A train can't take me to the beach. It can't take me camping away from civilization. It can't haul lumber from a hardware store so I can build a treehouse.
I love trains, but let's not pretend there is a perfect Venn diagram of overlap between what their use cases are.
Trains can take you to the beach and away from civilization. Build a station where you want to go. At one point trains were the most practical way to get to national parks.
How often are you building treehouses that you need to pay hundreds of dollars extra a month to justify the cost, versus a one-time delivery fee?
You must be an American, because plenty of trains exist to bring people to nature elsewhere. You know, when you drive a car to a nature place, you put it into a parking lot, then you are no longer in the car, right? Same works for trains.
Man I love this silly debate. The original comment just wanted to travel 500 miles to "somewhere" and most instances of "somewhere" that people travel to could be accessed by train.
Also no one has said that no one is allowed to drive ever again anywhere. I'm trying to be generous but the victim complex is crazy.
> but let's not pretend there is a perfect Venn diagram of overlap between what their use cases are.
I never said anything of the sort and I'm not pretending that at all. You're creating a strawman. The comment I was responding to said this:
> I'd love to get in my car and go to sleep for a couple of hours or read a book whilst it drives me somewhere. Imagine if it could even pull over and charge up without any kind of intervention too. You could get in your car, and get a full nights sleep whilst it drive you somewhere 500 miles away.
That's a train. Most instances of "somewhere" can be accessed by train. Or by a train to do the long miles and then other modes of transit once you're closer.
My overall stance is that there's a lot more overlap between why folks want a super expensive self-driving car and more robust public transit and better support for multi-modal transit. I've not pretended anything like you've claimed.
> Or by a train to do the long miles and then other modes of transit once you're closer
Of your many points in various posts, this is maybe the only point I'm really on board with. Amtrak already supports this, even. My car can drive me to the train and then the train can do the long haul, and at the other end my car will drive me off the train and to the destination.
Still need waaaay more rail routes than we have now, though, so this is a dream for a century from now, not something in my lifetime.
This isn’t strictly directed at you, but I’m saddened that HN is immediately ready to dream big when it comes to solving hard problems and making the world a better place in spaces like AI, crypto, and technology in general. But suddenly shuts down over things as simple as trains, buses, and bike lanes.
There’s plenty of examples of guerrilla urbanism that I think align closely to the hacker ethos. Even more these problems are very solvable and can net huge gains in metrics without having to “dream for a century”.
> waaaaay more rail routes
It’s actually much simpler, Amtrak just needs right of way along with some other straight forward regulations to help balance freight and transit on America’s railroads.
Amtrak has also been doing great at incremental expansion and brining back (or increasing!) ridership just in the 5 years since the pandemic in a number of areas like Chicago to Milwaukee, and in the PNW.
The defeatist attitude isn’t what I expect from HN. You already found the best piece of actionable advice which is to look for incremental ways you can adjust your life to be different. My wife and I hardly drive anymore. Most of our trips: her work, groceries, restaurants, most leisure activities, etc are now by bike. We live in the suburbs too, a full 10 miles (20-30min drive and across an interstate) from the city’s downtown.
Cars are only perceived as necessary in America bc it is assumed that they are. There are many small and safe ways to shed the car dependence and they’ve all been huge positives to my life. We’re happier, healthier, building more community, spending less money on gas and maintenance. It’s nice.
I live in Manhattan, and don't own a car, so I get where you're coming from. The reality here is that America doesn't like trains and isn't going to build trains in any kind of a timeframe that's helpful to me. I'm about to move to Westchester, but I need to get to the Upper West Side every day. Yes, I can take the train from Westchester, but it goes into Grand Central, so then I need to take another train from there. And I'll have my kid with me.
So my options are:
1. Drive, walk, or bike with my kid to the train station in Westchester, ride to grand central, switch to subway, drop her off at school, then take the subway to my office. Total time about 90 mins.
or
2. Drive 35-45 mins.
I'll be driving.
There's talk of having one of the train lines go into Penn instead of Grand Central, with stops on the Upper West Side! But that'll be a decade or more, if it ever happens, and it won't be relevant to me anymore at that point.
I love trains, but let's not pretend there is a perfect Venn diagram of overlap between what their use cases are.