The fact that cars mathematically cannot scale with population is “so very minor”? Or that cars are the most expensive form of transportation? Or that cars require tons of parking and wide roads that lead to inefficient use of land, contributing to a housing crisis and ugly sprawl?
So what is a “major” problem? Ah right, walking a few blocks.
nowhere near where I live
Even the Netherlands or Japan have many places where only travel by car makes sense. We will always need some cars. Maybe your situation is like that. But your personal situation doesn’t dictate whether or not it makes sense for society to build a lot more trains, which is what we’re talking about.
Also, describing how much less convenient trains are for you presently than driving is kind of missing the point. Everyone already agrees that train lines don’t exist to service many places. We’re not talking about what exists now, but how things should change.
It’s pretty obvious that a single train full of passengers is more energy efficient than the same number of people driving a bunch of individual 4000 lb SUVs.
Cars are even more restricted in travel time. Unlike trains, which typically come multiple times an hour, car travel has to be planned around rush hour and gridlock.
Honestly, I don’t even know how we can be debating this. Car dependence is a dead end. Cars don’t scale because a linear increase in drivers requires a non-linear increase in surface area. Car dependence makes it impossible to meet our climate goals. These catastrophic failures are so much worse than needing to walk a few blocks. There are so many flaws that car people just fail refuse to see.
There are many places in the US with the density of Europe or Asia. And those are all the places trains are being built.
Not all liquid moving near the throat is drinking. Drowning, for example, isn’t drinking. It has to be ingested using swallowing muscles, etc. Molten lava would disintegrate the perimeter of your mouth and throat. That’s “drinking” like a shotgun to the face is “eating”.
Drinks tend to be drinkable.
Why not? It’s like saying, “Witches don’t exist, but if they did, it’s ridiculous to think that they can make love potions.” I would even go so far as to say leaving “shadows” behind is a standard part of rapture lore.
I guess I’m just a lot less confident about how rapture physics works than some folks.
In the reality where people can be raptured, what is logically incoherent about rapture causing slight discoloration of furniture? For me, if there’s difficulty in suspension of disbelief, it’s in the former part, not the latter.
What are you taking about? Plenty of intersections are green on left turn and straight at the same time.
“Left turn yield until (left arrow)”
Not arguing about what the actual traffic laws are. I am arguing that this is objectively confusing design. “Left turn yield on green (CIRCLE)” does not mean that left turn yields on green. It means, “when turning left, but the solid light is green, and the left turn arrow is not lit up, yield to oncoming traffic. But if the solid light is green and the left turn arrow is lit, then do not yield.” So you literally do not yield on green.
Sure you can just tell people to “please learn the road signs” no matter how terrible… or we can acknowledge that this is an asinine design. I have no idea why anyone would spend energy defending this.
I personally find this confusing. The sign reads “Left turn yield on green”, which implies that you yield when the arrow is lit. A sign that says “right lane stop on red” means stop when the light is red, not when it isn’t.
No urban designer or transportation expert thinks that cars scale with population. Talking about rural and small cities is the opposite of scaling with population. Car dependent big cities like LA or Houston have hellish traffic.
At least have a cursory look at the link I posted in my last comment. Cars play a huge role in bad land use. This is why they have an enormous effect on housing supply.
You seem to be lost. You made the point that walking from a train station to your final destination was some major problem. I’m not even sure what point you think your last paragraph is responding to. Yes America is bigger than a few blocks. So is Europe and China. So what?