What definition of “flat” are you using? It isn’t the width of the track area that is a problem, it is the navigation of gradients. It is much harder work, and much more limiting, to run a train track through a series of steep hills (or even moderate hills) than it is to run a simple two-lane road.
“To put it into perspective”, this was a mere 3 months after JFK was killed. Those events feel like they are from completely different eras, with the mood of those involved at such polar extremes.
It’s hard to understand because it’s a total non-sequitur. Why do mountains in Europe make trains superior? It’s much harder to run railways through mountains than roads. Trains run well on level real estate. Why does America’s abundance of level real estate make cars, not trains, more practical.
Well yes. Roads, parking lots, interchanges take up more flat area than railroad tracks. But that’s not why Europe is more mass-transit friendly than the USA. Rail can’t completely replace roads. And unless you’re in the Alps, most European cities aren’t hemmed in by terrain.
Technically, the Beatles were supposed to be introduced to American audiences the day JFK was killed. Walter Cronkite was planning on a feature, but it was pulled for obvious reasons. In January, he decided it was time; the feature was on the news, Sullivan saw it, and the rest is history.
Santa Fe, New Mexico was founded in 1610 - twenty years before the founding of Boston, Massachusetts.
The 1960s started with black & white TV that referred to African Americans as “colored.” Mid-decade the TV was in color, and referred to African Americans as “Black.”
ASK SWITZERLAND! Jesus people, I’m just some guy on the internet offering speculations. I’m not the fucking authority on US mass transit.
Musician Elizabeth Cotten had a performing career that spanned 80 years. She first performed on stage 40 years after the end of the American Civil War, and I got to see her perform shortly before her death, a bit under 40 years ago. Her career spanned more than half the time since the end of the Civil War.
Go ahead and try, but we might just shrug and say “We can go either way on that…”
In a similar vein, one of 10th US president John Tyler’s grandsons, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Sr., is still alive (as of this writing, he is 93 and has dementia). To put that in perspective, his grandfather lived from 1790 to 1862, and served as president 1841-1845.
One clears a right of way of roughly 30 feet for a train [finished width, not working width] and a 2 lane blacktop is about 40 feet with shoulders, around 100 feet with shoulders for an ‘interstate’ [4 lane blacktop] so going through mountains is much less blasting to get working width and finished width. In many cases in Europe the roads and railroads follow ancient mercantile trails that follow the easiest pathways through mountainous areas, where instead of the path winding around the outside of the mountain, it goes through an edge as a tunnel. [In the US, a ‘trace’ is a trackway through a mountain pass, frequently along a river - it is moderately common to be able to see these trackways when one looks at the common routes westward used by wagon trains that ended up as railway routes and then as interstate routes]
Hearing your description of the width of a US road reminded me of a story. In December, for reasons too long and complicated to explain, we ended up spending time with a visiting Canadian woman (who Mrs T knew slightly) and her twenty-odd year old granddaughter, also Canadian. Because we’re decent people, we drove them around once or twice.
At night, on a Sunday (so: quiet), I drove them down this road -
- and the granddaughter literally shrieked. She simply could not cope with the narrowness of English roads.
j
(Yes, I know Canadian and American are not the same; but I’m guessing your roads are similar)
This is from String Theory: If an atom is blown up to the size of the Solar System, a string would be the size of a tree.
That looks like a very ancient road - I remember reading, many moons ago, that you can guestimate how long a road (or the original track) has been there by the height of the soil bank either side. One metre equaling roughly 1000 years, so you road might have been there for 3000 years or so! Well, unless it’s a man made cutting.
I remember holidaying in Ireland where slightly narrower roads than this one were two-way and a whopping 80 km/h speed limit. It took us about a week to get used to it, but somehow we did. There’s always a lot more possible than would be advisable I guess 
This picture is of a road that, until very recently, was the main way of accessing the main town shopping street. I drove up it every day in order to get to my flat.
It was one-way only but people did have to stand sideways as cars went past.
Yes, I can’t point to any difference between the two. Same width, same style of paved shoulder, same painting. Once, at the office, we were playing a game where we saw a random Google Maps location and had to guess where it was and we were plopped onto a highway and we immediately and correctly guessed it had to be American – or Canadian. We went virtually down the road until we saw a farmhouse with a Canadian flag on it which was how we could narrow it down.
If we had seen a highway sign it would have narrowed it down too, even though the signage is also remarkably similar. The signage only looks slightly “off” to me rather than completely foreign like in Europe, unless there is a crown on a highway sign or a speed limit sign in KPH.
So there I was, an American kid driving up a narrow Swiss mountain road with a car full of hanggliders, and there really wasn’t room for the cars barreling down… and some spots had no guardrails…
I can still remember the rhythmic clicking as every car’s sideview mirror tapped every one of the other cars’ sideview mirrors.
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eta: Sorry to be part of turning this discussion into “The width of roads and railroads thread”. We need more “perspective” examples, but I’ve got none.
I found the 1872 OS map on line, and that road is on it. My guess is that if it’s been there 150 years, it may have been there a very long time. Whether it’s a cutting or not - different question. But the name (“Hollow”) kinda suggests not.
j