alt Hacker NewsThe solution to car problems is not more cars. It's serious alternatives to driving. We don't need Chinese cars. We need trains, busses, and bikes.
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The things you’re describing aren’t “alternatives to driving.” They perform a different function. Most Americans don’t aspire to live like Chinese people packed into high rises with 0.8 kids taking the train to work. They want to live where they want to live, then take their 2-3 kids to school and themselves to work 10-15 miles away without having to plan their lives around a public transit schedule.
https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st...
Never happens on the timescale of the next decade, maybe two. How far along is California high speed rail? When did they start?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail (construction began in 2015 and it won’t be operational until at least 2031, 16 years later) If you break ground today, you won’t see new public infrastructure operational for at least a decade. Brightline light rail was built in Florida and is approaching insolvency, even with 3M riders per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
We could provide subsidies to move the disadvantaged to major urban cores with public transportation systems, I’d support that. Have to find the funds to do it though. Cheaper than trying to build anything new in the US for sure.
https://dailyyonder.com/half-of-all-rural-counties-are-losin...
https://ecpmlangues.unistra.fr/civilization/geography/map-us...
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/poverty-area-measures...
(Where will those bikes, busses, and trains you mention be built? China, as they are 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity)
In the long term, yes, but infrastructure projects are famously drawn out in the US due to meddling from NIMBYs, companies puppeting sham environmental groups, and third parties forcing their way in and holding projects hostage unless they get a slice of the pie among other things.
It’s a battle worth fighting but public transport infrastructure isn’t going to happen overnight and people will need cars that won’t bankrupt them until then.