Light rail is expanding here in Dallas. It was also expanding in DC when I was there this summer. It is still inadequate, but there is some progress.
I mean duh, We, the US, are a gold plated shithole.
Our tiny, merciless, exploitative, sociopathic oligarch class just skew the numbers.
This place fucking sucks. Always has. Even the supposed “good” times were held up by an explicit, abused underclass. People that take pride in this fucking place are strange to me. Then again I’m against self-delusion in the name of positive feels. 🤷
Many of our subway-worthy cities are coastal. As sea levels rise they can either have flooded subways or attempt to build massive levees to hold the ocean back and skip the subways.
but if I ride the subway, I won’t need to buy a $50,000 ginormous pickup truck I won’t ever use for any actual truck stuff!
What happened to this? 😩 Turned out to be more empty promises, as expected https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/08/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-billions-to-deliver-world-class-high-speed-rail-and-launch-new-passenger-rail-corridors-across-the-country/
How quickly do you think these things happen? Billions of those dollars have gone to projects like CAHSR, Brightline West, and the NEC maintenance backlog, among a host of other projects. The fruits of this spending are something we will really see around 2030 for the most part. Also, worth pointing out that subways are usually funded separately from intercity rail, which was the focus of that announcement. Separately, that same act funded 700 million in new rail car purchases for 7 public transit systems (4 light rail systems, 2 subways, and 1 Commuter rail), 1.7 billion for new lower emissions buses for a number of systems across the US, 13 million for a new transit oriented development pilot program, and a number of other programs. It’s not as flashy as the turn of the century subway system build outs in Atlanta, DC, and San Francisco, and there’s just so much room for more because the US is absolutely starved for transit, but calling that an empty promise is just an absurd mistruth
