united states: hey you know how we have a pretty extensive railway system?
united states: looks like this? it’s basically everywhere?
americans: yes we are aware
united states: what if we pretty much only gave you this amount of track to use for public transportation? this is good right?
This is actually really interesting in the “I want to kill everyone” sort of way:
Back when oil was getting popular for use in personal modes of transportation, the companies that provided it decided to hand together and corner the market. Before personal vehicles, railways of various kinds, INCLUDING streetcars and trollies, were MASSIVELY popular. These companies either outright bought companies or, together, bought enough ownership in the companies to either directly shut them down, scale them back, or make them shift focus away from public transportation so as to force personal vehicle acquisition.
This is why AmTrak only has this little portion of publicly accessible railway: people used to be allowed to ride wherever they wanted but oil companies got greedy.
