[echelon]

European weather is still mild relative to the US. It will be so long as the Gulf Stream doesn't shut down.

Americans are fatter and less healthy.

Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard, play hard.")

Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer economy.)

We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our infrastructure. We might be able to put in a bike land here or there in a majorly dense city or two, but we're not changing all of this.

And more than anything else, America is fucking huge.

I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us. The proponents in the US trying to make it happen misunderstand the fundamental differences.

Just five years ago I would have said you were selling a monorail fantasy or sight to the blind to us. And an unfortunate few in the US were lapping it up as something we could actually do.

Now that self driving is finally arriving, what I'm saying is that our future is even brighter than most countries. We have the road infra to really make this magic.

I can wake up one day, make my coffee, hop into my car with my wife, and through no effort of my own, wind up at a mountain resort. No security checkpoints. No hassle packing. No screaming babies. We can listen to music, read, cuddle. It's our own space taking us wherever we want at complete and total leisure, affordably, comfortably, privately. We can even detour for food or whatever.

It's going to be pure magic. As big a revolution as the internet was.

[coryrc]

> I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us.

lol. You're what we call "carbrained".

Explain how the climate of the coastal West coast is unsuitable for year-round bicycling. Much of it is nicer than the Netherlands and has several times the population.

[LEDThereBeLight]

It’s not about the climate. Cities are just too big.

[kuschku]

That's because you're using planned economy principles for your cities.

Remove all zoning but for industrial zoning, and remove prop 13, like it is in most of Europe, and the invisible hand of the market will transform most of cities into medium-density mixed-use like in Europe, though in your case likely accomplished with 5-over-1s instead.

And with increased density, maybe you'd even have space for some public parks again.

[array_key_first]

Not big, sprawled - because of cars. In terms of population, most US cities are not very impressive.

[echelon]

You do realize most of the US doesn't live on the West coast, right?

Your sampling is skewed.

It's been freezing cold here and any destination within our major city you want to reach is 30+ minutes away by bike.

The "carbrained" insult is so stupid, btw. Once autonomous vehicles are commonplace you'll either come around or be complaining about it nonstop. Car usage is going to 2-10x.

[jclulow]

> Car usage is going to 2-10x.

What a bleak vision of the future.

[echelon]

It's beautiful.

Automated conveyance from front door to anywhere.

Perfectly comfortable, unscheduled, private.

I cannot fathom the bleak pessimistic perspective of wanting fixed trains and busses over this. Crying babies, rude people.

American transit sucks and it's not getting better. It's tolerable in cities like NYC, but even so it's a far cry from Asia. If you're not American, please don't project. We'll never have that here. We are not dense enough for it.

[Anamon]

I vote for the "bleak" interpretation.

The main problems with cars are not about the fuel they run on, or the level of automation. They're the space they occupy per passenger and duration of use, the mass they have to move around, the materials required to build them, tire particulates, and the danger they pose to other traffic participants. None of these are alleviated by the thing-du-jour the car industry presents as a solution to all the problems on any given day. The real issues are all endemic to the concept of a car in the first place.

And, maybe, if more people stopped seeing random encounters with some of their co-humans as just an annoying moment of having to deal with icky other people, we'd make some progress on our loneliness, aggravation and political polarisation problems.