[rayval]

The article mentions how global cities outside the US are building out urban rail systems.

Here's some more detail about China, which has the two largest transit systems in the world: Shanghai and Beijing.

In 1993, Shanghai had one line running 2.7 miles with 4 stations. Less than 30 years later, the system had 15 lines, 500 miles of track, and 500 stations. [1]

And in that same time frame, the Beijing subway system was expanded, from 2 lines in 2002 to 27 lines and 500 miles of track, with 13 million riders per day in 2022. [2]

Also in that time, 30 other cities in China got subway systems as well.[3]

In 1993, China's per-capita GDP was $537. By comparison, per-capita GDP in the US was 50 times larger (about $23k). Since then, the gap has narrowed. US per-capita GDP is now 5x of China (66k vs 12k).

China demonstrates that, even with small GDP, if you prioritize the needs of the people over entrenched commercial interests, it can be done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Shanghai_Metro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway [3] https://qz.com/1010911/a-beautiful-data-animation-shows-the-...

[shiroiushi]

In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere. And their all-suburban cities aren't dense enough to make it work economically or practically anyway: everything is just too far apart.

Finally, the largest transit system in the world isn't in China, it's in Tokyo, Japan (though to be fair, it isn't really a single system since it's run by many different companies).

[Kbelicius]

> In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere.

Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks. Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewhere with a good public transit and walkability?

[fragmede]

> all-suburban cities aren't dense enough to make it work economically or practically

I'm not sure why we even call those cities, because they're not. They're big sprawling towns.

[HDThoreaun]

> China demonstrates that, even with small GDP

China's public transit success was because of their small gdp per capita, not in spite of it. Their developing economy gave them labor at slave wages and allowed the government to just bulldoze peoples houses without much backlash. Not having those things are the biggest problems the US faces when it comes to building infrastructure.