Transport culture in the USA is very different from Europe. Here, the car is king. The country is organised to support driving: roads are wide, straight, and easy to travel on for long distances, fuel is cheap, and most towns are not compact, with few living within easy walking distance of local shops.

Meanwhile, public transport in the US is typically poor, and a very different experience from travelling in Europe. I think the US psyche is resistant to public transport. The country has a strong sense of individual freedom and self-help. The private car embodies these ideals. Americans appear to see public transport as unreliable, and reliance upon it a source of insecurity – which it certainly is. There is also limited support for collectivist projects such as public transport in the USA. By contrast to Europe, taxpayer-funded projects require a lot of justification – with low taxes and small government a powerful political philosophy. Indeed even in the more progressive state of California, a project linking the two wealthy cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles by high-speed rail was recently cancelled.

I recently embarked upon a trip from Davis, California, hundreds of miles north to Portland, towns and state parks on the northwest Oregon coast, and then Tacoma and Seattle in Washington state. During the course of this journey my girlfriend and I travelled on four Amtrak trains (two of which were overnight trains of 16 and 24 hours long), over 30 buses within and between cities and towns, several lifts from friendly Americans, several taxis, and many miles of walking. The journey emphasised just how powerful the driving culture is in the US, and just how poor public transport is.

Why does it matter if public transport is so poor in the US, if most people have cars and fuel is cheap? I think there are three important reasons why it matters.

Firstly, for various reasons, not everyone has a car. For those who must rely on public transport there is limited freedom; public transport services are very expensive, unreliable, poorly coordinated, and often infrequent. Those who are poor are particularly isolated, being unable to afford taxis or calling upon friends for a ride. The poor are offered poor public transport, and we wonder why they can’t escape poverty? Indeed, a recent Harvard study found commuting time to be the most important factor in escaping poverty. Those who rely upon public transport the most are some of the most vulnerable in society, and yet I saw very little compassion from bus and rail conductors to these people. I was caught up in one incident when my girlfriend and I tried to help a black man who had had issues purchasing his train ticket from an un-staffed station. We explained the situation to the white train conductor when the train arrived and asked to buy his ticket on-board. The behaviour of the conductor was in my view disgraceful, he showed no emotional intelligence or flexibility to the situation, instead behaving provocatively and escalating tension by initially asking for the police. The gentleman was not allowed on the train – the last one that night.

Secondly, poor public transport matters because social cohesion and strong communities cannot be cultivated by private services alone. Public spaces, public services, and public amenities all support the principle of equality and shared lives between citizens. How else do people from different socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds meet and speak to each other? Without these interactions I don’t think you can have a society that is strong or desirable. It feels like many people rely upon their car so much that they never walk through their cities, and if they did do this then they may become more aware of the scale of the homeless and health problems in America.

Finally, poor public transport matters because of climate change. Whilst we are making progress in decarbonising some sectors of the economy, transport remains a stumbling block. The risk that private cars pose to climate change targets is particularly acute in the US where there are few incentives to drive more fuel-efficient cars or take public transport. Private road vehicles dominate the 28% share of USA carbon emissions that come from transport. The US Department for Transport estimates private car travel accounts for around half of a households carbon emissions, and that the most effective way to reduce this is to increase public transport use.

To change public transport for the good of America’s poor, communities, and the climate, relative prices of car versus public transport will be crucial. Car fuel is very cheap, whilst public transport options for long-distance travel are expensive, if available at all. I am shocked at the price of Amtrak tickets, although when you consider that Amtrak is a for-profit company with no competition (excepting several long-distance coach options – also often expensive). European rail by contrast is mostly run by state companies which cannot profit, or in the UK the rail franchise system encourages competition by requiring operators to re-bid for their service contract after around 7 years.

The future for public transport in the US sometimes appears bleak to me. Driving culture is so strong that it will be very resistant to the kind of transformations that climate change action requires in our lives. Nevertheless, there is a growing movement to support these kind of transformations, exhibited by the global school strikes for the climate and national support for the Green New Deal, a publically-funded proposal to decarbonise the economy in a socially just way. Many US cities such as Portland, Milwaukee and Oklahoma City have invested heavily in public transport recently. With powerful environmental and social reasons to reform how transport works in the USA and some cities leading the way, the argument now needs to be made for bold action in every town and city across the USA.

For more information, and one of my sources, I found this video by Wendover Productions (‘Why Public Transportation Sucks in the US’ very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA