Derby, CT is a small, working-class, post-industrial town with a population which has been stagnant at about 12,000 for more than six decades.
The geniuses over at the Connecticut DOT decided that this obviously meant that the town’s Main Street needed to be widened, by twice the size, destroying a number of historic buildings and uprooting numerous small community businesses in the process. That red stripe on the far left of the “After” pic is the new edge of the street.
When small towns start disappearing, it’s often because they are no longer economically or socially relevant. Decline of local industries, reduced agricultural activity, lack of job opportunities, population migration…
The town is clearly on a downward trend. 60 years with no growth is not a positive thing.
Business owners just don’t randomly sell because the DOT wants to widen a road.
The town is already gone.
then why build the fucking road!?
People with drastically more information, data, and money decided this is the right call. These decisions are not made in a box and the town (mayor/chamber of commerce) is always involved.
What if the reason more people don’t stop in the town is because the narrowwness made it a difficult to visit the town?
People drastically more involved than any of us decided this is the correct course of action to revitalize the downtown.
people with drastically more information data and money than me decided to tear up the whole country’s rail networks and start using this shit.
so I’m sure you’ll forgive me for assuming they’re fucking morons when they do something that looks stupid as shit.
.Assumimg youre refering to the US, fixed rail is not a feasible mode of transportation for 90+% (ignoring something like a subway or monorail) of travel in modern America. Intra-city or between a major metropolis, sure. But that still exists… you can still take them… because the utility of them keeps them alive…
okay so why the shit were they using it perfectly fine a century ago? with overhead wire?
why are there all these abandoned towns and grain elevators and farmland scattered over rural america that no longer works now that the trains can’t get there anymore? why the shit did it work for the deepest most remote ass end of nowhere villages in rural mexico during the diaz administration? why did it work for the USSR-of all their fuckups; they did make trains to rural areas work pretty damn well.
you’re repeating bullshit auto industry propaganda. trains may service rural areas differently, but they can be served, and they can be served well. we know this because it’s been done before on I think three continents. do better.
I don’t know what sort of copium you’re smoking. I lived in rural Michigan for most of my life. Train is absolutely not a viable mode of transportation for rural America. There’s a reason trains and subways still exist on the east coast of America and in most or Europe, Asia, and south America - they are useful.
They died out everywhere else because guess what, they are not ideal at all, and the convenience factor of cars is basically unbeatable. Even if we had a high-speed rail connecting our major cities, okay, how do I get to my destination? Another train? What about when I live 35 miles from the city center… another train…? Sounds absolutely atrocious
asphalt roads in your climate are not practical. the maintenance is CONSTANT. rails would be much lower maintenance. trains work. they have worked. I’ve told you where to look for examples, for actual history of this working. you are not more remote than a rural village in fucking siberia. you’re not more spread out than pre-industrial mexico. I have told you where to look for examples of better, to correct your idea of history without having to believe me, and you’re just here arguing your anachronistic propaganized historical fiction at me.
why are you even here, on fuckcars, if you’re just so comitted to them and not willing to imagine better?
yeah living rural is fucking inconvenient sometimes. that’s part of the point. honestly, it’s part of the charm. so you can’t go to walmart on the spur of the moment every second of every day. boofuckinghoo. I survived living rural by having a garden, solar, micro-wind, and bicycle backup. I’d have had a battery instead of a shed of janky capacitors, but it was a while ago and I was poor. what the fuck are you even doing out there without that?
cars are unsustainable. not “difficult to sustain”, UNfuckingsustainable. cannot be sustained. every second we try to hold onto this shit costs us, ruins what we get next, robs the next generation by another tiny fraction, steals hours from their lives. even if you were right, which you were not, I’d say you’re shit out of luck and your way of life needs to end. it doesn’t, because you’re wrong, but, like, if you weren’t.
edit: oh, and there’s an indigenous group running their own railroad somewhere in the ass end of nowhere WAY north of you. i forget if its just one tribe or a little bigger, but this is a rural community who decided to service themselves with trains, and they seem happy with it.
so if these people with more information and money always make the right decisions, you’d be fine with them knocking on your door and taking you to prison, right?