[nathanaldensr]

Has the author of this article ever driven across the US? It takes days and days. The US is huge; it makes absolutely no sense to build mass transit connecting that many places where people live when it's so uneconomical. The US isn't China; the government can't just decree that something happen.

[Jensson]

The states along the coasts aren't huge (they are roughly like large European countries) and there isn't good public transit there either compared to the rest of the first world, and that is where most people live.

[Ekaros]

No one is really talking about connecting tiny places really faraway from each other. But cities in 1-6 hours drive of each other and sensible locations inside them clearly make very much sense to connect with public transit.

[onecommentman]

Unless almost everyone who wants to travel already owns a car which they and their family can quickly, safely and directly drive (with reasonable luggage) to the very doorstep of any given 1-6 hour destination. Which is the case in the US. Will be even more the case if cheap Chinese electric cars ever hit the shores. Makes very much less sense then.

[rsynnott]

San Francisco to LA is about a seven hour drive. It’s about 90 minutes flight, plus getting to the airport and getting through security in the airport and all the general airport-induced slowness. Given a top-quality conventional high-speed line (300km/h) it would be two hours (so in practice faster than the flight).

[shiroiushi]

Exactly. Most Americans have to commute long distances crossing multiple states. Daily commutes between places as far apart as Texas and Florida are common. Lots of people working in New York commute by car every day from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, and even Mississippi. There aren't any kind of clusters of people living together in the US, normally called "cities" in other countries, because Americans all live equally spaced apart across the continent, so that's why public transit can't work in the US.

[fragmede]

sarcasm aside, most of those have no business being called cities, as they don't have the density to support city services like buses or light rail, and should only be called big towns or suburban sprawl.