that’s part of it, but also the continental US is massive and divided by two pretty impactful mountain ranges. Not defending our lack of train infrastructure but we came of age pretty much in line with the rise of the Jet era along with our culture of individualism and the massive expansion of public interstate hiways due to one specific president’s expierence as them being useful tools for self powered land based military vehicles so obviously that was prioritized over investing in new rail infrastructure in the interceding years.
Point being, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved with why we are where we are in regards our national rail network—would be nice to hop on an hourly train and zoop from Boston to LA in 6 hrs for like $50 but we also just elected Trump again for incomprehensible reasons so in all likelihood there will be a nuclear wasteland in between those two cities, which will need additional plates to be spun up to deal with.
Isn’t the USA about the same size as Europe? I think Europe might actually be bigger. We also have a bunch of mountain range dividing up our continent too.
(Not denying the rest of your comment, just pointing out)
if you include eastern, and western europe, they’re comparable. The problem here is that most of the US population is centered on the coasts, and in the midwest, and a bit of the south, so most rail infrastructure would be useful there, everything between about illinois, and nevada is a wasteland of like, 12 people living there.
this (mind you, single country made of disparate states) was only contentiously “settled” about 300 years ago—Europe has had a pretty consistent and coherent cultural thrust for thousands of years, regardless of various clan-based spats, and a consistent build up of infrastructure to match. The US is the product of stolen land, a whole lot of racism and slavery and then being thrust into the center of the world stage right at the point when means of conveyance drastically shifted from ships and trains to planes and cars. the end result is the completely horrific infrastructure of the modern US landscape.
Neither the post nor the comment limited themselves to the EU. Europe as a whole (10,014,000 km²) is in fact very slightly larger than the US. In this context you could argue that neither USA’s Alaska nor all the barren tundra in Europe should really count, then the contiguous 48 could be bigger depending on how how much of Russia you leave out.
thats what you get when you put car and oil billionaires in charge
that’s part of it, but also the continental US is massive and divided by two pretty impactful mountain ranges. Not defending our lack of train infrastructure but we came of age pretty much in line with the rise of the Jet era along with our culture of individualism and the massive expansion of public interstate hiways due to one specific president’s expierence as them being useful tools for self powered land based military vehicles so obviously that was prioritized over investing in new rail infrastructure in the interceding years.
Point being, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved with why we are where we are in regards our national rail network—would be nice to hop on an hourly train and zoop from Boston to LA in 6 hrs for like $50 but we also just elected Trump again for incomprehensible reasons so in all likelihood there will be a nuclear wasteland in between those two cities, which will need additional plates to be spun up to deal with.
Isn’t the USA about the same size as Europe? I think Europe might actually be bigger. We also have a bunch of mountain range dividing up our continent too.
(Not denying the rest of your comment, just pointing out)
if you include eastern, and western europe, they’re comparable. The problem here is that most of the US population is centered on the coasts, and in the midwest, and a bit of the south, so most rail infrastructure would be useful there, everything between about illinois, and nevada is a wasteland of like, 12 people living there.
this (mind you, single country made of disparate states) was only contentiously “settled” about 300 years ago—Europe has had a pretty consistent and coherent cultural thrust for thousands of years, regardless of various clan-based spats, and a consistent build up of infrastructure to match. The US is the product of stolen land, a whole lot of racism and slavery and then being thrust into the center of the world stage right at the point when means of conveyance drastically shifted from ships and trains to planes and cars. the end result is the completely horrific infrastructure of the modern US landscape.
The United States (9,826,630 km2 / 3,794,080 sq mi) is larger than the European Union (4,233,262 km2 / 1,634,472 sq mi)
Neither the post nor the comment limited themselves to the EU. Europe as a whole (10,014,000 km²) is in fact very slightly larger than the US. In this context you could argue that neither USA’s Alaska nor all the barren tundra in Europe should really count, then the contiguous 48 could be bigger depending on how how much of Russia you leave out.
China, about 9.7M km2
Edit: is your size source right? I found somewhere that says China is 9.7M km2 vs US which is 9.3M km2
https://www.worldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/
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