• utopianfiat@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    You tell me; your community was likely first built by having a train line drawn out to it in the frontier era, and later had the tracks scuttled due to obsolescence and overt state support for the motor vehicle alternative.

    Rural rail has been done and is still done in pretty much every country that’s not the USA. If you’re a farmer, there’s a lot of rationale to having rail built out to whatever market terminal you sell your product at. It’s not unheard of for farmers to build out small private rail lines across the farm to transport goods, equipment, themselves, etc.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know a country as spread out as the U.S. that has practical rail in all rural areas. Certainly not Canada or China or India.

      • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Canada is carbrained like the US, but China and India actually have extremely profuse rail networks.

      • spiphy@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The U.S. The U.S. was that country. The country was built by train.

        Oh, and 80% of the population lives in cities!

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          And that 80% of the population should have robust public transit.

          Then there’s the rest of us who don’t live in cities. The train never went out to farmer’s fields in the hopes of picking up people here and there who happened to live between them. That’s nonsense.