[shereadsthenews]

I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”

[baroffoos]

I have noticed the same thing just in general society unrelated to Americans. When you propose an alternative that works 95% of the time people will find that edge case where it doesn't work and refuse to acknowledge the solution.

A similar related event was when stop lights got converted to LEDs. In some areas in some times of the year there would be snow that covers up the light which now no longer runs hot enough to melt it. News at the time sensationalized this issue making it seem like the LED stop lights were bad despite the obvious solution being to just put a heater on the light to run in those areas on those few days where it is needed.

When people suggest getting to work by bike they don't expect you to only ever use a bike for the rest of your life but to cut out the needless car trips that could be done by bike and leave the car until it is needed. The money you save on not using a car multiple times a day would easily pay for a taxi in the rare case you need it.

[RobLach]

All these statements are nonsense.

There are train lines from Miami to Seattle, and the US rail system is the most efficient in the world for metrics it cares about: $/ton and on-time.

Miami to Seattle is ~4400km, which would be 11 hours at 400 km/h without making any stops, or 4 hours longer than a flight.

Many cities were built with automobiles as assumed modes of transport, so walking with groceries would be silly as you're expected to purchase more than you can carry from a more centralized store. The tradeoff for being reliant on a car is the cost of goods are lower in bulk. People walk home with groceries all the time in cities built before the automotive age. For example, everyone walks home with groceries in Manhattan.

People cycle all the time in rain/snow in northern US cycling friendly cities. Actually the best cycling cities in the US include Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and New York, which all have very rainy/snowy seasons.

No one is building hyperloops seriously. They're fun projects for bored wealth.

[michaelt]

  I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

Have you, by any chance, seen most of these conversations happening on the internet?

It's my experience that you can say something 99% of people agree with, the 99% don't feel the need to reply with their support. But the 1% who disagree do feel the need to say so. And forums will validate this, with upvotes for well-reasoned discussion (i.e. disagreement), and downvotes for 'me too' comments.

If you posted "The bald eagle is a majestic creature" I'd get downvoted for replying "This! You tell 'em" but I'd get upvoted for replying "Bald eagles are much smaller than wedge-tailed eagles, and they have a call so sickly film makers use the call of the red tailed hawk instead"

[_2d30]

> I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.

[keerthiko]

Although I disagree with GP's original phrasing, the parent comment: > If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”

...describes a very real experience they had at least anecdotal experience with, which I too can relate to (getting those responses to those suggestions from Americans). I have some hypotheses for these, but honestly they have also been beaten to death by transit advocates elsewhere.