American reacts to Why Europe Is Insanely Well Designed

hello how are you good okay thank you for joining me today to see and learn well I'm Gonna Learn why Europe is insanely well designed by obf go check out this channel oh my gosh almost 3 million views wow well you can see right here that they apparently it looks like they have lamp posts just perfectly spaced apart from each other all throughout the whole continent so that must be why this is a map of Europe's mass transit Railway system across oh to 33 countries the yellow lines indicate the presence of a train line and as you can see it's very dense there are hardly any spaces where there isn't any coverage for Railways now if we compare this to a map of rail rail tracks in the US it's a different store it's pretty crap it's pretty crap huh yeah they all just go where to Chicago hurry while pounds of the US have some good mass transit there are large areas of the country which isn't covered by Amtrak the nation's largest passenger rail ours looks like a spider and your guyses looks like a spider web quote of the day road service let me show you another Amtrak the nation's largest passenger railroad service but let me show you another map this time of High-Speed Rail in Europe now obviously high-speed Railways aren't going to be as common as 300 kilometers an hour wow regular speed Railways as they require excellent design strict planning and massive investment and yet as we can see High-Speed Rail is present in Europe which is a stark contrast to the us as you can see from this map while the US does have some higher speed rail I didn't even know we had any how how fast do these go because those one went up to like 300 kilometers per hour um this is kind of a stupid scale travel time at 220 miles an hour what what okay like that doesn't help yeah Aquila line in the northeastern Corridor it's hardly an effective map of Transport Solutions and the Aquila line isn't really that fast either it can reach about 150 miles per hour but averages less than 70. this is not the case for Europe's insanely well-designed railroad let me just see real quick 150 mile per hour or two 241 okay respectable but he said it doesn't even stay at that speed system and you have to remember that Europe's system accomplishes this while spanning 33 different nations in a very diverse continent and I know what you're probably thinking this is just because Europe is smaller than the United States which simply is I wasn't thinking that I've always thought you're all of Europe I assume it's a good amount bigger but I I don't know for sure it's true while the European Union is smaller than the US oh wow it's a lot small darn he tricked me he was like you probably think it's smaller it is Continental Europe has an area that is about 1.04 oh well there you go he keeps tricking me this is the European Union that's not in Europe this is blasphemous stop tricking me I knew Europe was bigger actually it's almost the exact same size four times as much as the us so we can dismiss this argument that the United States can't be that well designed because it's too big Europe simply is better designed I would be a really stupid argument I mean the more the bigger it is the more of a need you have for High-Speed Rail so it should be better designed if it's bigger but and it's not if you're American you might not understand why railroad tracks or public transport as a whole is so important I mean driving a car works fine right well no and Europe showcases why a primary focus on private transportation is so detrimental to a well-functioning Transit System look at these Maps they show the U.S Road Network versus the eu's and as you can see the eu's road network is not nearly as impressive as the US's And yet when you look at some of the most congested cities in the world European countries don't feature particularly prominently in the global rankings this is a pretty shocking information because you'd assume that the country with a more expansive Road network has a lot less congestion especially considering the United States has devoted lots of time and money to their highways so how come Europe is less congested when they have he might have to Define exactly what congested means because congested with people or cars fewer roads well it all comes down to disincentivizing the use of cars and most importantly making an attractive alternative Europe does this by having both private and public transportation infrastructure which technically the US has as well it's just a lot worse but on top of this yeah I've never even used a train I used a Subway Europe makes it pretty expensive to buy own and use a car this is achieved by having high taxes on vehicles and gasoline in fact the thing is Europe I think the entire Society is well more much more well-formed to having you know like uh public transport whereas we'd have to make a lot of drastic changes here in America we all live in houses that are 10 miles away from the grocery store and it's mostly just other houses around you you'd have to walk to get to the train station you'd have to walk 10 miles and people wouldn't want the the train station coming through the neighborhood most people in Europe own a car right though do you do you ever drive it to the train station that seems weird here's a map it's more of a city thing worldwide gasoline prices as you can see European nations are in the top rankings while the US lies at the bottom charging very little but let me be very clear it's only a good idea to make it expensive to drive a car if you have an attractive alternative which America doesn't but Europe does I mean obviously this wouldn't work in the US with its current Transportation infrastructure but in Europe this is a great strategy because you make the roads less congested for those who actually need them and give everyone else an affordable and efficient alternative being Europe's amazing public I guess you could ride your bike to the train but where would you put the bike transport like the trains on the railways this is arguably the better strategy because even though the vast majority of Americans have access to vehicles at around 91 and gas is comparatively cheap it still leaves nine percent who don't have access to Vehicles what are these people who can't afford a car supposed to do they gotta take the bus and that sucks I mean sometimes public transported but also a part of that nine percent are people who intentionally don't own a car because they live in the middle of Times Square and don't need a car isn't even an option or simply two but probably that's probably a pretty small percentage to be honest expensive for money so you've now actively excluded those who owned exactly the most well of from society to make matters worse some U.S cities actually got rid of their public transport to make room for more cars I'm not joking American street cars like trams were actually removed to make way for bigger roads absolutely insane compare that to Oslo Berlin and Madrid where discussions are underway to restrict or even exclude most cars from the city center and let's not forget that when you have cars you also need somewhere to park them and this is yeah that's the thing that sucks about cars it's where things started to become rather ridiculous you see the United States has two billion parking spaces and then the more parking lot to have the more distance you have between locations like between even just shops so now you need the car just to travel through the parking lots you have a mild parking lots to go through to get from Walmart to the restaurant even if it's right next door for 250 million cars that's eight parking spaces per vehicle in Europe it's pretty much a one-to-one with around 250 million public parking spaces four of 300 million cars wow that's actually fascinating that really says a lot I'm not exactly sure what the exact implications of that but they're clearly using their parking spaces much more efficiently and that just means there's a lot less Dead Space being wasted on parking lot I mean the parking lots are huge and usually they're only at 25 occupancy so but to emphasize the Ridiculousness of this even further the area that the US dedicates for car parking is actually larger than the area dedicated for housing people it's honestly unbelievable that people without being squeezed out of American cities due to Regulators wanting to make more room for parking spaces this simply wouldn't fly in the EU as it has a whole policy dedicated to improving open Planning see the EU spends 115 billion euros between 2014 and 2020 to improve city design by making it smarter Greener and more connected simply meaning they allocated funds to make their cities more efficient more connected yeah I don't see any parking garages here it looks so good it's very uh aesthetically just beautiful and better for the environment and better for the environment they really are as the average resident in a typical Western U.S city such as Los Angeles or Phoenix contributes approximately six times more carbon to the atmosphere per capita than an average European city resident this is pure sorry well I don't live in the city so there only the results of not having effective Transport Solutions which saves resources and allows people to move about efficiently and exactly that moving about efficiently is something most of Europe's citizens are able to do as a result of the European Union look at the amount of bikes I want to see the statistic on that there's just so many more bikes and see a lot more healthy people most of Europe's nations are in the European Union which gives the EU citizens a number of perks which includes a free travel area this has been one of the most important achievements of the EU as it makes it possible for an EU citizen to travel freely to other EU member states and stay for up to three months all they need is a passport or even just an ID card now visas no trips to embassies no form filing just head straight over this makes it incredibly easy to travel study and work in other countries and communities and having this level of centralization yeah it's just interesting to even see areas like this where it's people walking through there's no cars there's no there's no it's not even a road it's very important to good design as it gives the smartest people the opportunity to work where they are most useful and since good design obviously requires a lot of complicated problem solving and planning this is very smart another smart thing is the incredible biking infrastructure we see in Europe perfectly illustrated by this map of bipart density in Europe all the purple lines are bike paths and there's clearly a lot of them especially towards the left side of the map but that's just because this is the home of the Dodge the Netherlands now the funny thing is I won't be able to compare this to a map of bipart density in the United States because such a map hasn't been made at least I wasn't able to find any and I can only wonder why but it doesn't look like that anyway what Europe and also the European Union that would be a very pitiful map I'll tell you right now most bike paths are just tiny Lanes that are sometimes to the side of the road if you're lucky you know if you live in like a nicer area or like a city you you can have a bike lane that's you know this big and goes right next to all the cars that are going 60 miles an hour and has achieved is pretty remarkable as it's hard to think of another set of such diverse countries where you would be able to travel so freely in an efficient and inexpensive manner I mean you can literally get from Paris to Amsterdam for example in just three hours for around thirty dollars imagine being able to travel all over Asia without any border crossings checks or visas and being able to stay for months at a time that would be truly amazing and let's not forget that Europe that camera made me a little seasick Stein has always been distinctive and very successful in fact the continent's history of design and interconnectedness serves as a model for the rest of the world but even though Europe and the EU are pretty great and have amazing infrastructure they obviously aren't perfect I love to hear no they're not some of the reasons it might not be so leave a comment down below if you have some thoughts on this but that's he's like they're not perfect I mean I don't know any flaws but I think they're not perfect they must not be perfect that's it for this video thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one uh it looks a lot more homogeneous and tightly packed overall anyway that was interesting some very interesting stats eight times as many parking spots per car in America and there's more parking lot per like more square footage of parking lots than houses okay that's that's mind-blowing I don't even understand that's ridiculous you pretty much need a car in America if you unless you live right in the city right in the middle of the city and you can just walk other than that you pretty much need a car like I would die if I didn't have a car I mean not not actually but I would probably be in much better shape which is the opposite of dying yeah I don't know but my point is I'd have to walk like 10 miles just to get to anything if I didn't have a car and I'm not taking the bus because they're gross like they're actually dirty the ones around here anyway thank you for watching I hope you had a fantastic day and I hope to see you again tomorrow if you feel like it because I'll be here you're you are welcome to come I'll be here you know same time okay uh goodbye

Channel: Ryan Wuzer

Views: 470,831

Keywords: american reacts to uk, Why Europe Is Insanely Well Designed reaction, american reacts to why europe is insanely well designed, american reacts to europe mass transport

Id: cnCQFxACFnI

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023