According to this graphic https://www.hunterurban.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Car-L... 57.3% of children (0--18yo) are in a household with a car. There's a weighting issue here, but I'd still bet that most families in NYC have a car.

It's not only the mileage. Age is very important too. Look at any car advert - it's the age that is highlighted first. Mileage only if it is unusually low.

Many components degrade simply due to time, especially things like rubber seals.

I took Caltrain regularly pre-pandemic when I had a job in Palo Alto and going to SF. It was not bad at all. Other cities like NYC had way more packed trains.

While things are bad for some people, calling the bottom 20% living in Hell is an exaggeration that is nowhere near correct. People always complain about their situation and think it is somehow much worse than other people, so if you see someone who is in worse shape you can think it is a living hell. However the reality is very different, and if you step back and look you discover most people in that bottom 20% are happy overall despite having imperfections.

Which is a more likely explanation for why banks did not make loans in redlined neighborhoods?

A) Every bank is run by racists who are sufficiently racist to ignore a profit opportunity

B) The neighborhoods are bad credit risks

Yes, transit costs a total X. In the car regime everyone puts in a small amount towards public transit and roads and richer folk put high amounts towards cars, totalling X. In the public transit regime everyone puts in a medium amount towards roads and public transit, and a negligible amount of tradespeople and construction companies buy their work vehicles, totalling X.

You can choose the car regime if you want, the US does, but: 1- public transit is lower quality due to higher income brackets choosing cars. 2- everyone is screwed by the cars' negative externalities (noise and air pollution mainly). 3- lower income brackets are screwed by the traffic generated by the higher guys (50 minimum wage workers occupying the same lane space as 3 SUV-driving middle managers). Also you have to remember how much the mortality increases in higher car traffic areas, so that X figure isn't really true

That's just because the roads are built out by the Department of Transportation no?

Like if you had to drive on toll roads built underground then nobody would ever drive (see Hyperloop). I think the big mistake being made is people are arguing for free subways and really we should just go to free buses first.

Minimum hourly wage is a terrible metric - very few people make that wage. In your areas where transit is most useful it is also the most economically productive so even less people are making minimum wage than the normal population. I don't the cities in question, but in general these days minimum wages is what you see paid in the economically depressed dying small towns, or people so disabled (generally mentally) that they cannot do your easiest fast food jobs.

How do costs compare for average people in that area is a much better metric. (understand that in transit areas I'd expect people with cars to have newer luxury cars, while in more car centric areas I'd expect more used non-luxury cars, and in poor areas worn out cars - which is itself a skew of the facts)

Looking at the Swedish railway, the issue is related to budget but the problem is not that simple. The main issue is that the railway system lacks redundancy in track capacity, meaning that any failure require short term fixes in order to reduce short term losses. Those short term fixes eventually leads to overall higher downtime and higher failure rates, which only lead to a even more focus on quick fixes and shoddy repairs. Building out new capacity becomes too expensive and takes too long time, and takes money from the budget that is needed to do all the quick fixes that pop up. When those lines become too popular, the pressure only increases to continue do quick fixes, since any downtime has even larger impact both on the straining cargo traffic and passenger throughput.

It becomes like the meme when people talk about nuclear power. Sure, it would had been an good idea 10-20 years ago, but there is no time to do it now and it cost too much. Next year will be even later, and it will cost even more. Any new funding need to be channeled directly to the starving short-term budget, which will continue to always be too low on funding.

This is backwards. The public transit lobby is the Green/climate lobby which is absolutely massive and incredibly influential because it peddles to politicians a unifying moral story about the end of the world that justifies unlimited exercise of political power.

What does the auto industry have in response? Jobs? The left don't care about jobs to begin with, they view anything linked to capitalism or employers to be inherently suspicious.

To see this is true, just look at which group is a net tax payer vs net tax recipient. Car drivers subsidize public transport everywhere I know of (unless you get into stupid arguments that assume world peace exists solely for the purpose of oil transport).

Inability to competently manage finances within the framework of populist democratic politics is one of the top reasons governments suck at running things and "public *" often ends in failure.

No, auto industry is dying in Germany and was more powerful in the past. German railway collapse is a recent phenomenon. It's the inverse: the Green push to make everyone use public transport is collapsing both the auto industry and public transit there.

When I said transit I mean mass transit. Most people do not refer to roads as transit even though they are part of your transportation network.

They're not cheaper, that's an illusion and lie sold by the automobile and petroleum industries.

The interstates in the US alone have costed more than 25 trillion dollars. That's just the interstates, no other highways or roads.

But none of that even considers cost of using said roads. In the US, on average 15% of gross income is spent on automobile transportation.

That's a 15% tax right off the top, before your other taxes.

Rails can and are used to transport freight. Trucks contribute a lot to bad traffic and therefore the same kind of blockage you mentioned.