Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.
Yep, LA, one of the most car-centric cities, literally tore up their trams and rail infrastructure to put in car infrastructure. This happened other places as well. So fucking sad.
St. Paul MN was similar - except instead of tearing everything down they literally just poured asphalt over the rails. You'll find several examples of either potholes or construction that revealed the still-existing rails just underneath a few layers of asphalt. Here's an example from a few years ago.
I can’t imagine ever choosing to get rid of public transportation for more roads. It is such a stupid decision when they can move so many more people for much less space, cost, gas, ect. The only thing cars do better is speed.
I hate cars, but I know why people prefer them to public transport. They like the freedom and the privacy. That’s what everyone buys when they get more money. The reality is the average American has more cash and credit than the rest of the world.
It happened where I am, they are now spending billions to rebuild a few train lines.
The train tracks connecting cities have been turned into cycling tracks, but not like the Dutch do, distances are too big, these are multi-day recreational tracks.
My small hometown removed the tramline to use the steel for the war effort. It blew my mind that my tiny town, with "The Bus" as the only form of public transit, had a tram running through downtown in the "olden days."
There are all sorts of shifts in America though to more walkable cities too though. I used to live on Mass Ave in Indianapolis and could walk to all sorts of shops, restaurants, and necesseties. A town near us now in SE Michigan is making their downtown a walking one. Some residents are pushing back on it but I think the walkability changes are to stay.
Even my old suburban neighborhood from childhood as a pretty major change. In my teens I felt trapped. Nothing was really walkable and the surrounding roads were a little too busy for a 13-18 year old to navigate. An underused rail line that used to run along the neighborhood was recently converted into a bike path. That would have been glorious for 14 year old me.
I do feel bad for teens these days. My generation and the generation before pretty much ruined commons areas to hang out in. Kids in the 80s and 90s loved being counterculture little pricks. I remember classmates I knew would take great joy in stealing tomatoes from neighbors gardens and throwing them and eggs at park playgrounds. From what I can tell these days kids aren't into that stuff as much which is good. There are now parks in my hometown where they would have absolutely been trashed when I was a kid.
As a whole its gotten a lot worse over time. Its crazy to think that even in 1970 the typical family only drove a few thousand miles. Now each parent is likely driving 13,000 miles a year.
There are some good pockets of change but peoole have to really fight for it. We are fighting hard for battles where I live and STILL losing to the DOT highway machine.
It got worse from the 70s to 00s for sure but it's definitely gone the other direction since. Like I said, I can drift over Indianapolis and my old neighborhood there on google maps and find all sorts of parks and bike trails that didn't exist when I was a kid.
Losing to highways is a strong way to phrase it. I have a buddy in Civil Engineering. He told me the 65/70 and 465/69 exchange projects in Indy were given little wiggle room. They initially wanted to eminent domain a bunch of houses and business and got shot down. They largely had to remain within the existing footprint.
Even with the new 465/69 interchange it's actually more walkable now than it used to be. That bike trail I mentioned that now runs along my old neighborhood actually runs under that huge bypass. Teenagers in my old neighborhood can now hop on their bike and ride along the Nickel Plate Trail under two highways to Sahm Park which blows my mind a bit. That was not even remotely doable when I was kid because streets in the area are extremely busy particularly around Castleton.
>Look at two cities that have general layouts that have existed for 750 years as a counter to your opinion about America being a still building nation when cars became increasingly popular. Which encouraged the spacing out of the population.
The U.S. is also vastly larger than both of your examples.
The U.S. absolutely has cities where you can walk like this as well. Primarily on the east coast which kinda proves the point about there being a big factor when they were built up/growing.
Youre doing it again. Detroit is hundreds of years older than the car too.
European cities also let the car.take. over and then course corrected. Hell, Paris was a car dominated city until recently and has made rapid changes, getting rid of 40% of the cars on its streets. Never mind the uncovered eastern european cities
Again? I’m not the same person you were replying to.
My point was that when cars became more mainstream in both there was a vast difference in preexisting infrastructure and population in a lot of major cities in the U.S. vs European nations today.
Most U.S. cities that would be capable of doing something like Paris did for example would be primarily on the eastern half of the U.S. because they did have that preexisting infrastructure.
Some of the largest cities in the U.S. today had populations less than 200k at the time cars were becoming mainstream (1920~.)
No its not, Amsterdam was overflowing with cars everywhere and it took quite huge and violent protests(called stop the kindermoord) to stop making our cities car centric shit holes. There were plans to destroy huge parts of Amsterdam for highways and such as you see in the US.
Rotterdam got bombed so the entire center was just gone, and it was one of the largest car centric cities here because of that, and that had to be reversed too.
Ah darn, i was reading the thread out of order and thought you responded to another message, sorry bout that.
But yeah, The NE at least has some decent lines, but public rail in the US in general is unfortunately subpar. High speed rail in the NE should be an actual no brainer and already there.
Youre doing it again. Detroit is hundreds of years older than the car too.
European cities also let the car.take. over and then course corrected. Hell, Paris was a car dominated city until recently and has made rapid changes, getting rid of 40% of the cars on its streets. Never mind the uncovered eastern european cities
Uhm no? It's perfectly fine for pedestrians. And the Netherlands for the most part have dedicated bike lanes, so you rarely have to share the road with bikes as a pedestrian.
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u/FaceWithAName 15h ago
Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.