A more realistic future

The one with a stop within 3 miles of your house, and a connecting bus that runs through every 15-30 minutes can take you closer. Or if you're like me leave the bike at the station and bike home after.

Probably the one running on the line closest to your house.

The North American mind can't comprehend cities where there's no split between residential/urban areas, and every mode of public transportation goes from your house to anywhere you want. Even the next town or country

Is it possible the European mind can't comprehend how big North America is?
- The fuck does that have to do with intracity travel?
- Russia, which is even bigger, has loads of trains.
- Maybe but a brief look at statistics e.g. https://www.statista.com/statistics/254155/inbound-travel-from-western-europe-to-the-us/ and https://www.statista.com/statistics/311580/outbound-travel-from-the-us-to-europe-by-destination/ seems to show that in 2019 14 millions from Western Europe went to the United States while 12 millions from the US visited Western Europe. I'm not sure what's the overlap between Western Europe and Southern Europe visitors but I'd argue the order of magnitude appears similar. Consequently and keeping in mind the population size, if travelers to and from have any significance to the understanding of the size of a place, then comprehension would be about equivalent.
  
  Depends where they go though. I'm guessing people on both sides mostly visit a select few cities in WE or US, and don't really get a feel for the sprawl of the country in general.
  The US is mindbogglingly large, whereas finding remote spots in WE is more of a challenge.

Imagine a world without the need for a car. There's probably a train station that's in walking distance. Maybe 10-15 minutes. More than that, possibly a quick bus to the corner of your street.

In this world, the grocery store is also a 10-15 minute walk, possibly near the station. Instead of loading up on $200 of groceries once a week, you buy a few pieces on your way to work and/or back home.

There's a nice public park, a library, and even a promenade somewhere also a short walk away. Various retail shops and service centers of all kinds (electronics, home and goods, hardware, appliances) could literally be your downstairs neighbors.

Even if all of these aren't exactly close to you or your train station, they can be a short bus or train ride away. You walk more, bike more. You have a backpack and side racks for the bike. Your health improves, and you interact more with the people of the area.

Welcome to many cities of the world, even in the US.

Re on groceries, another awesome tool that I like for living car-lite in the south of all places is grocery delivery. For 50 buckaroos a year Walmart will bring your groceries straight to your doorstep, no bullshit required. No driving to the local supermarket, no slow crawling looking for parking, no darting through a sketchy looking parking lot at night, no crowded aisles and dodgy people on motor carts inside, no half hour long line for checkout, no please remove item from the bagging area calling an attendant to give your introverted ass a heart attack from an unwarranted conversation. Literally open the website add items and it just shows up at my door the next day. I also feel I make my money back because I'm not spending on impulse purchases. And I can shop in my underwear if I feel like it!
Sure our cities could be much better but you do realize there are communities in America that can't even provide reliable safe drinking water let alone an entire new infrastructure for their small, low income population? Or already overburdened underfunded system so nothing is working efficiently and just adding more to the docket?
Probably gonna get shit for this but I find the fuck cars people to be as narrow sighted and obnoxious as vegans. I love your vision, I really do. But damn I have a hard time not being exasperated every time I read a post.
- Hi vegan here. Okay not really, I'm from the south and we eat the hell out of ground beef pork bbq etc all the time lmao.
  Just because a small low income populated city is having financial troubles does not mean that the large and medium sized cities cannot do better with how lackluster they are being. Cincinnati can have some bus and transit improvements despite Appalachia to the east having ghost towns everywhere. Detroit can have a light rail network and commuter buses despite Flint having a water crisis. And Houston should never have cancelled their mass transit plans of MetroNEXT because their new mayor hates the idea of it and picked cabinet members to kill it, even if we are in the midst of an immigration crisis to the south.
- Approximately half of the entire US population lives in large urban areas. 115,000,000 people. Large urban areas can benefit from higher density housing, as well as what I previously mentioned, and so much more.
  And the money is there.
  Yet, somehow, every time improvements using transit are suggested, every single fucking time, someone mentions the complexities of rural areas.
  Maybe let's fucking start somewhere we know it could work, and then branch out.
  But can we fucking START‽
- not subsidizing petroleum would probably bring in a few tax dollars
Sure, now imagine all those things in Germany:
The train comes every 30 minutes, but oh whoops there's a 30 minute delay that's keeping the other trains behind delayed. So rather than getting home on time for dinner, you eat shit from a vending machine. Oh and we need to prioritize passengers going between the main cities, so the provincial trains will need to wait. Oh, and tomorrow there's a strike. Oh and the fare costs 10€ if you travel more than 5km.
The bus comes regularly but it meanders between small villages nowhere near your final destination, so takes 30 minutes longer than it should.
Just to be clear, I'm not against trains and I am definitely against cars. But I do think E-bikes are the way forward for any journey less than 100km

T-R-A-M

Trams are smaller trains to get to trains (and elsewhere but mostly trains)

Probably the u-bahn since you clearly live under a bridge.