One reason that people embraced automobiles was because they revived the promise of individual freedom. Compared with railroad travel, motorists were unhampered, free to follow their own path.
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Despite early successes of transportation modes such as railways, streetcars and subways, mass production of automobiles lowered prices, and more roads led many Americans to buy cars.
By 1930, most streetcar systems were aging and losing money. Service to the public was suffering; the Great Depression compounded this. Yellow Coach tried to persuade transit companies to replace streetcars with buses, but could not persuade the power companies that owned the streetcar operations to motorize.
Between an 18-year span following the year after World War II, 1946, passenger traffic declined from 770 million to 298 million by 1964. By the 1950s total industry losses on passenger rail service was over $700 million. Commuter trains declined by 80% from over 2,500 in the mid-1950s to under 500 by the late 1960s.
While the US was a passenger train pioneer in the 19th century, after WWII, railways began to decline. The auto industry was booming, and Americans bought cars and houses in suburbs without rail connections. Highways (as well as aviation) became the focus of infrastructure spending, at the expense of rail.
HOW SAFE ARE TRAINS? Trains are statistically much safer than driving. In 2020, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics recorded 40,867 total deaths from travel, including in planes, in cars on highways and on trains.
Most people who live in New York City don't own cars, finding it far more convenient to use the city's elaborate public transport system of buses, subway, and trains to get around boroughs and out of town. Of course, there are those famous yellow taxis to get you from point A to point B too.