Autists unite

Good thread. Being a socialist because of education and healthcare is pleb-tier, being a socialist because of housing, transit and city planning in general is where it's at.

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Amsterdam has a decent metro system (with a huge expansion recently) despite marshy soil.

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I know, i live here, but they are only able to build it like that due to modern improvements where ground is frozen before they drill in it, and immediately build the tunnel around it as it's drilled. Our rock isn't until 400 meters deep so it was never an option for us before said techniques

How bad is the state of railroads in the States?

also doubles as bomb shelter

Very fucking bad. Claps are lucky if they even have a train, fuck, they're lucky if they have a bus system.

good thing everyone there has a car

Too bad most states can't keep all the hundreds of thousands of miles of roads within their borders from disintegrating. American roads will become more and more third world-tier as the century wears on. States will end up prioritizing roads that go in and out of big cities while letting rural roads crumble. Quite frankly I think the decline of American empire might actually propel the development of mega cities as long as they somehow deal with the landlord problem. Otherwise cities will just implode instead.

Jesus I know (hope) you're joking but still

This, the road near my apartment is full of holes and bumps, half the road has no sidewalk, and the bike lanes force bikers to ride right next to cars. When the city does decide to lay down new tar for a road, it takes half a fucking year for them to finish a few miles.

My city got rid of all public transportation a long time ago which completely fucks me over because I can't drive.

Its probably some garbage private firm who is owned by one of the people on your city council and they're probably told to go as slow as possible to drag out the costs.

Trains in America are dogshit. I live in Indianapolis. No trains here. The midwest would be a good place for a decent rail system. No one likes driving long distances on our miserable high ways but no one can imagine how nice it would be going 100 miles an hour in a comfy air conditioned cabin with wifi. Obama whiffed hard on his chance to force hsr down America's throat but no hes a massive pussy and can't even do the most basic socdem-ish things.
see what a good start would could've had??

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Does anyone have this picture of a naked girl sitting on one of the over night amtrak trains. I've seen it before, but now I can't find it!
You can have some DDR fashion in exchange.

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South Central Texas reporting in, all this city has is a mediocre bus system and cars
The only non freight train station is a shitty Amtrak station downtown. Speaking of Amtrak, anyone have that picture comparing the laughable Amtrak station in Dallas to an actual functioning train system?

For passenger usage, virtually non existent, and what little there is, its under used and under funded.Saying Amtrak sucks is being charitable.
For freight, its quite good surprisingly, the existing lines are all old, but for the most part well maintained.
Unfortunately, they're mostly unsuitable for conversion to or shared use by hsr.
We'd have to more or less start from scratch, and the cost is immense no matter how you look at it owing to the landscape and the distances involved.

would be worth it though because getting around America is not only boring without trains it is also unsustainable.

Why live?

The only way it'll ever happen is if the government does it, as far as the private sector is concerned, there's no money in it.
Even if it does happen, it'll be operating at a loss for the foreseeable future due mainly to most Americans having an aversion to public transport.
Which is understandable, given how abysmal all the existing domestic examples are.

Australia by-and-large is pretty underdeveloped in regards to rail infrastructure.
Nationally, the only passenger route worth mentioning is far more of a tourist thing then a viable way of crossing the country for domestic passengers.

Otherwise, the only notable passenger rail system we have is the Sydney system.
However even that -like all other passenger lines in this country- has been plagued by decades of systemic mismanagement.

Just a single HSR link between Brisbane and Sydney would effectively revolutionise transport in this country and get rid of the countless, inefficient passenger aircraft that fly that route each day.
Given that our domestic airlines have an undue influence over all levels of government and would not like to see one of their most busy/profitable domestic routes try and compete with HSR; I do doubt that we will ever see such a link.
Even if they did build it, I'm sure our government would fuck it up somehow.

I really do like suspended rail.
I would love to see a city really invest in it.
Several suspended rail lines running through buildings in a big CBD would be quite the sight.

I love traveling by train
Even though the trains in my country are all very old and shitty
And a 200km trip takes over 6hours in them
They are comfy, you find an empty cabin and can do whatever you want for the whole trip.
Sometimes even the conductors don't show up, so you can get away with traveling free (though I don't recommend it since if caught they'll let you out on the next station, but you can juggle it by entering in different doors)

British trains are ludicrously shit and expensive. Pic related is a train cobbled together from bus carriages, introduced in the 80s as a stopgap but still in use today.

bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35725299

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It can be hell on earth, but there is just something about the London Underground.

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Every time I try to argue in favour of better public transport in Australia, dickheads tell me no one will use it because public transport is shit and everyone will want to drive.
It shows me how few people in this country have been anywhere other than Bali.

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Haven't seen that comparison but I'm in Dallas. Posting a photo of Union Station where Amtrak connects. Shockingly, as undeveloped as it is we at least have a train system which can't be said for most American cities but it'll still take you an hour to get anywhere and that's within the city. And you're still going to need to get in a car to get anywhere *from* a station since the city is sprawling megaburbs. Related, the trains all lead to downtown. But to have a true train system the trains need to also orbit around the core like Moscow. The metro area is going to start adding more lines though, which is good. Give it another couple decades and we might make it somewhere.

But right now the process goes like (1) drive car to train station (2) board train (3) ride train (4) disembark train (5) get in Uber/Lyft (6) drive for another 10 minutes (7) arrive at destination.

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Texas is a great example in letting people who read tons of Ayn Rand in college run things because under the 14-year-long Rick Perry regime (he was our Brezhnev), he opted to make as his main pet project the expansion of toll roads across the state. So in the metro areas, to get anywhere in a reasonable length of time – relatively speaking, this is Texas – you have to pay tolls which disproportionately falls on the poor and working class. Some people are paying $200 month just to get to work and back. That's the "upside" of living in a "low tax" state.

Of course, people fall behind and they start getting charged late fees, and the toll agencies work with the state and local governments to suspend drivers' licenses, block their registration renewals and issue them tickets and eventually arrest warrants.

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I think what is really needed for the more sprawling cities that America has is a combination of the rapid metro transit along with an extensive tram network so that doesn't need to fuck with any sort of cars. Also we need to work to end this urban sprawl issue and develop cities more tightly around a nice transit system.

Melbourne has the largest tram network in the world by total track length (250km) so that's pretty cool. Many lines still use the original locally built Comeng trams from the 80s which are pretty nice despite their age. Plenty of new models too; the Siemens Combino and Bombardier Flexity are both pretty ubiquitous, along with a few other models. (the Combino trams suck arse, so loud and so much wasted space)

We've got an expansive PT network, but it functions like shit due to massive urban sprawl. Main problem is it's a nightmare catching connecting services since both the train and tram lines radiate out from the city centre like spokes on a bike wheel, with only slow and infrequent buses connecting the main lines. It's easy enough to get into or out of the CBD, but if you want to go to a suburb, say, south west of you it becomes a drawn out affair. Still, it could be a lot worse. It's functional and fairly cheap (unless you get caught without a ticket). State government are also planning some improvements, a new train tunnel through the city centre, an airport train link and eventually a large ring around the outer suburbs (won't happen for ages though).

The S/U-bahn and the tube are the best PT systems I've used. Berlin and London cunts are lucky in that respect

An east coast high speed railway would be sick. It's absurd that you have to take a plane between the major cities in the country.

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what's the concensus on the london underground system?

i have literally never been on public transport, being an american and all
it fascinates me though, i wish we had it, i hate riding in cars and i'd prefer to walk to a station or something to get around

in a socialist world, you wouldn't have to pay through the nose to take a train. i'm serius, in the UK, anything more than a short train journey is extortionate.

i really really want a high speed rail system or something on the US coasts to major cities because it's so annoying and time consuming to drive it

the downside would be that it would be prohibitively expensive for those who need it most. same principle as the burger healthcare arrangement. I refuse to say system, because there's no way in hell that shitshow is a system.

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Has Michael Caine been banned from it?

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Autists should be put to forced labor camps. This thread is the ultimate proof of it.

you'll be the first in line bucko

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like those Chinese factories of major corporations?

Thats voluntarily exchange.

Your ideology will never have power again after your failures.

...

"Voluntary" under capitalism is a total falsification. Uneducated, ignorant manual laborer with 0$ can't do ANYTHING voluntarily.

fucking this.

not only did they build toll roads (most of which don't even address real traffic problems) but they have also, IIRC, been turning older tax-funded roads into toll roads.

Meanwhile, in fucking Mexico with as much corruption and povery they have, even a city like Monterrey has a subway system. Texas? Wait 2 hours for a bus or drive your car on a toll road that costs you $4.00 a day.

Fuck out of here.

Yeah for sure. Though I can say it seems like there's starting to be some pushback from suburbanite Republicans because they realize they're getting shafted by all these "hidden" costs. The real wealthy people don't give a damn but there's a lot of divorced and indebted middle-aged MAGA dads tooling back and forth to work in their Toyota Tacomas burning gas and paying out the ass for highway tolls. It adds up.

I'm up in Denton and one nice thing is we have a train that connects to DART. The trains are Stadler GTWs from Switzerland. Pictured in front of the beautiful brutalist towers at TWU – one of my favorite local features. It's still going to take you an hour and a half to get to downtown Dallas but I've taken it on a few occasions.

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this is very important

Can any of you autists convince me that DC's red line isn't the dumbest fucking shit in the world?

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What the hell is the justification for it?

It looks like two different lines which they decided to run as one so they'd need fewer trains. I doubt very many people actually take it from one end to the other.

I don't actually know, but my guess it was to get people from the suburbs of Maryland into the city. From what I've been told, areas past Silver Spring and around Rockville weren't populated when it was planned and built, but maybe population in those areas was projected to grow.

This is probably true, but I still hate it.

third-world tier

This is the kind of stuff anti-communists would make up about the soviet union. Literally trains made from bus parts.

its minimal, but im glad we have what we have desu

I hear those things are awfully loud.

It glides as softly as a cloud

Cuba actually has buses on train tracks too, but that's because of el bloqueo. It's crafty and resourceful if you're in a pinch, but it's retarded if you're in a wealthy country like the UK.

It is actually an old idea that was very common for radial railways. The idea was something that could be easily modified at the local train works to work on the rails to provide just enough service to sell land developments on the fringe of the city as having rail access to the city.

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In Germany he had Schienenbus (rail bus) and I love them. Some a little bit more modern versions are still running on very small regional routes until now, ~70 years later

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Living in a metropolitan zone with barely a milion people in a three-city area, I find it nearly inconceivable that urban areas with significantly larger populations have significantly smaller public transport systems. Removing the public transport lines frim thus cuty would be like removing most arteries and veins from a person.
There was however a time here, too, when some madman planned to demolish half the city to build a freeway trough it. Thank all that is good and right that didn't go trough.

You see, modern city-planning views motor vehicle traffic behaving like a gas of sorts: The more space you give it, the more space it takes. Therefore the quite counterintuitive trick to reduce congestion is to simply shrink roads further while boosting public transport capacity and ensuring smooth operation. When private car usage becomes unbearable, people look at the alternatives, which become very attractive if they operate hassle-free.

Cities in Europe and elsewhere have therefore limited the possibilities to park and drive downtown, by reassigning parking spaces to other use and converting streets for pedestrian and public use only, while improving parking near upgraded public transport lines outside the city. The latter is to encourage leaving the wheels at the perifery rather than forcing them into the already cramped environment of the town.

Is there a chance the track could bend?

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I'm almost a week late to the party, but I take Greyhounds to get to cities around the US when I go on vacation and the amount of time some trips take can be ridiculous because of layovers and delays. The alternative is a rail system that seems like it hasn't been maintained properly in 50 years or dealing with expensive flights.

Whether meme man Musk or the government does it, the country needs a massive upgrade to its transit system.

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train autists are best autists

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meme man musk won't do it
he is a conartist and will likely bait the government to give him money to start it and then suddenly realize how stupid his 'disruptive' idea was and quit.

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Not gonna lie, this is v important

I don't get why nobody just builds pipes with conveyor belts inside.

pick one

Nothing wrong with finding fun in ridding trains
Just alone or with friends sitting in your own shitty stained 70year old boot.
You get to meet a lot of strange homeless people too.