“Society” is a very complex and complicated topic to tackle even on the best of days, and asking about making a change to modern society (as a thought experiment) is not easy.

What part of the world are we looking at? What cultures would be impacted the most/least?

Personally, the idea of transportation is something that comes to mind when I think about society. The reasons? Well, for starters, in the United States, most of our major cities were built around the need for individual automotive transport. Cars, SUVs, and Trucks. Some of these major cities became so densely populated that traffic is incredibly bad and there are even large chunks of their populace that have never bothered to get their drivers license! Public transportation in those cities supplements their needs well enough.

Another thing to consider, that seems to come up as a repeat meme every week, is the sheer distance between the East Coast and West Coast. (The joke is that someone from Europe is in Florida, at Disney World, and they want to know when the park closes because they want to go to Los Angeles.) This calls to mind, for me, the increased need for individuals and families to own a vehicle if they live outside those major cities. Outside of New England/the East Coast area, the public transportation infrastructure just doesn’t support traveling between cities. Interstate and cross country travel almost always requires owning your own vehicle or catching a flight. Yes, there are buses and trains, but they’re not as commonly used, which is where I’m going with all of this.

Making cities more walkable/easier for non-motorized vehicle ground traffic is practically impossible at this point. So instead of focusing on that, looking toward interstate travel changes is what I had in mind.

The passenger train system of the United States has hundreds of stations covering 21,400 miles (34,000 km) of tracks, but the issue is that there are only a handful of tracks that cover East-West travel cross country, and only a handful that cover North-South (primarily along the coasts or in the eastern half of the country.) Where I live, I would have to travel a couple hundred miles South or Northeast by other means to reach one of the nearest stations, and those tracks then only run East-West. There is no track running North-South in my area, the nearest one is roughly 500 miles away to my East, or three times that distance West.

So, what would I change about modern society? There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on (yes I can, it’s the local and federal governments being in the pockets of the automotive giants) that is preventing the development of rail transit. My belief is that if we could develop solid rail transit between major cities, then things would be better. To be fair, I don’t know ALL the details, so it’s entirely possible I missed something, I’m not perfect, but I was definitely taking environmental and public health factors into account.

Also, if I’m being honest, I just REALLY want to ride a train once in my life without it costing an arm and a leg.