In movies I often see cars used for long distance travel and not trains. I can’t imagine having to always drive for a long time everytime I need to commute long distances. Sorry for the shallow question, I’ve never been to the USA.
In: Technology
1st, you got to understand is the US is very big. Up until the 20th century, normal people just didn’t travel that much. Industries were willing to invest in railways, but that’s cuz they made profit from The increased mobility. For the average US citizen, there just wasn’t really much need, so there was no call for tax dollars to be spent on public infrastructure like that.
Turn the century and during the inner war period, there was a lot of movement towards creating better road connections, but That was mainly a military investment: in case of war the military could already take over and use existing freight train lines so they wanted to add better road connection to augment that ability. Then it all really blew up after world war II with the interstate highway project, which again was a major military investment during the Cold war. Highway regulations, like bridge strength road width minimum underpass clearance ect, all of these were dictated by the military for their needs. The US military still bases a lot of it’s new technology around being able to use the US highway system.
So now you’ve got all these roads you put down from military defense. But they’re not being used for military defense, so use them for civilian needs. You’ve got a booming economy and a huge automotive industry; corporation can make a lot more money selling everyone a car, so they’re going to lobby against building a robust public transit system.
It’s an incredibly simplistic version of some of the major factors that led to this situation
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