this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Airplanes, long distance busses, or trains?
Cars a good for long distance travel to the middle of nowhere. Which I personally rarely do, if I need to, I carpool or rent a car.
I live in the middle of nowhere, I am basically obligated to own a car.
Circumstances have always demanded that I have one. Whether work demands, or simply being able to travel away from my house at all.
If I lived and worked in a city, at a job that didn't demand a vehicle, I wouldn't have one.
what if your local community and the trek into town was bikeable and/or had a bus route to a robust rail network
I would be utterly amazed that they decided to send a whole assed bus through my <10k population town, when even the taxis and Uber drivers won't bother, and our police presence is one officer in a vehicle that drives through town twice a day.
Which isn't to mention that pretty much every home here has 3+ cars in the driveway.... Aka, zero demand (or close enough to not make it viable even stopping in the town). The nearest "city" with more than 10k population is at least a 15 minute drive down country roads with little if any shoulder; so overhauling the routes to make them bike friendly for the handful of people that actually own a bike who live out here, and not only can ride that far, but are able to go that distance in a reasonable timeframe.....
To be blunt, I'd wonder what the local government is smoking, because there's so few people who would either want, or benefit from, such an infrastructure project that would likely go into the tens of millions in costs, if not more.
I get what you're saying, but my town could triple in population and I still don't think transit would make sense economically.
Forget buses, there are smaller towns that have 15 minute train service, for an average ridership of <1/day on their unmanned platform. Here's a random line: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyohashi_Railroad_Atsumi_Line
On trains in the US-
I have to be across the country soon, and looked into the best ways to get there. I axed airplanes due to a fear of flying at this time.
A car would've gotten me there in 50 hours, the train takes 75. I went with the train bc I would be exhausted driving for 50 hours. In the US, trains are much less time efficient for cross country travel 9 times out of 10.
(Amtrak is a private company and not owned by the government. i wonder why this is.... /s)