The number of people in America who live half an hour from the nearest freeway is so small as to be irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting that 0% of trips be taken by car. It's fine if your grandmother drives around. It does not matter in the big picture.
What matters is if the 82% of Americans who live in cities are forced to crawl through sprawling car-choked landscapes, or are able to live in a walkable environment. High reliance on cars prevents the latter.
By the way you were wrong about that Japan vs US comparison as well. USA has a higher proportion of urban residents than does Japan. And they have plenty of trains in Japan.
82% of Americans do not live in cities. Rather, they live in areas classified as urban (which really means not rural) by the census bureau. Here's the definition: "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters."
Yes, I'm guessing that many of those urban areas are within half an hour of a freeway--though this may be less true in the West. But the vast majority of those 82% don't live in places that are remotely walkable.
Oh no, you're wrong. Public transport literally CANNOT work... after all, it didn't work in the USA. It's fundamentally impractical, and countries that make it work are performing magic.
/s obviously.
God I hate the responses on threads like this that insist on the impracticality of public transport worldwide because it doesn't work in the US. It's like mass Stockholm Syndrome or something!
Okay you can just stop that shit right now. No one said it's unfeasible everywhere just because it's unfeasible in the US. If you're sick of hearing about the US, I'm sick of every time someone says something about the US, someone else has to chime in and say "yeah but you're wrong because there are other countries". What you're arguing right now is that cars shouldn't exist in the US because public transport works somewhere else. Can you find the hypocrisy there?
Notice how I even said "it works in places like Japan"? Notice that? See it? Good. Now quit acting like like you're being oppressed every time someone mentions the US. Yes, the world is a big place, but guess what? The US exists and a lot of people live there. Deal with it.
Jesus christ it's like I insulted your mother or something.
What matters is if the 82% of Americans who live in cities are forced to crawl through sprawling car-choked landscapes, or are able to live in a walkable environment. High reliance on cars prevents the latter.
By the way you were wrong about that Japan vs US comparison as well. USA has a higher proportion of urban residents than does Japan. And they have plenty of trains in Japan.