[Discussion] What are your opinions on this Not Just Bikes comments on "fixing" North America?
[Discussion] What are your opinions on this Not Just Bikes comments on "fixing" North America?
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I hard disagree on this, and after watching a lot of his content I kind of got the feeling that this was his position. The united states is fucking HUGE. I agree we will not fixed the US within our lifetimes, but there are a lot of major cities that have a good launching point. Mostly in the northeast.
We also have to think about the major CA HSR project that will be finished in our lifetimes, and if that project is a success it could have serious implications for transit across the whole country.
This attitude gets us nowhere. No serious amount of people are going to move out of North America, especially not the United States given how fucking huge and diverse it is. Comments like this actively hurt our cause.
Also he's wrong that "That's not doomerism". It's exactly doomerism, and it anchors the whole problem that doomerism creates: it asks you to be hopeless about changing anything. Indeed, says you are not part of the community if you think things can be changed.
We aren't going to "fix" the whole United States and we don't fucking have to. Do you think there are trains that visit every square inch of the Netherlands? If you think everything must be fixed for it to count, then the Netherlands isn't Fixed, either. Change is done gradually; sometimes gradual change is followed by rapid chaotic change. Look at the way we gained the right to gay marriage or legalized weed in America. I heard people saying they'd never see new weed laws in America as recently as 1 year before states started flipping the script.
Fight to change something, don't just give up. This guy sucks.
And almost all of the transit-related changes are things decided locally. Boston or NYC aren't Amsterdam, but they are very different places for transit with very different potential for solutions than something like a Houston suburb.
You're talking about one high speed rail like that was a divine revelation but in first world countries we call it building infrastructure