Yeah, so to break down what the others are saying - I could take a bus to work in my Midwestern city. I need to be there by 7:00. If I want to take a bus, I would have to leave my house, about 12 miles from work, at 430, hop the bus from in front of my house, ride all the way downtown, connect up to a separate bus an hour and a half later because the scheduling is done by a madman, and hope that I get to work on time because we have no dedicated bus lanes and they get boxed in all the time on the highways.

I also have the luxury of being able to take a train to, let’s say Chicago (the terminus of the line). If I wanted to make a day trip out of this, I would have to take the last bus down to the train station the night before because they stop running at 11, find something to do for 4 hours that doesn’t immediately get me arrested for looking homeless because the train station has no actual seating or waiting areas to speak of, and hop on the train at 330 in the morning.

The trip to Chicago by car, from where I am, is roughly 4 and a half hours to go about 300 miles. That same trip by train is about double that, assuming you don’t get held up to let a 3-mile freight train go first, or several, because freight is assumed to always have priority here. If that happens, your 9-hour train trip could go anywhere from 12 hours to 20+, one-way.

Europe has actual alternatives to driving. Most of the US doesn’t have that (intentionally because of GM & Ford lobbies)

For most of Europe public transit is at least possible to use.

Who cares, it’s a meme

Sloppers are lazy, they don’t know jack shit about masking something in photoshop pixel by pixel for hours.

Not at the same station. But gas near me is about double the price of 2020.

The bottom picture feels very AI generated

Not yet but give it a few weeks