You can drive for 16 hours and still be in Texas, the european mind cannot comprehend this! <
Yeah because driving 16 hours straight is stupid because you would just take the train and be driven 16 hours straight.
Car centric infrastructure should have never been introduced.
While public transport is undoubtedly fantastic, let's not pretend that it's a great option in many European countries. I'd love to take the train in the UK, but thanks to the Tories it would cost me more to take the train (when it works) than it would to drive and park.
The key is public ownership of public transport.
Public transport in Europe is often in a sorry state, but trust me, it's nothing compared to the US. Here in France, a lot of regional trains are very unreliable at best but at least high speed trains on dedicated tracks are fine (very expensive, but ok).
I don't remember UK rail to be a shitshow and/or that expensive but my only experience is going to/from central London to/from neighboring counties and it was fine.
But in the US, oh boy. About 15 years ago I was living with some roommates in Campbell, CA and we went to SF one day. 1h drive mostly on shitty concrete motorways, including probably around $5 of gas. They were heading north for a romantic getaway so I went back to Campbell by myself. It took almost 4 fuckin hours, on maybe 4 or 5 different private companies, and cost me like $25 to get back.
Public transit in the US is so fucked up im almost convinced it's by design.
I think you just underestimate how awful public transport is in the US. Beating what's available here is not a high bar to clear, especially when it's nonexistent in many places. It can also vary pretty widely across and within regions. I imagine public transport in London is a different beast from public transport in Manchester, for example.
When I was visiting Manchester in March, it was pretty great. I could get around the city via bus, tram or walking pretty easily, and trains between Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were all pretty clean, even late at night, and the most I paid for two round-trip tickets was £48.40 going to Leeds and back. Everything else was below £30 for two people, round trip.i Wherever I got off, I could get an Uber to where I was going for less than £10 if I didn't feel like waiting for a bus, or there wasn't a bus nearby. For a similar trip here, for one person going from NYC to Philadelphia and back would run me in excess of £100 with Amtrak making the trip in about 90 minutes, or closer to £30 round trip, but with each leg taking nearly 3 hours without any delays on NJ Transit. A 15 minute Uber here to work would routinely run me close to £20 each way, before accounting for a tip.
Nobody was screaming in my face asking for "donations," there weren't people with amplifiers blasting music, or homeless folks left to stew in their own filth keeping entire cars unusable for anyone else due to the stench. Even walking about the cities at all hours of the night, I had a grand total of 3 people ask me for money in a week. Residents apologized a few times about how awful things were there, but it was absolutely lovely, even in the parts they thought were local embarrassments for allegedly being unbearably dirty or run down. Granted, it was nice and cool, so I didn't get to see if Manchester gets the same lovely summer effect that NYC does, where every outdoor space smells like hot piss and garbage once the temperature clears about 27°C.
Granted, spending a week in a city as tourists isn't the same as living there, but from folks I know who've made the move, it was a massive upgrade in terms of things like public transit and general quality of life compared to life in the US or Canada. I ran the numbers, and it would actually make sense for me to take over a 50% pay cut if I could move there. Heck, it was cheaper for us to eat out for every meal for a week straight for two people and me buying several coffees out a day than it is for me to shop and prepare every meal at home and make all my own coffee here. Even if things aren't as good as they used to be, they've still got us soundly beat in many regards.
Sir, this is
a Wendy'sDetroit.I never get this argument of US Americans against public transport. Even in europe most public transport happens within one city, I don't regulary drive to another country
Americans don't generally have a negative thing to say about public transportation. Americans, however, prefer to drive their own vehicle for many reasons. For one, being independent, not relying on a schedule. Not worrying about missing their transportation and catching a later one, then being late to the arrival of their destination.
I don't know where you live, but in the big cities of the U.S., public transportation... isn't exactly hygienic. You will smell urine. You will encounter chitty people. You will be spending time reading all the random chit people write/scratch onto the walls and glass. You will sit on uncomfortable chairs, might even touch someone's chewed up gum by accident.
I've seen some chit both in city busses and trains but this was in Chicago and some parts of NY. Never would I ever want to live that life. Ever.
Seriously.
The larger the area you have to cover with rail is, the larger the cost. The US is much more spread out in general than European countries - some people choose to live hours+ away from significant population centers. There's no need to decide which system is inherently superior. Cars work for the US, trains work for Europe.
Are you high?
It's not that it's unsafe to drive in Detroit due to crime, it's just that the automotive industry lobbied hard to make the country car friendly, and that city faced the worst of it.
This scene has nothing to do with car-centric city design
In Detroit where in some areas, you don't stop at a red light.. you drive right through it and keep going.
If you're white and driving a decent looking car the cops will just ignore you. At least that's what I was always told.
My wife is Arab, wears a headscarf. She stopped at a red light, cop car whips around to the side of her vehicle and told her that driving the vehicle she has will catch attention and get car jacked. They outright told her never to stop at that red light and the following three red lights on that road, day or night.
Which ones?
Gratiot Avenue and Kelly Road between 7 and 8 Mile roads. Pretty much stay away from zip code 48205 aka 4-8-2-0-DIE!
Also:
Is that actually a thing?
Yes. I've been told that by cops in prior years.
That said, things have improved enormously in the last 10 years. There is a vibrant downtown area, and fairly large pockets of redevelopment around it, with safe(-ish) and affordable housing.
Only when turning left. Seriously, a city planner or something had a huge beef with turning left at lights and launched a war against it.
To assholes yeah. I grew up in a pretty rural area and still drive through some holes in the wall regularly with traffic lights where I'm stopped and there's no traffic in miles. I still stop because that light is there for a reason. To save lives by enforcing some consistency in the rules.
Yep, no cop no stop
That's not just Detroit though. There's areas all over the world like that. Including some other places in the US.
Oh.. lol no doubt.
I've been told the same thing in st louis by cops, " if you're west fo the river and you don't see a cop just keep rolling"
Detroiters was so good. I only watched a few episodes but they were bangers.
Whole series is great, got canceled way too soon
As a Detroiter, I think I really need to watch this.
Obligatory c/fuckcars
Is that person's nose real, I refuse to beleive its real
Forget the nose. That person isn't real.
He's Andy Samberg's damaged clone.
Star trek lookin ass
believe it's* real
It really is the Paris of the west.
Is this a show?
The show is called "Detroiters" on Comedy Central https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroiters
I'm guessing due to the housing shortage literally everywhere else.
Kind of. The housing prices are rock bottom. there is also a sense of community that is utterly lacking in the airless suburbs. Seriously, there are some subs in places like Novi or Farmington that were built in the 80s and are completely lacking in sidewalks. Compared to that, some neighborhoods in Detroit have affordable homes, neighbors, and urban prairie. Seriously, Ive been to farms on land left to seed.
Also, there is a wave of gentrification coming through.. Mostly on the riverfront and along the Cass Corridor into Midtown. The Illitches and the Rocket Mortgage guy have both invested enormous quantities into fixing up that zone, and at least before the pandemic, there was really a sense that a recovery had begun. A lot of white people have been drawn to the area and a lot of old industrial or commercial have been redone into luxury apartments. And honestly, the corner of Jefferson and Woodward on a summer weekend is insanely nice these days.
I want to point out that there are still rough scrabble areas in Detroit, like Brightmoor. But down by Hart Plaza? Wayne State? The Fox? You'll be fine.
- its* first population growth
- it's* a safe area
That's because it's the cheapest property market of any major city, ain't it?
I live in Detroit and I don't get why people are scared. Yeah, there's a few scary areas, but the city itself is safe with a great nightlife scene.
No one is scared in downtown anymore. But I used to live in downtown over 20 years ago and it was scary. Just walking down Woodward at night was dangerous but you look at it now and wonder how it ever was like that.
My grandmother is convinced it's still like that. She would not have let me go to WSU except it's the only school in Michigan that offered a degree in Mortuary/Postmortem Science
That doesn't sound like a good thing, at all, though?
Why do people cheer for population growth?
In this case, it's due to the way the infrastructure currently stands in Detroit. So many people moved out of Detroit years ago that 1/3 of the population is left to maintain the city. They need people to move back to generate money in order to rebuild.
