this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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Sure, perception can change. When all you have is a car and a highway. It seems outrageous to want an alternative. When you are used to high quality public transport, driving there is a chore.
Driving four hours is an effort that you have to actively take. Plus costs for ownership or rental, fuel and lodging. Americans treat these factors as mundane (and the cultural romanticization of road trips that doesn't exist anywhere else), but they have real costs. Sure, a plane or a train are more expensive. But it offloads a great deal of cognitive costs as well.
The distance itself doesn't change though.
Are things really that bad in Europe? In Japan, non-HSR is cheaper than driving, in China HSR is slightly cheaper than gas, and in vietnam I can even put my motorcycle on the train for less than it would cost to drive.
Trains being more expensive than driving sounds like what happens when you have politicians trying to kill your train system.
Totally depends on the country and the route. I don't live there but have family. They say some train lines are comparable to a plane ticket. Some are cheaper, some are more expensive. The most expensive ones are usually the ones that cross national borders. Though overall the train will always be considered a tiny bit more expensive, it will also be a lot more comfortable. Since the airlines with tickets cheaper than trains usually offer the tiniest seats with zero amenities.
Some countries are better than others as well. In England, trains can get you almost anywhere relatively comfortable and fast (yes, some caveats exist). Spain is rather good in the central regions but many places have spotty coverage. While in Switzerland you can go virtually everywhere except the alps without ever sitting in a car.
The big comparison, that most people fail at, is not just the price of gas. Cars are taxed heavily almost everywhere in the EU. And the tight emissions regulations also require a lot of regular maintenance. So the train will always be more expensive than just the gas, but not more expensive than the bigger picture of car ownership. Plus, if you drive, you're the sod stuck driving the whole way.
"Offloading cognitive costs" for the sake of convenience is ruining this species.
I meant like paying someone else to drive the plane/train/bus. Not the AI kind.
Having to drive everywhere makes people misserable.
Edit: we take for granted the infrastructure required to support a society that drives everywhere in personal cars. That is what is actually driving the species to extinction via climate change.
I wasn't just talking about AI.
Being trapped and anxious makes people miserable; lots of people are scared of driving (because they're bad at it and/or have attached anxiety), and sitting in traffic is frustrating. There's lots of very good reasons to choose mass transit. The unwillingness to be engaged with the task of driving a car for a few hours is not a good reason, it's a symptom of a totally cooked attention span.
A car is not freedom. And the absence of a car is not being trapped. Those are false equivalences. I've been perfectly free and lived a fulfilling anxiety free life without a car. I know how to drive, just never owned one. Because, I've never had a financial or otherwise incentive to do so. You can own a car and still be a trapped and anxious ball of cooked nerves, as I've met many people who are. And on top of all of that they are financially trapped by owning a car they can't afford to pay but also can't afford to not own.
I never once claimed otherwise, that's an argument you invented for me.
You are a bad faith comementer. But it is nice to see a, even if indirect, admission that your comment was just a personal attack and you have no intention of actually owning your words. So, eat them.
What are you even talking about. I said "Being trapped and anxious makes people miserable" in response to your "Having to drive everywhere makes people misserable." It's not the need to drive that sucks it's the circumstances of the drive that suck. Being stuck in traffic is a very different experience than an oceanside highway with nobody around. But that's only half the point because you're ignoring the context of my attention span statement, which was with respect to the "offloading cognitive costs" point. I don't think offloading cognitive costs is a good thing in most circumstances, you should be aware of what you're doing and where you are. It gets complicated with anxiety and hyperawareness and such wherein passive existence is overwhelming (and this is one of the things I was flagging as a "good reason to choose mass transit")
If you choose a slower, more expensive way to get somewhere because you can't put your phone down and focus on the task of getting from point A to B for four hours, and it isn't due to mental fatigue or a disorder like ADHD, then I think it's wasteful and reflects poorly on your character.
Here are more things you pretended I said because people in this community are so used to fighting caricatures of car culture. Calling me a bad faith commenter.