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US rural settlements were built on train lines before cars destroyed that.
For most long range travel, trains are the solution.
And bikes or PEVs for short range travel.
PEVs are kind of a trap though.
ICE cars are not just problematic because of their emissions, they do much worse things with their infrastructure requirements. Roads and parking that can support everyone driving their car alone everywhere results in sprawl. That makes everyone not in a car have to get in a car as well, and also increases infrastructure costs for other services, since they have to service a much larger area.
Cars have their place, but in an ideal world, a regular family regardless of where they live shouldn't need one. It's not a personal mobility solution. Taxies and stuff make sense, everyone sitting in their own car doesn't.
And this is not even counting that car accidents are a leading cause of fatalities because we give a licence to everyone with a pulse.
PEVs (personal electric vehicles) aren't cars. They're ebikes and escooters and EUCs and things like that. Things you can carry up a flight of stairs or onto a train. They are most at home in bicycle infrastructure.
I stand corrected.
While I was living in a city with an expansive but terrible quality public transit system, I owned a foldable electric bike. I used it to commute, I kept it under my office desk and charged it off the office mains while working. It had like 30 kilometres of range, which I used like 12 of, so I even had some distance to play with and visit a friend after work.
If it was raining, I could get on the bus with it. It was cool as hell.
I moved since, now I commute by tram.
Exactly.
I have two sets of tracks in my city, one that's used as a commuter rail, and the other which is currently unused but connects to a light rail network (about 10 miles away). That unused rail connects about 500k people, and eventually connects to a commuter rail in two places (one about 15 miles south w/ a university, another about 20 miles north w/ a hospital), and goes through a blue collar job areas, residential areas, and white collar job areas, with downtown areas for shopping shopping along the way. The existing rail goes by a major league stadium, shopping district, and later a hospital, with connections to other lines.
The commuter rail takes ~2 hours to get to my office because of awkward transfers. If they moved a bus line to that station, my commute would drop to ~1hr. Or if they extended the light rail on existing tracks, my commute would be ~1hr and I would use it for shopping and recreation as well.
But because they don't do either, I drive ~30 min to get to work. I would take the train if it was only 1hr.
Instead of building out along this existing rail, they built a new light rail line that only connects one hipster community (maybe 100k people) that cost the same more or as extending the light rail to my area. I just don't understand the priorities I guess.