It’s awful and geographically most urbanized areas in the US are built this way. Thank god for the small areas that were built before cars were invented. I live in one and while we still have huge negative impacts from car infrastructure at least walking and biking are viable alternatives here, even if the system doesn’t put them first.
On the flip side, one of the UKs major transport problems is that we were the first to industrialise. So although we have rail networks all over the place, they worm through literally thousands and thousands of small bridges and tunnels designed in the Victorian era. So not only can the speed not increase (at least not without buying the surrounding land and straightening the track, crazy expensive) adding any physical dimension to the trains would basically mean re-digging tons of tunnels and lifting bridges, which would also make the cost crazy.
Meanwhile Germany is zooming about in double decked trains like a boss…
It’s actually possible to fly to Europe cheaper than some UK train tickets (due to demand)
Meanwhile, cycling in London is actually getting pleasant in some parts. And it’s seriously satisfying to zip past cars congested for miles. The tube is 24hr as is a large part of the bus network.
We had the same issues here but then made them much worse by canceling virtually all rail lines and even tearing up a lot of the track in many places. So same situation with air travel almost always being cheaper and faster and on top of that rail travel only connects major cities and can’t connect to smaller cities and towns at all.
It’s awful and geographically most urbanized areas in the US are built this way. Thank god for the small areas that were built before cars were invented. I live in one and while we still have huge negative impacts from car infrastructure at least walking and biking are viable alternatives here, even if the system doesn’t put them first.
The US is truly a shithole country.
On the flip side, one of the UKs major transport problems is that we were the first to industrialise. So although we have rail networks all over the place, they worm through literally thousands and thousands of small bridges and tunnels designed in the Victorian era. So not only can the speed not increase (at least not without buying the surrounding land and straightening the track, crazy expensive) adding any physical dimension to the trains would basically mean re-digging tons of tunnels and lifting bridges, which would also make the cost crazy.
Meanwhile Germany is zooming about in double decked trains like a boss…
It’s actually possible to fly to Europe cheaper than some UK train tickets (due to demand)
Meanwhile, cycling in London is actually getting pleasant in some parts. And it’s seriously satisfying to zip past cars congested for miles. The tube is 24hr as is a large part of the bus network.
Your rail problem could be fixed if they were willing to invest in modernizing the system.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/kYfQx8NswT4AAAAd/kevin-spacey-really.gif
We had the same issues here but then made them much worse by canceling virtually all rail lines and even tearing up a lot of the track in many places. So same situation with air travel almost always being cheaper and faster and on top of that rail travel only connects major cities and can’t connect to smaller cities and towns at all.