And even within those cities, they are vast stretches of suburbia, without the density that makes rail and mass transit systems practical. Rail as mass commuter transit works better the more dense a city is (conversely cars work worse). So if you wanted to try to massively reduce cars as an answer to the climate crisis, you’d first need to rebuild all of these cities that were largely built after cars were a thing. Which is even more impractical than electric cars.
Would be AWESOME if we had more dense cities and rail connections like Europe, though! We need the next generation of city planners to encourage more density in our (non Northeastern) American cities.
Europe has a lot of suburbia too and rural areas too though. I live in the SF Bay Area. It’s population density is similar to many regions in Europe (barring ultra urban cities like capitals). Yet with this density (and loads of money) we sadly still don’t have decent public transportation here…
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}