281–290 of 374 posts
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Right as an American this reads like "American who's never been to large Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing etc..
I'm with you. Tokyo is incredible. It's the only large city I've ever been to where I left thinking, "I'd love to live there." Transportation in Japan is a whole other level compared to my experiences in Germany and Austria. I've never been to England, though, so can't make that comparison.
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The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more similar to the hundred year plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail feasibility studies at several points in his career across decades. London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as…
It's a pretty extensive system and the pretty new Elizabeth Line is great. But if you take something like the Piccadilly Line in from the airport, you probably shouldn't have a lot of luggage because a lot of stations just have stairs and platforms are often at a significant offset from the underground cars. (The double decker busses also work pretty well although they're not generally my default.)
I live in a big continental European city that also has a start-up hub. The companies here are also small, creative, solving problems, but don't necessarily aim for an exit and growth at all costs, many of them want to create a sustainable business solving a need that people have. I think, to the economist, these are just SMEs and a start-up is about making money, an IPO, an exit, the unicorns. And of course London a…
14 years ago now: https://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
Of course, this culture is less helpful for individuals and cities, who have to live with the volatility.
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Trains are not an efficient use of time for travel within the US. The US is huge. If you were take a 300mph (nearing 500kph) train (which would make it the fastest train in the world), it would be OVER an 8 hour trip from New York to LA. (Again, about 2500 miles or 4000k) Even in some of the densest areas, the trip times end up being pretty long due to distances: dc to New York? 600 kilometers or almost 400 miles.
This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country isn’t what determines where people go. It’s not like trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the union. Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with parking minimums, have much more to do with it. Here’s a video that explores the topic if you’re curious https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
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Trains are not an efficient use of time for travel within the US. The US is huge. If you were take a 300mph (nearing 500kph) train (which would make it the fastest train in the world), it would be OVER an 8 hour trip from New York to LA. (Again, about 2500 miles or 4000k) Even in some of the densest areas, the trip times end up being pretty long due to distances: dc to New York? 600 kilometers or almost 400 miles.
This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country isn’t what determines where people go. It’s not like trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the union. Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with parking minimums, have much more to do with it. Here’s a video that explores the topic if you’re curious https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
Most people ARE interested in coast to coast travel. It is called flyover country for a reason.
There are a few exceptions like the Baltimore corridor, or the San Francisco peninsula, and these are in fact serviced by good trains.
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I've lived in and visted many other cities in Europe. Public transport is often much cheaper than London, but there's few examples where I'd really say it was /better/. Can you think of an example?
Oslo and Madrid come to mind. For the worst than london, The Rome underground is so sparse, it not really usefull. Paris is dense, chaotic and overcrowded.
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This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country isn’t what determines where people go. It’s not like trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the union. Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with parking minimums, have much more to do with it. Here’s a video that explores the topic if you’re curious https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
It is highly relevant to the question asked. What you’re addressing is how cities should be built.
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Trains are not an efficient use of time for travel within the US. The US is huge. If you were take a 300mph (nearing 500kph) train (which would make it the fastest train in the world), it would be OVER an 8 hour trip from New York to LA. (Again, about 2500 miles or 4000k) Even in some of the densest areas, the trip times end up being pretty long due to distances: dc to New York? 600 kilometers or almost 400 miles.
I see your point, but consider this: getting to and through a major airport is a huge pain the ass. Trains also tend to take you to city centers more often than airports, which almost always need to be a significant distance from anything interesting due to the noise. Let's take a hypothetical scenario: - 5 hours flight time (average for NY and LA), 2 hours on each side to get to and from the airport to the actual ci…
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It's pretty good in NYC. I heard it's nice in Boston too.
Its good in NYC for american standards. For european standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.
I cant speak to all this, but as an American doing a lot of work in London, wow transportation is incredibly great. Shockingly impressive. Traveling to London, and getting around London, and doing a lot of meetings in a small trip, is easier than anywhere in the US now because of how beautifully their transit system works (despite occasional delays which can be expected.) The rollout of the Elizabeth Line from Heathr…
Thin air? It was delivered 3 years late and cost £5bn more than it should have. While projects like HS2 to the North are scaled back. The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects. I have a dog in this fight as I'm quite close to the public transport industry in the North and it's pretty disheartening to see politicans use us as some sort of "policy win" and then never follow through w…