A few weeks ago, I discovered a viral tweet advocating for public transit.  It read in rather bold terms

“I don’t want self-driving cars. I want boring things like public transit that comes so regularly I don’t need to check a schedule.  I want fast passenger rail so accessible and easy it’s preferable to suffering airports (sic).  I want cities that aren’t built around cars-as-default.” (Lynlisss).

The future of transportation is far from certain, but the creator of this tweet clearly shares a popular sentiment.  The post currently sits at over 240,000 likes and 46,000 retweets.  When it comes to the diffusion of innovation, no mode of transportation from the 21st century has effectively reached critical mass.

Of course, this is only half of the story.  Among China, the Four Asian Tigers, and parts of Europe, high-speed rail and public transit are an integrated part of everyday life.  Japan is even renowned as one of the most efficient business states in the world thanks to its public transit (Ryall, 2014).  In Singapore, private car ownership is regulated with so much dictatorial ferocity that it’s almost totally impractical (Aquino, 2011).  In most of the developed world, high-speed rail is already a simple reality of life, so what path should America follow going forward?

Whenever outside innovations are introduced, the United States has always struggled to follow suit.  Despite being an overwhelming beacon of innovation itself, we’re still “laggards” in many ways.  We’re one of the only developed nations without a nationalized healthcare system; we’re one of the only developed nations which still has not abolished the death penalty; and alongside Liberia, we’re the last remaining resistance on earth for the Metric system.  Our geopolitical orientation has simply left us in a decades-long fight against most of the world technologically.

To that end, contrary to public opinion, I could only see America taking the route of self-driving cars.  That is to say nothing about its currently lagging status in the diffusion of innovation.  Obviously, the technology is in its “early adopters” phase at best, and there’s no saying if/when it’ll reach critical mass.  With that said, it fits America like hand-in-glove, and the immensely powerful corporations fueling its progress will not go down without a fight.

In 2021, Tesla, Inc. was one of only a few corporations on the New York Stock Exchange to have a share price exceeding $1,000.  In November that year, Rivian Automotive, Inc. raised almost $12 billion in its IPO (Johnston).  Clearly, there’s a lot of excitement regarding the future of cars.  The American financial system is entirely willing to bet that they’ll electrify and self-drive for critical masses long before getting superannuated by high-speed rail.

Unlike Europe and Asia, America is a nation built upon the automotive industry.  We don’t have the mixed zoning of other nations; we don’t have the economic priorities of other nations; and we don’t have the infrastructure of other nations.  As such, we don’t have an environment for high-speed rail.

That’s to say nothing about which solution would ultimately be better in the long haul, but it does speak volumes towards the diffusion of innovation itself.  The market saturates on an inconsistent basis, and the stages of adoption model is far from linear.  We might be laggards in regard to high-speed rail, but we are innovators in our own alternative.  What might prove to be vital in one part of the world might not necessarily work in another, and this discrepancy is vital in understanding where to look going forward.

What does all of this have to do with Informatics?  Simply put, our transportation time is a collective aggregate important to everyone.  We all wish that a bullet train existed on-demand at our doorstep because commute times are important to us.  Our entire world revolves around getting to work, and the path we take revolves around what the path is good for.  This is where America sets itself apart from Europe and Asia.  Our infrastructure was built around the automotive industry, and our automotive industry was built around a vast, rural, agricultural landscape.

Japan is a nation in which you are never more than a 150 Kilometers away from the ocean, and Singapore is a nation in which you are never more than five kilometers away from the ocean!  Here in Hays, KS, however, you are well over 1,200 kilometers away from the ocean, but you’re never more than five kilometers away from the nearest cow.  We are not a centralized metropolis, and our most powerful industries are still largely agricultural.  Unless bullet trains innovate to accommodate for transporting humans and cows alike, we will never abandon our private vehicles on our paved roads.  We are not alone, either.  20% of Americans are still living in rural areas, and in regions like Maine and Vermont, that number is actually trending upward (2010 Census).

Pictured:  the road I grew up on and one of many signs which has not been repaired for as long as I’ve been alive.

I, along with tens of millions of Americans, grew up on a dirt road.  My tax dollars still haven’t been able to afford a replacement for the rusted road signs battered with bullet holes on my street.  I cannot rely on federal or corporate spending to bring transit to me, so I’m going to invest in private transit myself.  In this regard, my socioeconomic status will certainly keep me from falling anywhere other than the late majority.  In terms of the adoption process, however, my confirmation is all but indelible.

Self-driving electric cars are in my future.  While Los Angeles might do well to have more high-speed rail, the overwhelming majority of America will benefit without it.  Instead of scrapping the entire rural road network that I have, I want to improve it with a more efficient, more sanitary, safer, and environmentally friendlier alternative.

Works cited

Aquino, K. (2011, February 17). BMW Costing $260,000 Means Cars Only for Rich in Singapore as Taxes Climb. Bloomberg. Retrieved February 20, 2011, from https://web.archive.org/web/20110220044725/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-16/bmw-3-series-costs-260-000-as-singapore-tax-keeps-cars-for-rich.html.

Johnston, M. (2021, November 15). Rivian IPO: What Happened and Why it Matters. Investopedia. Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.investopedia.com/rivian-ipo-what-happened-and-why-it-matters-5209505.

Lynlisss (2022, January 6). Twitter. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://twitter.com/tobosbunny/status/1479022777747267588.

Ryall, J. (2014, October 1). As Japan’s Shinkansen network celebrates its 50th anniversary, Julian Ryall charts the history of the game-changing locomotive. Telegraph. Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11133241/Bullet-train-at-50-rise-and-fall-of-the-worlds-fastest-train.html.

(2012, September). United States Summary: 2010 – Population and Housing Unit Counts. United States Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/cph-2-1.pdf.