Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in :

OK your're writing from a European perspective.

You do realize most of our states are bigger than most of your
countries?

How does that make efficient rail services impossible?

Also, cities here are a bit different too.

In some ways yes, in others not so much. I don't dispute that a rail
network has to be adapted to the local conditions.

It is all "city" from Santa Monica to San Bernardino, for example,
but they are about 60 miles apart.

Europe has several "cities" of comparable sizes, for example Randstad,
the Ruhr conurbation, and some of the large metropolis like Paris,
London, Moscow come close.

Both my wife and I commute over 50 miles one way. My next door
neighbor commutes 60.

So?

But we can shift the weight a lot if we want
to. Private cars can become mostly leisure toys.

Not with 30 to 60 mile commutes being common for most places.

Why not?

Regards

Because the US isn't a large number of people going to a small number
of places, it is small numbers of people going to a huge number of
places.

There are no major hub sites.

The highway system is a giant web with an enourmous number of branches
and more than just freeways.

As a matter of fact, both the wife and I could take public transportation
to work. The only problem is the trip would be about 4 hours each way.

To work, public transportation has to go everywhere the public wants
to go, which means it has to stop a lot.

And again, there are virtually zero hub points where you could go
quickly.

There is a reason the freeways have on/off ramps at about a mile apart.

Los Angeles does have light rail along the few high traffic corridors
where it makes some sort of sense.

For most of California, and most of the country, such a system makes
no sense.

Just because something works in one place does not mean it will work
in another.

This is the problem with all the one-size-fits-all thinking by
people that are going to solve all the worlds problems if only
their pet scheme were implemented.

Public transportation works in the New York area, many parts of
the east coast, and in small areas of the west coast.

It doesn't in the majority of the country other than local, urban
buses.

Heavy rail works to get bulk cargo between major hubs. It doesn't
work to get all the stuff that needs to be transported everywhere.

Solar power works pretty well in Arizona, not for crap in North
Dakota.

Tidal power generation doesn't work in Colorado, though it might
in Alaska.

The bottom line is if some system were economically practical, it
would already exist or someone would be working on building it.


--
Jim Pennino

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