Solo traveler Adventurous Kate recently wrote about her woes over the American train travel system.
While she boasts about "the sleek bullet trains of Japan to the impossibly comfortable cars on Austria’s first-class cars to the ultimate luxury journey on rails, the Blue Train in South Africa," she claims America's AmTrak system leaves something to be desired.
With expensive rates, few expansions, a weak route network and a business class that compares to economy in most other countries, Kate wonders if any politicians who discuss train travel in the platforms will ever actually do anything to make America less car-centric.
95 percent of American homes own a car, and 85 percent use those vehicles to get to work each day, according to state.gov. Only a few cities in the U.S. have public transportation reliable enough to void not owning a car, with New York City claiming the lowest car ownership rate at 50 percent of households.
What do you think? Is America too car-centric, or are we just lucky enough to be financially stable enough to focus on individual transportation? Would you rather America have a more public-transportation mindset like many European countries that Kate mentioned? Comment below with your opinion.
