r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Dante Alighieri]

I kind of assumed that states in the US more or less resembled countries and you can generally live without leaving your state outside of vacations. Did I assume this wrong?

Yeah but we also can just drive wherever the fuck we want. We're more spread out here in the US.

 

[Dimension Sniper]

Distances which aren't necessarily short, but also not particularly long.

Americans drive those. Like I don't even consider flying anywhere until the drive becomes multiple days, and even then if gas and hotels are cheaper than a plane ticket I'll still drive. My family used to go to Emerald Isle, NC on vacation, and the 11 hour drive to get there was just part of the trip. I do site visits for my projects at work and I'll often have to drive 4-5 hours to get there if the distance isn't considered far enough for the client to spend money on a plane ticket. I do not mind it in the slightest as I genuinely enjoy driving, and it's typically the most economical way to get around by leaps and bounds. I think a lot of the disconnect stems from the fact that Europeans and Americans tend to have a radically different idea of what constitutes reasonable driving distance.

I kind of assumed that states in the US more or less resembled countries and you can generally live without leaving your state outside of vacations. Did I assume this wrong?

No, this is correct, but a lot of people will travel between states for work. As previously mentioned part of my job involves doing site inspections for projects all over the country, and clients always want us to travel as efficiently (timewise) as possible, which is typically by plane if you're going more than one state away. I've been on what were basically commuter flights that got me from Ohio to New Jersey and back all in one day. Even a trip to TX or Florida is like a 4-5 hour flight (though you'll probably have a connection). I'd spend at least twice as long on a train.

 

[quaawaa]

I honestly just straight up disagree with this.

Your complaints aren’t really specific to flying.

Every time I've flown by plane you are stuck in an extremely tiny seat, cramped right next to a sweaty dude.

In the US we have A/C so people aren’t sweaty.

In all seriousness, try a normal airline and not an ULCC like RyanAir. The seats are similar to those in your train picture, though with less legroom.

You try to fall asleep to make the trip go faster but every single time turbulence wakes you up or some random yell by a passenger.

Turbulence is pretty rare these days because pilots avoid bad weather instead of flying through it. The only times I can recall experiencing turbulence is when there’s a storm over the airport.

Then a baby starts crying, then a kid starts going apeshit, then you hear a muslim family loudly arguing

There are annoying passengers on the train as well, but the high prices do filter out some trash. Though if the EU gets their way and bans short haul flights, all of those annoying people will be on the train.

, the food comes in and it looks less appetizing than the slop fed to pigs at a farm. You eat the meat only to realize it is raw and icecold, you awkwardly let your plate sit.

For short haul flights there’s no need for food. Just eat before you leave. Even transcontinental first class food sucks compared to a restaurant.

Then when it arrives you want to get out as soon as possible but you have to wait at a standstill for 50 minutes while the staff does God knows what,

Outside of taxiing and waiting for other passengers to move, I’ve never spent time waiting to deplane.

then you get on a cramped bus which is never properly airconditioned whenever you are going to a sunny country

Imagine still using stands in 2026 and not having jet bridges.

There are problems with flying today (e.g. security, delays) but none of them are exclusive to planes. All it will take is one large terrorist attack on a train and then train stations will have just as much security as airports. China already has checkpoints for their HSR.

 

[Mikoyan]

Why would we?

That's the thing the fuckcars people are trying to do, make it so painful through government action that you have to do what they want.

I kind of assumed that states in the US more or less resembled countries and you can generally live without leaving your state outside of vacations. Did I assume this wrong?

No, you didn't assume wrong.

Weirdly this however is one of the core demographics of long distance trains in the US. Retirees traveling back and forth to 'the big city' because they feel the doctors at Big City University Healthcare will give them a .5% better chance of fixing their Boneitis.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

I do not mind it in the slightest as I genuinely enjoy driving, and it's typically the most economical way to get around by leaps and bounds. I think a lot of the disconnect stems from the fact that Europeans and Americans tend to have a radically different idea of what constitutes reasonable driving distance.

It also has to do with the fact that Euros have gone out of their way to gimp car ownership and make driving far less economical than it is in North America. They have higher gas taxes, higher registration fees, (generally) more rigorous vehicle inspections, higher licensing requirements, and much stricter and more draconian traffic laws than we do.

In all seriousness, try a normal airline and not an ULCC like RyanAir. The seats are similar to those in your train picture, though with less legroom.

And that's not to mention that you're only in the plane for a couple hours at a time, going from Chicago to Dallas only takes about three and a half hours for reference, so even if the flight is on the longer side it's typically over quickly.

I kind of assumed that states in the US more or less resembled countries and you can generally live without leaving your state outside of vacations. Did I assume this wrong?

Depends on the state. Wisconsin, for instance, is the 25th largest state by land area, so dead set in the middle. It's roughly the size of Greece. However Wisconsin also only has a population of roughly six million people throughout the entire state. There's a couple of tourist areas sure, but the largest city is Milwaukee with a population of 577,000. This is roughly one third the population of Budapest. The entire middle, southern, western, and northern regions of the state are very sparsely populated, some of those places can have a pop density of two people per square mile. Nearly the entire state population is spread along the eastern border primarily in the southeastern and northeastern corners, with one small city near the center and another couple small cities on the western border. And when I say small cities I'm talking populations of 15,000-70,000 people.

So yes, the United States is very large. And most of the individual states are of consummate size to European countries. But the population density is generally more akin to Russia than it is to anywhere in Western Europe.

Picture for scale:

Weirdly this however is one of the core demographics of long distance trains in the US. Retirees traveling back and forth to 'the big city' because they feel the doctors at Big City University Healthcare will give them a .5% better chance of fixing their Boneitis.

And that's assuming they don't have a Private Pilot's License and just fly themselves there by renting a Cessna. GA was huge in North America back in the sixties through the eighties since it was relatively affordable and a lot of those old guys still have their licenses assuming they've kept up with their med certs.

Minor edits for spelling and grammar.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Compare to North America, whose population has more than quadrupled in the last ~100 years or so. Demand for passenger rail in North America started petering out in the 50s and 60s simply because people just weren't taking the train. It didn't make sense for the network to continue expanding once everyone had a car and flying became more affordable. Even if you save a few bucks taking the train, planes are just faster and more price competitive than you may assume. It also helps that for planes you don't need any actual ground infrastructure. It's way easier to just pave a giant slabs of asphalt in each city and fly there instead of laying down thousands of miles of dedicated passenger tracks between every single major population centre that need to be consistently maintained.

The demand for passenger rail was already on the decline by the 1930s, which also corresponds to passenger air travel. Many airports were built by the 1930s, and with innovations in planes they "took off" in the 1960s which replaced trains as the de facto long distance travel option.

But to go on to @FPTMIU's post...

To me it just kinda feels like
>Man this store sure is lacking in apples
>BUT THE ORANGES ARE RIGHT THERE DUDE

It all comes down to what exactly you are asking for. The actual method is wildly different, but it still fulfills the same purpose of what is trying to be achieved. This is different than comparing highways to passenger rail because they still serve significantly different parts of the population.

I honestly just straight up disagree with this. Every time I've flown by plane you are stuck in a extremely tiny seat, cramped right next to a sweaty dude. You try to fall asleep to make the trip go faster but every single time turbulence wakes you up or some random yell by a passenger. Then a baby starts crying, then a kid starts going apeshit, then you hear a muslim family loudly arguing, the food comes in and it looks less appetizing than the slop fed to pigs at a farm. You eat the meat only to realize it is raw and icecold, you awkwardly let your plate sit. Then when it arrives you want to get out as soon as possible but you have to wait at a standstill for 50 minutes while the staff does God knows what, then you get on a cramped bus which is never properly airconditioned whenever you are going to a sunny country

I've had very very different experiences. Granted, this is subjective and luck of the draw, and in the last 10 years I've only gone on three flights, so flights tend to be memorable experiences, good or bad. I've figured that if you fly regularly like my brother does (and goes on international flights, so Europe included) that these are going to be anomalies. (I can ask my brother, if you like). Frankly, I've found a good book works well (laptops are too bulky). Never been on a long-haul flight that includes real food, but United often has stroopwafels available and soft drinks. This is all from a relatively inexpensive line like United's coach.

Also when it comes to the aforementioned buses, the shuttles I mentioned are definitely air-conditioned. @quaawaa is right--those people will be on the trains if the EU kills shorter flights like parts of France did.

Also also it's never anywhere close to 50 minutes to disembark unless there's something seriously wrong. Yeah you'll still wait for the passengers in the front and it feels longer when the last time you peed was 800 miles away and you're regretting getting that fourth beer, but 50 minutes, come on dude.

Well, no. US actually used to have a pretty decent train network which was from what I recall mostly abandoned or turned into highways.

The train network still mostly exists, it just does freight, which was the real profit center for railroads even in the "golden age". The road network nowadays takes a lot of pressure off of the trains by having trucks carry a lot of the dry goods and smaller loads, but trains are still useful in bulk deliveries (and almost universally, raw product—the general rule for factories is "trains in, trucks out". They weren't replaced with highways in the same way you think of them being. In some of those cases, the old rail line was used for expanding or rerouting an existing highway...not in the Katy Freeway sense where they used the obsolete line as right of way, but examples like how US-290 west of Hempstead uses an abandoned rail line to expand the roadway, a result of Southern Pacific (pretty sure it was Southern Pacific) abandoning the line soon before. Some of the old line is on private property now.

The particular railroad here was the direct connection from Austin to Houston, but Southern Pacific found that for freight there were other connections that worked better (less twisty/hilly) and the potential for passenger was squeezed out between a decent highway between Austin and Houston (still not a freeway, especially with Austin's issues, but more parts have been upgraded over the years) and the airport connection between Houston and Austin.

The issue is that, as previously mentioned, no european is going from Amsterdam to Moscow on train (Then again in the current political climate, not by plane either ), when people talk about taking the train, they mean Lelystad to Rotterdam, Dresden to Berlin, Milan to Venice. Distances which aren't necessarily short, but also not particularly long. You're really looking at this in the completely wrong way. I mean, the common favorite country of train autists is Japan where you have basically 0 long distance trips made.

I kind of assumed that states in the US more or less resembled countries and you can generally live without leaving your state outside of vacations. Did I assume this wrong?

I mean it really depends, the cities in the Northeast are tightly integrated, there are metropolitan areas there (and smaller ones in the rest of the U.S.) that cross state lines, and of course logistics require free travel between states. That's not even counting the sheer size of some states (Texas, California and Florida lengthwise, most states widthwise). State lines can be in weird places, there's some that will cut through neighborhoods, some that are on opposite sides of the roads, or maybe even parking lots. On the major highways, there's usually a big sign and a nearby "welcome center", which is a fancier rest area that has an air-conditioned building with restrooms, tourist information, and vending machines. (This is different than a "travel center", which is a fancier name for a truck stop, or a "rest area", a mostly-dying relic that just has some parking and picnic tables).

 

[quaawaa]

And that's assuming they don't have a Private Pilot's License and just fly themselves there by renting a Cessna. GA was huge in North America back in the sixties through the eighties since it was relatively affordable and a lot of those old guys still have their licenses assuming they've kept up with their med certs.

Fuck the FAA and the lawyers for making small planes go from costing as much as a car to costing as much as a house. Similar thing happened to boats; they also used to be affordable and now a small fishing boat is $500k. I'm sure urbanists would love for cars to be similarly expensive.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I wanted to attach the pictures of 290 and the railroad like I was referring to in my previous post. The one on the top is from around 2019, the one on the bottom is from 1959. Note the old lead-up to the underpass still existing, and the other country roads.





I should also mention that a few miles to the north the railroad is still intact as a spur servicing Blue Bell Creameries.

When it comes to Katy Freeway, that line was abandoned in the 1980s partly due to a merger, and with the merger the line became irrelevant. The nearest city with a junction, Sealy, is accessed by Houston-Rosenberg-Sealy, and by that time the line had been 100% freight for a few decades.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

I mean it really depends, the cities in the Northeast are tightly integrated, there are metropolitan areas there (and smaller ones in the rest of the U.S.) that cross state lines, and of course logistics require free travel between states. That's not even counting the sheer size of some states (Texas, California and Florida lengthwise, most states widthwise). State lines can be in weird places, there's some that will cut through neighborhoods, some that are on opposite sides of the roads, or maybe even parking lots. On the major highways, there's usually a big sign and a nearby "welcome center", which is a fancier rest area that has an air-conditioned building with restrooms, tourist information, and vending machines. (This is different than a "travel center", which is a fancier name for a truck stop, or a "rest area", a mostly-dying relic that just has some parking and picnic tables).

Hell, there are a couple cities in the northeast that stretch across national borders. Half the town is in the US and half the town is in Canada.

 

[Baraka Obama]

It's 13 hours slower than driving.

So I've done this train. Well the Montreal to Halifax part, which is the VIA Ocean line.

The whole thing is more of a ride than a form of transportation, you have to want to be on the train. We got a sleeper cab and had 3 really great meals in the dining car and there are some cool views. I'd do it again when I don't have young kids. It's expensive but it's fun, do one way and get a flight back it's well worth it.

And on paper its slower than driving but that long a drive you'd want to stop for the night for a hotel anyway which are also expensive. It's not uncommon to take 2 days to do the same run to Halifax, and it can be a miserable drive.

Even better is the VIA Canadian line from Toronto to Vancouver which takes 4 days!

 

[Mikoyan]

Fuck the FAA and the lawyers for making small planes go from costing as much as a car to costing as much as a house. Similar thing happened to boats; they also used to be affordable and now a small fishing boat is $500k. I'm sure urbanists would love for cars to be similarly expensive.

It's terrifying, really. GA used to be an accessable hobby. Not now! And it's totally what they want for cars. Go back to the days where only aristos could play with automobiles.

Hell, there are a couple cities in the northeast that stretch across national borders. Half the town is in the US and half the town is in Canada.

#annexwindsor

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Go back to the days where only aristos could play with automobiles.

And even THAT'S a primarily European thing. Automobiles had become accessible to the common man in the United States by the 1910s, primarily due to the Model T.

 

[DavidS877]

Fuck the FAA and the lawyers for making small planes go from costing as much as a car to costing as much as a house.

Have you tried not being poor?

There is some new stuff in the sub-$200k market from the light sport standards. Admittedly those are all 2 seats and somewhat slow. Also not useful if you want to fly through weather, but if you're a casual flyer you probably don't want to fly in weather anyway.

 

[Mikoyan]

Even better is the VIA Canadian line from Toronto to Vancouver which takes 4 days!

The Canadian sits in stark contrast as almost a success. It is a clear example (along with the Aussie LD services) of knowing what it wants to be when it grows up: An expensive 'cruise train' to see Western Canada, selling the top end tickets at up to ten grand a pop and barely paying any attention to pleb tier coach customers. Amtrak cannot do this because it would upset the political applecart around them where they require rural support to even exist. The service to Halifax has similar aspirations but it's more balanced.

And even THAT'S a primarily European thing. Automobiles had become accessible to the common man in the United States by the 1910s, primarily due to the Model T.

Indeed. But they want everything to be 'european'.

 

[BulkForceFive]

Fuck the FAA and the lawyers for making small planes go from costing as much as a car to costing as much as a house. Similar thing happened to boats; they also used to be affordable and now a small fishing boat is $500k. I'm sure urbanists would love for cars to be similarly expensive.

Boats are still affordable, it's the upkeep that kills you. Pick up a copy of Wooden Boat magazine and look at the F/S ads in the back, sort out the obvious firewood piles from the decent boats and you can find 30ft vintage cabin cruisers for 60k.

Then go and price out diesel at 5gal/hr, weekly mooring fees for a 30ft boat, the cost of having it hauled on a slipway to scrape the hull and replace cutlass bearings and anodes...

 

[quaawaa]

you can find 30ft vintage cabin cruisers for 60k.

In the old days, you could buy one new for the equivalent of that.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Boats are still affordable, it's the upkeep that kills you. Pick up a copy of Wooden Boat magazine and look at the F/S ads in the back, sort out the obvious firewood piles from the decent boats and you can find 30ft vintage cabin cruisers for 60k.

Then go and price out diesel at 5gal/hr, weekly mooring fees for a 30ft boat, the cost of having it hauled on a slipway to scrape the hull and replace cutlass bearings and anodes...

In the old days, you could buy one new for the equivalent of that.

A boat is a giant hole in the water into which you continuously throw money.

 

[BulkForceFive]

In the old days, you could buy one new for the equivalent of that.

If it's been well-kept it doesn't really matter.

I'm basing this on an actual ad I saw for a 32ft fly bridge cruiser, twin Ford V-8s, absolutely immaculate one-family boat from the 60's... it was 30 grand USD several years ago. So I wondered what the catch was, and talking to people who sell boats and run marinas I found out that the yearly cost of ownership for that boat would be in the thousands of dollars. An average family could afford it but at the cost of having very little fun money to spend elsewhere.

 

[quaawaa]

If it's been well-kept it doesn't really matter.

That's just cope and eventually you'll run out of used boats from the boom era. It's sad to have to pay what used to be new prices for a decades-old example. The high running costs are partly because the industry has shrunk; not only were boats a lot cheaper to buy back in the day, they were also cheaper to run.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

That's just cope and eventually you'll run out of used boats from the boom era. It's sad to have to pay what used to be new prices for a decades-old example. The high running costs are partly because the industry has shrunk; not only were boats a lot cheaper to buy back in the day, they were also cheaper to run.

Regulations were also looser and harder to enforce, and taxes were significantly lower.