cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/23351353
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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In Japan they have rail lines that seamlessly integrate with the metro system of large cities.
And even if cars for rural users is necessary, their driving experience will be much smoother if all the other people have good access to transit.
Japan is an extremely small and dense country with actually very little rural areas, so I'm not sure if that really answers the other person's questions.
The main island has a land area of about the 13th largest state, Utah. But Utah has about 35 people/sq mile, compared to Japan with almost 1200 people/sq mile.
America is really rural and rural areas are really far apart from each other. Growing up my nearest neighbor was about a 10 min drive down the road. And I wasn't even that rural, I went to a normal school with a normal school bus.
Once again, this is a silly argument, which this tautology makes obvious: Most Americans live where most Americans live. A full third of the U.S. land area is USFS or BLM land on which nobody lives, and the sparsely-populated areas of the rest are just that: sparsely-populated. Utah has only 3.3 million inhabitants, which is 0.9% of the national population. But even they're not rural! Most Utahns live in a handful of metro areas; the Salt Lake City region has areas with population density over 5,000 people per square mile.
The United States is overwhelmingly urban, and the number of people who live in really rural areas is basically a rounding error.
Sure but this comment chain is specifically talking about rural people. And none of that changes that whats considered "rural" in Japan, would barely be considered "suburbs" in the US.
Yes, the US should absolutely be investing in mass transit and inter-city rail. But using Japan or other European countries as "an example of how it should be done!" is just dismissive of the actual size of the US and shows me that you haven't thought about it any more than just "trains = good; cars = bad", and is outright disrespectful of the population that you will need to serve.
Something like 10% of the population lives in towns under 10k. That's not what I would consider "a rounding error".
@Lv_InSaNe_vL @SwingingTheLamp OK. Compare it to China. Larger landmass. Larger population. And larger proportion rural. Yet China has some of the best rail systems in the entire world, and even the rural people in the back end of nowhere tend not to have cars; they use bus services most times instead.
What's your point now?
Yes, that would be the best outcome and comparable to early US settlement where most towns had rail to connect each other and most people even in small towns didn't maintain their own horses. Of course travel back then required a lot more planning, which is why automobiles were able to successfully promote themselves as providing independence because they do. They do provide independence, and I can attest that as a kid when cars were easy to maintain they did provide independence in rural areas and still do!
They don't provide indeoendence in congested cities suffering from urban sprawl and loss of mass transit, which is where the comic is accurate.
@spankmonkey @Little_mouse Here in Wuhan cars do the opposite.
I have two colleagues who live across the river from where I work. One takes public transit: bus to metro to bus. One drives. The one who uses public transit arrives at 8:15 every morning, give or take three minutes, except in the most extreme of circumstances (like city-wide flooding). The one who drives that same rough distance will sometimes be here before 8 and sometimes comes in at 9 because traffic is hellish and random.