There's no reason buses need to be terrible. Intercity bus service in Mexico is practically luxurious, with big reclining seats that you can actually sleep in and thick curtains that close. In the U.S., there was a startup offering overnight trips between Los Angeles and San Francisco with sleeping pods. They shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, but imagine how nice it would be to wake up at your destination refreshed instead of fighting through LAX at dawn and squeezing into a 737 for one of those "cheap" flights.
I often take Amtrak from Portland to Seattle instead of flying. Theoretically it is a short flight vs a four hour train trip, but consider that the train station is centrally located on both ends, and you can enjoy the decadent spaciousness of even a coach seat on Amtrak, while breathing nice fresh sea level air the entire time, and Amtrak wins easily.
> but imagine how nice it would be to wake up at your destination refreshed instead of fighting through LAX at dawn and squeezing into a 737 for one of those "cheap" flights.
I generally have bad sleeps when I’m staying in a luxurious bed at the Marriott or Hyatt. I cannot imagine that spending a night in something called a sleeping pod would end in anything other than me being up all night unable to sleep.
I think regional airports are great, but I don’t think they can meaningfully compete with intercity coaches. It will never be financially viable to price a commercial flight on a small aircraft at the sub $30 point. I also don’t think the interchange network can possibly have the same level of coverage.
It needs to be possible for people to use public transport to get around, including between smaller destinations, otherwise you’re just completely abandoning the population who can’t drive.
The majority of Americans didn't fly anywhere last year and I'm not sure they would agree with your assessment. This is a case where more democracy — putting region airports on ballots — makes a lot of sense. If the majority of people vote for it, then by all means, subsidize it.
There is a reason why republican government is more effective than a pure democracy.
We have plenty of examples of populist idiocy. Many folks never fly - I’ve actually only ridden an airplane 8 times. But the overall benefit to society is compelling and beneficial to society.
Sports stadiums can be similar, but modern clubs want facilities who luxury features exceeds what the government should provide.
EVs aren’t wasteful. The US alone consumes 9 million gallons of gas a day. It’s not sustainable. If we don’t transition in the next fifty years no one will be driving except for the extraordinarily wealthy.
Oil is made over millions of years and we’re on track to deplete it in under 200 years. We’ll never completely deplete it because the oil that’s left will be uneconomical to extract, but that’s functionally the same thing.
Downvoted this because it's basically just a bunch of off-topic political talking points. They bring nothing relevant to the comment you're replying to.
