And I think you still keep missing it, so let me reiterate.
I am not discussing the technicalities of building transportations lines in particular locations, which as every reasonable person would agree, can vary by geography or population density.
What I am discussing is the state of public services in the US, including transportation services. What I said was that the US transportation system (rail or road) sucks, because it is inadequate relative to the demands put on them (in another context it would have been a wonderful system). I also said that it is so not by accident but by design, i.e. because the oligarchy has decided to run a "minimum state" that you can "drown in a bathtub" - and that means scaling down all public services to the necessary barebones.
To which you replied:
> You are the one who misses the point: the Interstate system in the US
> was NOT designed to be the way for people to go on vacation between the
> cities. It was designed principally as the cargo network for trucks (a
> role it fills admirably) and secondarily as a defensive measure: the
> Interstate Highway Commission is still under the budget authority of
> DoD some 60 years after its establishment. The fact that dad can fill
> up the stationwagon and take the family to Yelowstone is way down on
> the list of priorities for that system.
- which reiterates exactly my point - the transportation system (roads in this case) was designed mainly to serve the interests of the oligarchy - moving merchandise and troops - rather than public interests or popular demand. So how am I missing the point?
I would also like to add that the US is one of the most politicized and propagandized societies in the world - so much that politics and propaganda, like air, are a part of every breath you take and thus invisible. This whole discussion about 'efficiency' 'profitability' "feasibility studies' that we hear every day from people who call themselves the government is pure bullshit, wool over the eyes, steaming horse crap forked over by the truckload by sleazy politicians (the best government money can buy).
Feasibility, efficiency and profitability, if they enter the picture at all, are only of secondary consideration while the primary consideration is and has always been - politics. More precisely, pork and barrel politics or bringing in tax dollars extorted elsewhere to one's district to buy influential votes and perpetuate the scheme. This is the essence of the US politics from the day this country was founded.
Perhaps the only and rather brief deviation from the machine politics was the New Deal when the FDR brought a bunch of publicly minded civil servants to government. But that was only an interlude that turned US into a modern state with modern services.
Now it is back to machine politics as usual, and whatever was created during the New Deal and the times following it is going down the drain. This country is indeed a giant built mostly of papier mache and plywood, and standing on clay feet, a Potemkin village writ large - any traveled person who can look beneath color posters and window dressing can see that.
Wojtek