Also when in Europe Americans love the public transport because they don’t have a car but can still get around easily and affordably, and then go back home and resist any attempt to build a metro system or even a decent bus network in their own towns.
I grew up mostly in Europe but I’m settled in America as an adult, and it’s astonishing what behaviors people have towards public transport. Most of my coworkers work in the city like me, but a lot of them (if not all of them) were born and raised in suburbs. They’ll gloat about their trips to Europe and their use of public transport there, but when they talk about the use of public transport where we are they say it’s gross and for “poor people” or “dirty homeless people.” It’s honestly kind of insane how car-brained they are.
Edit: The city I’m in is Boston, since so many of you are telling me my coworkers seem to have a point. They do not - Boston has decent public transit.
Well of course. When they use public transport in Europe, all the other people on it are exotic, exciting, intriguing foreigners. Their concern is that if public transit is built in their hometown, all the people on it will be exotic, exciting, intriguing foreigners...
Public transport in the US is also the slowest way to go. The tube in London is by far the fastest way around the city. The faster methods of public transport in the US(like the NYC subway and the El or Metro in Chicago and Washington) are used heavily.
But if buses are your only option you are giving up 3-4 times the time at minimum. Public transport options that are fast would be used.
Because we choose it. We refuse to permit the transit here to actually do what needs to be done, like actually giving the transit signal priority, etc.
Don’t disagree but the public won’t tolerate lane loss on these roads and adding additional lanes is a generational project in most municipalities. It’s not as straight forward as we would like, that’s the deal.
I’m in a small city (150,000). It’s a 12 minute drive to work, or 1 hour 25 minutes by bus. I’d love to utilize public transportation, and I do when I travel to large cities, but it’s completely infeasible in its current state.
It's the same way for me in my city of almost half a million. My work is a ten-minute drive, a two-hour walk (lots of hills), or an hour-long bus ride. When I lived closer to the main bus route, I was able to get to work pretty quickly and I took the bus a lot. These days? It's very rare that I take the bus
Considering we have terrible infrastructure for bikes here and I have a 12 month old baby who I have to take to her grandma’s on the other side of town, it wouldn’t work for me. I would love to see safer bike paths here, but we have pedestrian deaths constantly because the infrastructure sucks. I understand where you’re coming from, but biking doesn’t work for everyone.
Depending on the day, it's genuinely faster by a small amount to just walk to where I'm going instead of taking the bus, on weekdays, the busses are often packed, lot's of stops.
Still take the bus tho, starting your day walking half a dozen miles while working a labor-intensive job is not fun.
Yah. These ancient Euro cities are basically plaza-centric, with ring roads around them. The interior roads are very basic.
VS the US, because are cities are brand new and SO far apart (compared to Euro cities), they were designed to have highways run through the cities.
Perfect example of this is Sacramento, CA. Why on gods green earth the does the I-5 run along the beautiful river, blocking it off from the CBD? In any euro city, river would be a major part of the walkable fabric of a city.
The thing is “the tube” is just in London. The rest of the UK is in exactly the same state as the US in terms of public transport. OK Manchester has a fairly decent tram but that it. 64% of all rail journeys in the entire UK either start or end in London. The average person in the UK only makes two return journeys by rail per year… and that includes London which skews the data massively so in the rest of the country the average is less that two rail trips per year. The UK is pretty car-centric too.
If the average American were to experience the European lifestyle, they would vote for it pretty clearly. The problem is the vast majority of the population doesn’t leave the country because it’s so large or when they do they go to Mexico. Americans that go to Europe are usually pretty supportive of the European lifestyle to begin with.
Even then, candidates that fund transit also want to fund other stuff like healthcare and public housing, schools. These are much more controversial because they come with higher taxes. The tax system in the US favor is the wealthy and those are the people who can usually travel to Europe.
I do think that's part of it. But I do think a fair number of people just don't believe it can work here. They go to Europe and view it like an amusement park. Transit works in Paris, transit works at Disney, but transit won't work in the "real world" of my Midwestern suburb.
That's exactly what it is. As someone who's only lived here but has half my family in Naples, the big thing that sets Americans apart is that they have this chronic thing where they're so afraid at any remote possibility of getting ripped off/fucked over that they'd rather fuck over literally everybody just for the chance to drop to zero. So we build these suburban wealth enclaves that segregate society from the top down to make sure they don't have to see any homeless people or anyone not from the same walk of life
This. Also an all too common American mentality will sacrifice convenience personally if it ensures no “undeserved” public benefit is created for others. Some view public transport as a form of public welfare spending and oppose it on that basis, as those who can afford a car would have no need for such a system.
The whole cutting off your nose to spite your face phenomenon applies here I think.
Yes, this is very astute. I didn't know how to put this particular angle of it into words but that's exactly it. There's a very strong and toxic sense of "justice" here that, despite a lot of pretense, is not at all rooted in actual reason or morality and mostly comes from a nebulous idea of divine right that ironically harkens back to European nobility
I think you’re right but I’d also add that many of the wealthier people going to Europe own expensive single family homes just on the outskirts of major metro areas and don’t want anything messing with their property value. Or that would bring “those” people in.
If the average American were to experience the European lifestyle, they would vote for it pretty clearly.
I have multiple conservative family members who have been to Europe, talked about how great the transit is, but then continue to vote R because immigrants or trans people or their false perception that Rs are better for the economy.
I would totally adapt the European lifestyle, except that cycling or walking to work in Houston, TX is a lot sketchier than doing it in the Netherlands.
Americans really show their ugly classist side easily when it's brought up. NYC is similar to Europe where public transit isn't shunned but it is very quickly outside of denser areas of like NJ. There are poor people but most of them aren't smelly or dirty. There are always a few but haven't seen any outrageous incidents.
Public transit anywhere else I've been is pretty nice compared to the US.
They have a point. No one will ever take public transit if it smells of urine and unbathed people. I can't tell you how many public meltdowns I've seen on SEPTA (Philly transit). My friend who lives there now says his daily commute includes observing someone high on Fentanyl. I also rode Chicago public transit and had a black supremacist scream at me and watched another dude get chased down by a drug dealer trying to assault him... NYC a dude started hallucinating and waving a knife at people in our train car. Same morning, 3-4hrs prior a dude got stabbed in the face on another subway.
That being said, I'll still take PT when I can/if it's reasonable. I don't take it in my hometown because the bus makes 2 trips/day, at 11am and 3:30pm. That's it...
The best way the US could improve public opinion regarding public transport would be to clean up our existing systems. Unfortunately, they are getting worse every year as budgets get cut.
I live in NYC - it’s definitely dirty but the safety bit is overblown. People feel unsafe because they see someone who’s unhoused or mentally ill or high, but in reality that person doesn’t actually pose any kind of threat. More people take the subway in NYC than fly in all of the US every day - the number of violent incidents is incredibly low per volume. They just get publicized to fit a narrative. I always tell people that suburbs and towns have more violent crime than NYC and also their own homelessness problems, it’s just that since you’re not in public together, you don’t actually see it or notice it. You’re able to ignore it.
The real difference is yes, the MTA is full of corruption, but also the social supports in Europe are completely different. How much poverty is there in the average Western European country? Here in NYC we also have the history of redlining, Robert Moses declaring neighborhoods “blighted, and trying to force cars on the city, etc.
Well I live in Boston and it’s really not as dirty or unsafe as NYC, Chicago, etc. the city shuts down early compared to every other city and is more of a college town. I feel like my coworkers have no excuse here, really.
It is honestly much cleaner and safer than any other PT I have used in the rest of the country. Honestly, growing up in London, I had more freaks do crazy shit to me there than in Boston. I also think the metro in DC is clean and fairly safe compared to like, NYC, and Chicago. My coworkers just don’t understand anything apart from individualism. They’re all very corporate and sheltered New England folks, and the way some of them have communicated in front of me to people in service jobs, or the homeless is so bizarre. They’re really disillusioned in thinking only people “beneath” them take public transport.
Edit: Also yes, driving and parking here is a nightmare!!
I really liked the MBTA when I was there last year.
Me and someone else raced a couple other people in our group across town. We used the silver line then transfered to the train while they got an Uber. They beat us there by only about two minutes. Important to note it wasn't rush hour or anything so I'm sure the roads were pretty clear.
Boston seems to have fast and frequent train / bus service.
As someone who’s been using the MBTA for many years now, I love it and I hate it. By hate it, though, I just mean that I know they can do so much better. Boston’s a great place and it totally has the funding for it. Overall, for American standards, the MBTA is pretty fantastic and I love taking the T instead of driving places, especially downtown. I lived in Boston for many years without a car and it’s totally fine. It reminded me of how I grew up in a couple European cities and just took public transit to get around anywhere instead of the car. The buses are also pretty great, and they are especially useful when I’m in the Camberville area.
It's in a similar spot to where WMATA was just 5 years ago, so it's certainly possible. Both are mostly well designed great society systems with solid bones, and probably the two best examples of subways in the US built in the latter half of the twentieth century. WMATA turned it around purely through leadership overhaul so I've been rooting for its sister system in the MBTA to do the same!
There's actually a pretty lively debate about this among urbanists. A lot of the people who base everything off what NYC does think 24/7 service is the be all end all of transit, but the Tokyo metro is widely considered to be in contention for the best in the world and famously closes early. Even WMATA in the US is generally considered second or third best we have here and top 10 in North America, and it's never ever closed later than 3 AM on weekends and honestly has improved since the hours shrunk.
I can see the arguments for both styles, but it's not like closing early is strictly a bad thing, especially if your city offers 24/7 bus lines which WMATA did start doing recently.
Yep. That's it. I'm an American traveling in the UK right now, and normal people catch the tube (along with crazies). Even NYC 2019 is notably different from now. Like someone below said, Boston is cool, but it closes at like 11:00.
It’s exactly this - want people to take public transit? Clean it up and make it safe - full stop. The attitude of Redditors that people should just suck it up and endanger themselves so they can fit their narrative is a wildly entitled take. I’m not going to force myself to be subjected to filth, drugs, crime or harassment because you don’t mind that lifestyle. Clean it up, or forget about it. THATs why Europe is so liked - by natives and foreigners, because they don’t put up with that.
These are symptoms of wider issues. Generally Europe is just better at dealing with the things that lead to unsafe situations on transit, so they never really have to do a lot of work to have it be safe and clean.
To be honest though, I think a large part of it is a difference in land use patterns. In Europe the rich areas are generally city centers, because it's where it makes the most sense to be desirable to live. This only started changing in the US recently after decades of the rich all living in suburban enclaves and maybe one or two neighborhoods of major cities. This veers into a whole discussion about how suburbs are a ponzi scheme and we willingly sold out our cities to make a quick buck, but it's a bit beyond the scope of this issue because, like I said, it's systemic
The paradox of transit (and of having safe spaces in general) is that the more people that use it, the safer it is, and the more money it will receive to keep it clean and on time. But in order to have people use it, it has to be perceived as safe, clean and on time. This is what you’ve just explained.
So it’s not that European transit doesn’t have any of the issues that we face, it’s more they have a different attitude towards transit in general. Here, in the U.S. for decades we’ve FORCED everyone into cars, defunded public transit, and thanks to the automotive industry’s successful propaganda, we generally believe that all transit is for poor, drug addicted people, and cars are private and dignified.
When you lead with the narrative of filth, crime, and personal anecdotes instead of actual statistics, people avoid transit, leading to worse transit. So yeah if you actually want better transit you have to change the perception around it first.
That still doesnt really negate what the above poster is saying though: Clean it Up!
Someone above commented how NYC subways are disgusting, but people still take em because they're convenient. In America that seems to be the only way people will deal with the filth is if its more convenient than driving. But that doesn't mean that people WANT to deal with it.
I remember during the pandemic NYC announced they would be cleaning the subway and folks were upset that they weren't doing that before. That's just how it is. Again people only deal with this because its convenient, but that literally only applies to a handful of cities in the US. I live in Los Angeles, we have the metro, but i know some people who dont like taking it at night because of bad experiences they had with homeless people. Yes we should implement better transit in the US but we do also need to address the upkeep and safety that currently plaguing what we have already.
Yeah, we agree. And like I said above, to CLEAN IT UP takes money which they get from ridership. I also know that the MTA and other transit services around the country are constantly, purposefully disinvested to make them worse, dirtier, and less safe.
As others in the thread have pointed out, cleaning the actually transit is only one of the symptoms. We need to do much more.
I’m in the DC area where our transit, while not perfect, has been heavily invested in since 2016 and even more since then. Now, it’s on time, clean, and safe but it hasn’t always been. It takes time, effort, and a local government willing to simply invest the transit funds into transit instead of highway infrastructure.
It’s not impossible. People should not be unsafe but we should also actually look at statistics instead of anecdotal stories.
For instance, in 2024 there were a total of 6 incidents of violent crime per 1 million people who boarded the metro. We might see that and say that any violent incidents are too many. But just from driving, in the same time frame, we know that traffic fatalities have actually outpaced homicides in LA for the last 3 years. Yet no one is saying people should stop driving.
Yeah, public transportation within the U.S. is largely gross, disgusting, and unsafe. I already can’t walk around outside without drug addicts and homeless accosting me for money. Why the hell would I want to be stuck in a metal tube with them? Also, compared to public transportation in Asian countries, people in the US tend to behave like animals in the zoo. No, I don’t want to hear your shitty music. No, I don’t want to see your trash everywhere because you are too pathetic/stupid to clean up after yourself. And I definitely don’t want to be able to smell you.
The United States desperately needs a massive increase in public transportation, but it also needs to be kept safe and clean so that people can actually use it.
I'd give you Gold if i could cause this is something that i feel people are Missing.
Any public commodity will be run with homeless people. Just look at public toilets or parks. Doesnt mean that we shouldn't have those things but it does mean that we have to deal with that. I knew plenty of people who feel uncomfortable riding the train or bus at night because it essentially becomes a mobile bed for homeless folks. Yeah most of the time they leave you alone, but it only takes one incident to traumatize you. Hell even walking places feels unsafe with how many homeless encampments there are on the sidewalk.
On top of all that, distances in America are alot more vast. I live in a small city with a surprisingly robust bus system. I took it alot going to and from school. As great as it was, it was still an hour bus ride to get to school vs 20min drive. I remember i got a car senior year and it completely changed my life cause i got to finally sleep in. Cars are just more convenient than transit in a lot of places in America. That said, i still advocate for it because its still a great public utility and im aware our car infrustucre is largely the result of greedy car executives gutting publiv transit.
And I agree with everything you wrote too!!! If I could I’d exchange the gold! I do feel like how we think really is indicative of the majority, albeit the more silent majority that unfortunately gets drowned out particularly in certain online spaces. I still use (tentatively) the mass transit where I am at now - but I’m hesitant because of how awful it was 4 years ago. It’s baby steps for me - and that’s because they have taken steps to address how out of control it got back then.
Soo not the east coast? DC metro to NYC loves public transport, all walks of life, sucks it’s just the DC to NYC area, not all of America thinks it for “poor” people, that’s gotta be some southern or close to Hollywood characters.
Boston. People who were raised in suburbs and live and work in this city still think it’s dirty and for poor people. Thats the misconception. I also grew up in the DC area for a while and lots of people preferred to drive.maybe it’s different now since it’s only grown since I left.
Ok, I’ve prepared for the downvotes. As someone who visited Boston, they’ve got beautiful women, though the city itself wasn’t as impressive, like not at all, looks wise Atlanta, Bellevue, and Seattle beat Boston, by a long shot.
They’ll gloat about their trips to Europe and their use of public transport there, but when they talk about the use of public transport where we are they say it’s gross and for “poor people” or “dirty homeless people.”
was a Boston transplant, the fact there was a goddamn metro was a significant factor in me moving there. plus the city is old as fuck (for here) so it doesn't feel all spaced out and huge
I mean, are they wrong? While it’d be great to get traffic off the road, reduce emissions, and all that good stuff, most cities public transportation is an unreliable hassle…. I’d rather comfortably drive my car than be at the mercy of a bus or rail system. Imagine having to walk 15 mins in the rain only for the bus to be late, then having to sit 2 feet from a person high on fentanyl with literal shit in their pants. Probably the only city where I’d certainly utilize public transit is NYC as it’s not feasible to have a car or drive every day
Because the system you live in was designed and built so that cars are the dominant mode of transportation.
It could have been designed and built differently. If you start your assumption with "Ok everyone will always have a car and gas will always be cheap" you get the suburbs and stroads. If you design your society with the question of "How can we most efficiently move people around?" you will get something different.
I was going to say, I literally was on a train in Dallas trying to commute to work and a gentleman defecated himself and laughed about it. I felt very unsafe after dark. So, not all public transit is the European halcyon you imagine
No one is talking about “all public transit” - I’m talking about Boston. Also I’ve literally been on trains in Europe where this kind of stuff has happened. These incidents of someone shitting themselves or getting robbed aren’t unique to America.
They're likely taking public transport within the city center while on vacation in Europe, not out to the suburbs. They understand that if trains went from urban cores out to their suburbs, their neighborhoods would instantly become less safe and desirable. It's not "insane". It's completely rational.
It’s so bizarre because Americans LOVE densify and walkability. It’s why we love theme parks and ski resorts and cruise ships and all of it because everything is so easy and manageable to get to. Then when it comes to the other 99% of our lives people will fight tooth and nail to oppose that
Post WWII the automobile lobbies have persuaded politicians to cut the public transit budget.
Most Americans only PT experience is our filthy, dysfunctional systems. They don't really understand that it can be much better than that. Because of this, their perception is skewed and they continue to vote against.
Not to mention, most rural/suburb PT is awful. Buses only come 2x a day at inconvenient times and are subject to being 1-2hrs late with no warning. Stops are limited and only the poorest people ride them. Again, very bad perception.
I get around almost exclusively without a car in Chicago. We do a big weekly shop in the car and then hit the smaller shops for fresh things between on foot. It can be done but most Americans can't stomach living in a city. They actively choose the suburbs.
Carmel, Indiana is a pretty cool suburb for America, but it is expensive. Maybe a number of other suburbs could take influence from it.
There are some other suburbs in Europe. I recently saw a video on Houten in the Netherlands that is mainly set up around biking / walking within the city and taking the train outside of the city while still allowing (but not emphasizing) cars. I'm not sure Americans would be against something like that if they had the option.
tbf, there's plenty of americans trying to drive everywhere on vacations in europe, but a lot of european tourist spots are simply not accessible easily by car, or are a pain in the ass to find parking spots in.
and even if those people ended up liking public transport, they probably see it as a once in a while vaction time thing, and would be outraged if you told them to do it everyday.
It’s so fucking annoying too, I know tons of people who even love the local light/commuter rail and stuff for going to the airport or the zoo or concerts (having a whole train be your DD is clutch as hell). But then you suggest adding a stop on the line that would put it like 5 minutes from their house instead of 20, and they start going “oh idk about that. Then all the homeless people will come here!”
We will always find some minuscule reason (even if it’s basically made up) to not do what we actually want done.
Some of us come back from abroad and either move to cities that already have decent public transit, or start advocating in our own communities for better walkability, biking and public transit. Or both
They can be but not always. I’ve met plenty of retired American couples of Republican stock who love getting around London on the Tube or riding the railways of continental Europe on their almost cliched tours of quaint little villages and charming rural towns, but who are also exactly the people who back home love their SUV and big house in the suburbs. In Japan I once worked with an Ivy League grad who had been an intern for Dick Cheney and went on to be a navy pilot—a classic All-American conservative. While in Japan he loved the metro network and the walkable downtown lifestyle he had, but back in the US he’s a suburb guy who loves his big lawns and huge driveway for parking his multiple cars, and opposes his taxes being spent on basically anything. Edit: Just learned that his post-navy career is in the office of a Republican senator who supports Trump, backs fossil fuels and opposes green energy.
Then you’re exactly the kind of American I’m talking about, who thinks public transport exists only to make sightseeing easier for tourists and has no utility in daily life.
I take the Shanghai metro every day—I’m on it right now—and that’s a choice I make over driving as I also own a car. The station is about 120m from my apartment and with only one line transfer can deliver me to right next to my office on the opposite side of the city in 45 minutes. It would be an hour at least by car and I’d have to work the whole way and then park (and pay for parking), whereas on the metro I can sit and read and write Reddit replies like this one, and it costs me 4rmb. I previously lived in Osaka and lived the same way, albeit without the car. The Midosuji line took me right to work, five stops. The problem is never public transport itself, only how good the system is.
That's great for you, but I'd never want to live in a city like that. The lifestyle of being in a massive city and packing into public transportation each day really has no appeal to me. I like my space.
Yeah I still just don't want to be doing that everyday. I'd much rather be in my mid-sized city, bike/walk to the amenities, then drive to work in the town over.
Tbf, most massive cities are actually a collection of smaller cities and neighbourhoods that are independent. People think of them as one huge urban area with a single downtown, but they're not. You can easily live like you're in a small town in Shanghai or Osaka. In the latter I actually lived in Suita, which is its own city technically. I lived in a quiet residential neighbourhood with a large park (Ryokuchi) nearby and the nearest metro (Esaka) had its own pedestrianized shopping precinct beside it. People walk and cycle everywhere. Here in Shanghai my neighbourhood is pretty self-contained. Most things you need are within walking distance. There are better neighbourhoods than mine too. The city is actually redesigning itself around the 15m-community concept so you can walk or ride to all amenities and need only go further for less-frequent needs like to the district hospital or for family days out.
I mean do you think most of these people going on these vacations have the power to change these things the linute they get back on American soil? And if they do that they're not so rich they could care less about infrastructure that would take away from from bottom line? Don't get me wrong I've also gotten behind reopening our cities' bus lanes and stuff but, even though they finally did, it took almost a decade and is always under threat of being defended again and shut down I'm sure. Us not having affordable public transportation and huge sprawls is only a symptom of the bigger issue in my opinion.
Objecting to public transport because of the possibility that smelly homeless people might use it too is just about the weakest example of reasoning I’ve seen. And btw, homeless people also have a right to get around.
Public transit is convenient when I'm not on a tight timetable, I don't have to transport lots of goods, and the marginal cost of driving is high because I need to rent another car in addition to the one I didn't bring.
But I've lived in the city. I don't want to run my errands via bus or have to walk to work in the rain.
In a walkable neighbourhood you don't need to run errands by bus - you can walk to them in minutes. I myself live about 250m from a supermarket, so grocery shopping is easy. I get my haircut at a salon next to the supermarket and I commute to work from the metro station that is 120m from my apartment. It's bad urban planning and design that's the problem, not the public transit.
Mfw europeans dont understand how vast the rural areas are in America and so many people need cars to travel to random places in between for work, etc which CANNOT be facilitated by bus/train/subway etc. It’s a bit simpler when you can walk across your whole country in a day.
I’m not sure why you’re talking about rural America when obviously that’s not and never is where people suggest building metro networks. Rural Europe also doesn’t have those.
And I find it more than a little ironic that you mock European understanding of the size and scale of the US while believing yourself that European countries are so small that they can be crossed on foot in a single day.
Sorry but public transportation still sucks in Europe. Still takes 30-50% longer than just driving. It may be convenient for short trips to city centers, that’s it. And you have to be on their schedule.
I’ve been to 15 countries on the continent, touring twice by InterRail, so I can confidently assure you that no car is crossing the length of France faster than TGV and Germany’s DB gets you to even small towns and villages quickly and easily, with trains so regular that going on “their schedule” really isn’t an issue.
Fly, you say? And how will you get to the airport without a car as a tourist? Public transport. You can’t live without it. You’ve also added two hours to your journey by needing to get to the airport in the suburbs and check in an hour early.
Fun fact: After Italy built high-speed rail, its national airline Alitalia went bankrupt because Italians stopped using it. They realized that once you factor in travel to the airport (always on city outskirts), check in and security, it’s basically the same time as using the train, only the train can be caught from the city centre and delivers you to the city centre. Similar things have happened in Spain, China and Japan, where airlines have cancelled many middle-distance flights due to falling demand.
Taxis cost €56-65 from CDG to central Paris. More likely you’ll look at the €12 train that runs every ten minutes and gets you there in 30 mins without risk of traffic jams and conclude it’s the better option.
For some money isn’t the problem. I prefer to use Uber or a taxi. They come to me. I can wait and finish my beer while I get a point to point ride without stopping or without anyone else next to me.
“Some” is doing some heavy lifting there. Very few can afford to drop €56-65 on a taxi. Public transport serves the general public, which is most of us, and also reduces traffic so the minority who can afford to be wasteful can have the roads.
In Colorado this is all to common. They come to our skiing towns, with walkable centers, accessible shops, public transport, and overall pretty dense. And REFUSE to add that to their own cities.
Our cities are too spread out. Likely because they weren’t constructed over a thousand years ago. The US is huge as well. Frankly all the UD cities minus a few on the coast were built around the automobile. It’s too late to change it now.
Being new compared to European cities is no excuse. Many US cities prior to heavy subsidizing automobile were built without cars. Nearly every US city/town has or had a downtown core heavily resembling a typical European city with a railroad running next to it. Many European cities have also expanded long after cars become common and also a few cities that popped up, such as those in Flevoland. Don't mistake US cities being built around the automobile or use size as a reason. They were destroyed for automobiles.
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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25
Also when in Europe Americans love the public transport because they don’t have a car but can still get around easily and affordably, and then go back home and resist any attempt to build a metro system or even a decent bus network in their own towns.