> Yeah, and if you ever had to leave the city, it was a multi-day dangerous journey by horse-back to get anywhere.

Not so much. There used to be inter-city rail that people used regularly.

This old railroad map (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4121p.ct001917/?r=0.329,0.288,...) shows how dense and sprawling the railroad network was, even in 1900. Towns like Rhinelander, WI (and ones even smaller) that aren't even served by inter-city bus routes today had regular train service.

That is a different problem needing a different solution. The problem at hand is transit and congestion in cities.

Obviously the automobile is the problem and bikes and public transit is the solution, which we can see has happened here in Olso but also famously in Amsterdam and Copenhagen before it. There is no excuse and reason for having cars in city centers, after you build out good bike, bus, and train transit inside a city.

I am fully in the hate-cars bandwagon and I don't drive myself, but I have no objection to any sorts of park-n-ride style solutions. Cars are very time-efficient for long journies and they aren't terribly fuel-inefficient for those long journies considering how much infrastructure investment would be needed to establish good rail service, but within a city cars are silly.

I've always wanted to establish high tolls on entering dense urban areas, you can leave all the roads as-is but introduce a high tax on driving that last mile and supply free busing to compensate, some rich dudes will still drive everywhere but after a few years of high tolls you could probably ban cars outright with good public support.

If all limited access roads were toll roads that kept traffic stoppage to a minimum (trying for zero) by active pricing, the world would be such a better place in many ways. People could plan much better for how long a trip would take, people would have much shorter travel times, investors would have some idea of the revenue potential of roads so they could decide to build more of them.

The key would be to have the toll be quite low generally and make most of its money when there is high demand. In many countries the tolls are set to maximize revenue and this usually done by having a very high toll and almost empty roads. What would better for most people would be almost free roads (trucks always pay something as they are what wears out roads) and charge when the road is getting close to slowing down.

Also: Maybe it is a good idea to let your highly productive people (rich dudes) be able to get around cities quickly. They will be even more productive that way.

Annnnndddddddddddddddd, massive traffic jams and a single point of delay. Thank you njabore, that’s very cool!

Isn't there a chicken-and-egg problem especially in US cities? The typical low-density suburban sprawl in american urban areas was "fueled" by the car/oil and housing industry in a much larger scale then in other similar developed countries. This lifestyle was nothing less then the american dream - no? In the same time the economy and the urban centers are expanding and everything is built around the autombile lifestyle. So yes, today it wouldn't be possible to simply scratch the car out of the equation, simply because it's heart and center of the urban america. But without the onesided accent on individual motor car traffic, america would probably have a different landscape that made public transport much more cheaper and convenient.

The train network connected every city. It was incredibly dense.

Again, more than half of Americans do not live in a city. Being able to get from one city center to another solves none of the problems that having a car solves.

They connected every town too. You're being over literal. And have you never seen a Western movie?

Every tiny spot had a train station.