jon_banquer wrote:
On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 1:18:41 PM UTC-7, Cydrome Leader wrote:

losing ground to what?

To places like Europe, Japan and China who take rail mass transit seriously.

Was there a competition? Mass transit has never been "taken seriously"
here. People like cars in the US, not sittingon trains that quite honestly
don't even go anywhere meaningful in the first place anyways. A total of
once I made the decision to take Amtrak somewhere as it was faster and
cheaper than flying. I've definetly not shaking my fists in anger over it.
I just don't bother with cross country train trips.

As for intercity type transit, we have a pretty decent system in the
Chicago metropolitan called Metra, which is just passenger trains on
freight tracks. Works great, covers a lot of area too. No real complaints
there.

here's a simple Metra system map:

http://metrarail.com/content/metra/e...ystem_map.html

Within the city we have the the CTA. Old, slow, pretty poorly run overall,
but still an extensive system. It does work and serves its purpose. Here's
a simple system map:

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets...tatrainmap.png

So in a major city like here, yes you can get by with no car at all.
That's not the case in smaller cities though.