[narcindin]

When blue states show me a viable public transportation network for a reasonable cost I will support them in my red state.

Consider the CA high speed rail a PoC for the nation. Would you endorse copying that model? Is Chicago increasing its ridership/coverage (honest question).

[willio58]

Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I think the U.S. so far has failed horribly on this front. My note about blue states was simply that they are the only ones pushing for public transport like this. But will we ever see CA high-speed rail that's cheap and useful? I'm not sure.

It's obvious that the real cost of things like highspeed rail come from environmental regulation and cost of land purchases from existing land owners. European & Asian countries have obviously figured out a way to streamline this process. They have more lax environmental restrictions and acquire land either through force or by never allowing people to purchase land outright (in the case of China I believe). I don't know if we want to go that far, but at a certain point we have to do something because riding around on congested aging highways everywhere is not the answer.

[generationP]

"Pushing for" is not a strategy. What I'm seeing in various blue US cities here is public transport falling into disuse in 2020, turning into a homeless encampment (often with the concomitant violence and theft) in 2021, and still not recovering in 2023. Philadelphia's SEPTA is still (2022) at half the 2019 ridership. It doesn't help that some lines got almost cancelled in 2020 (reduced to just a few trains per day), which likely caused a bunch of people to buy cars and not look back.