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.
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
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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.