Detroit is now home to the country’s first chunk of road that can wirelessly charge an electric vehicle (EV), whether it’s parked or moving.
Why it matters: Wireless charging on an electrified roadway could remove one of the biggest hassles of owning an EV: the need to stop and plug in regularly.
More than 96 percent of the Chinese population lives in the eastern half of that country.
The trains go to the population centers of the 3 and 1/2% on the west side.
Trains service everyone everywhere people are in that country.
There is no concentration of US citizens like this. We are more like the left side of the map than the right. There is no way to service the number of scattered towns we have with one rail line without a truly massive expenditure of resources and I just do not see the point in locking resources into that instead of maintaining current infrastructure for far less
Far better to focus these energies on mass transit within cities themselves without rebuilding from scratch for no reason.
When you talk about maintaining the current infrastructure, you’re talking about completely replacing it anyway at a higher cost since it’s falling apart must be meticulously replaced with crappier materials. Why replace the same slow, century old infrastructure when you can replace it with high speed trains and rail that costs far less?
There are so many obvious reasons to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of transportation.
Because the current infrastructure doesn’t connect the country.
Because that inadequate infrastructure is literally falling apart.
Because poor Americans can’t easily move to places with better opportunity.
Because rail can be enacted extremely quickly and positively impact the lives of 300 plus million people.
Also, you’re completely wrong about the concentration of US population, which is very much concentrated on the east and west coasts.
Affordable transportation benefits a country nationally and individuals immeasurably at a very low cost.
Every country with trains has proven that, even the ones as large as the US.
Can you provide a citation here?
Not nationally, only for a Denver metro track some council person told me about that they ended up spending more money and extra years refurbishing one line than it would have cost to replace multiple lines.
Refurbishing lines in the US, where the tracks are so old we’re replacing them anyway works too, however we can expand and modernize our ancient, prohibitively expensive transportation infrastructure is not as important as doing it.
I have no problem whatsoever with rail expansion.
I just think “cars bad trains good tear it all up” to be a gross oversimplification that isn’t helpful discourse.
Like I’ve said elsewhere in this chain, I am extremely pro-mass-transit - whatever form it takes. Any increase in mass transit is better than not, imo.
No, that’s completely wrong. The US concentrates a lot of population on the eastern seaboard, still has a lot of people as you move towards the Mississippi, but then quickly falls off to nothing as you hit the plains and Rocky Mountains. Picks up again right along the western seaboard.
Yes, we do have a concentration of population a lot like this. Or more accurately, two separate concentration regions with mountains in between.