives infrastructure to get to wherever you need.
Furthermore, as cars would be less necessary, cities could be overhauled to be more pedestrian-and-bike-friendly; there could be rent-a-bike stations or whatever, giving you more "last mile" choices, if the bus isn't quite what you want. Hell, there's probably taxis too.
What's really nice is you have leg room while on the train, you are free to do other things while on the train (like not worry about colliding into other cars at 70 mph), you go faster than in a car, and it doesn't burn the environment like air travel and cars do.