[Xichekolas]

Public transport is a chicken and egg problem in the US. Since everything we have is so spread out, we need a very comprehensive system before anyone could use it for anything. A train or bus system is worthless if it doesn't get you within a few blocks of where you need to go. In the US we seem to think that public transportation means a train from the airport to the stadium, stopping at a mall in between.

So you won't get any riders until the system goes everywhere decently frequently. And you won't make any money without any riders. Since no one wants to fund a public transport system that isn't self-sustaining, nothing ever gets built, or worse, a 'trial system' gets built to 'test demand' ... and of course since it only goes from the airport to the stadium with a stop at the mall, it's a dismal failure.

The only way it's going to happen is a massive federal/state cooperative infrastructure program like the Interstate Highway System built under Eisenhower. And even then, with suburban lifestyle, it'd be too hard to cover all that area.

[wumi]

which is why we'll keep driving cars in the US until it makes sense not to, which will be several more dollars/ gallon.

[kingkongrevenge]

Public transport is simply not viable at the densities common in American suburbia. Can't be done. So it's not quite chicken and egg.

More likely that a whole lot of suburbia is going to become ghetto cheap and people will crowd into existing, older areas.

> The only way it's going to happen is a massive federal/state cooperative infrastructure program like the Interstate Highway System built under Eisenhower.

Totally unnecessary. The whole problem is from government in the first place. Sell the highways off to the states and privatize AMTRAK. Within three years the highways will be crumbling potholed messes and private investment will be pouring into rail. The amount of money the government dumps into the highway system is massive. It is hugely inefficient compared to rail. That's why highways were fairly limited before the feds misallocated resources to them.

[Xichekolas]

Yeah I agree about the suburbia problem, but I still maintain the reason that public transport has such a bad name in most of the US is because the only contact we have with it is these 'trial projects' that don't actually go anywhere and so seem totally useless. My argument was that if you want people to actually try something new, it has to be useful to them, so you have to build out a whole system on faith (faith that the public will use it). This is probably why bus systems are more common than rail. Routes are more flexible and you are less committed to mistakes since you can change them as you learn where demand is.

> The amount of money the government dumps into the highway system is massive.

And imagine if all that money were instead dumped into rail transport? (Hello Europe.) I don't think privatizing rail would lead to much innovation regarding public transport. Rail is vastly more efficient than highways (over long distances), but the only place that private companies profit is in freight, and they are already doing that. I think you could have private companies own/operate the passenger trains themselves, but the actual track would have to be built out by someone with billions to do it (on total faith that it will someday actually pay off). Maybe Warren Buffet will get in on that, but an easy solution is to spend some of that crazy highway money on it.

[ijkl]

> It is hugely inefficient compared to rail.

Good point.

Compare moving a shipping container worth of stuff by tractor-trailer on rubber wheels on pavement (including dealing with traffic) to moving it on steel rails. Not even in the same ballpark.