Marunouchi Autistic
God damn it I just asked for a new title
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I don’t pretend to be an expert but in my view, the problems with transportation right now are:
Nobody wants to spend money on it. Ever. Especially not now. But also in the past.
We should have been implementing alternatives and the accompanying infrastructure, at least 15 years ago. At. Least. but nobody ever wants to spend money on it.
If we had done that, trains would be plentiful enough and cheap enough, to be good alternatives to air travel. And on the local level, to meaningfully offset the amount of cars commuting.
But now we have this big problem in our major metros. If we build trains now to fix the problem now: well that’s a lot of money. and the pricing probably isn’t going to be great or its gonna be offset somewhere else. Such as higher tolls elsewhere, etc.
So the “cheap” solution is to put more buses on the road and if we can, implement “bus only” lanes. But you still have to deal with being on the road. and right now, there are only JUST ENOUGH buses. At peak times, you might have to miss a bus because its too full. Or pack in there Japan style. and at peak times, many places allow the “bus only” lane to be used like a normal lane anyway. So you’re still late for work. And/or get home way late. In Seattle, I would often kick around town even if I had no reason to. Because I’d otherwise be stuck on a bus for nearly two hours, for a ride which will take only 30 minutes, later during “off peak” times.
Private air travel will never go away. These people have tons of money. They aren’t going to fly with the poors. They wanna be able to smell their own farts. Not everyone else’s.
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ALSO
When people compare to other countries, I think they forget we are talking about places which are the size of just one or two U.S. states. And with populations way lower than the U.S.
Setting up alternative travel in a country the size of one or two states, would be relatively easy. But we have 50 of those land masses. And they all have their own government with their own ideas about how to spend money or not. We probably have enough people in the U.S. for most states to have alternative travel options, which would make enough money to sustain. But, is it too much people. So many, that alternative travel still isn’t enough? or is the problem the states which have less people? The L.A. area has more people than the entire country of Canada. I wish it were easier. But we are fucking huge and complicated. In geography, and population.
and most of these governments don’t really have any money to spend in the first place
like most of the talk around transit infrastructure involves federal funding which is tough because you’re basically trying to catch the money at the end of the money fountain to solve your transit problem that only happens in your municipality
but we haven’t really figured out a way to handle the whole money thing better, and this is before the dumb SF thing of giving tax breaks to tech companies so the jobs they bring in drives more economic activity? I guess it drove economic activity but the city definitely didn’t see like, any of that
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yeah there’s zero drive to get alternatives outside of our metros. Its something which should have been slowly worked at over decades. But America pushed for the car, instead. Which has already been mentioned.
So man, you ready for a great joke (true story) about Ohio?
Circa like 2010 or so, Obama and the Dems had set aside a bunch of money for Ohio to build a rail line connecting its three biggest cities, which are all connected by a single highway. It covered the majority of it, with Ohio having to chip in a little bit as well. Someone was willing to spend the money on it!
Then we got John Kasich as governor as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave, and one of the first things he did was literally send billions of dollars back to Washington because he was so against government spending that he literally gave away money for his own state. This makes the Chapo bits about him being a Depression era hobo even funnier to me, because he clearly hates trains.
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shit!
sbcon should rip off train jam and have a meetup that includes a long ass train ride
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Meetup on a train
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oh another thing about trains, i’m sure this has been articulated elsewhere before, but i feel like another major issue complicating the “America would be better if we had high speed trains” thing is that the last time Americans tried to do trains it was basically part of the most catastrophic exploitation of land and humanity imaginable
i feel like maybe we don’t deserve trains?
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Seriously though have none of you ever driven a van or a miata
such opposite ends of the car transit spectrum and so pleasant
It’s inefficient commuting that sucks
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Driving is nice but it should be permanently banned in every urban area
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I’m pleased to announce my new car
I got me a Chrysler
It seats about twenty
I’ve been trying to be polite about this, but… Man this is the most neo-lib ai’ve ever seen you. You’re kind of doing a character, right? You sound like Caleb’s dad, and it’s scaring me.
Communism would be a lot more popular if they made Miatas instead of Trabants
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I’m not ignoring the problems (or if you like, evils) of a society in which everyone has to use a private car to get anywhere, but I’m also not going to pretend to dislike cars to make that case. I like cars. I enthusiastically look forward to new episodes of the Grand Tour.
I’m also currently on a vacation in wine country and just had Popeye’s for dinner so I invite you to think me too secure in my beliefs, which I basically already said at the start of the thread.
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I understand this honestly tho
I do think that aesthetically cars have had the benefit of decades of advertising and induced demand by car companies but that doesn’t make the aesthetic any less effective
what really helped me with bikes was actually something as simple and dumb as finding a youtube channel of a guy who goes bikepacking and goes on trips with his bike and it’s an aspirational lifestyle thing where I can like, buy things for my bike or bags or whatever
and there just hasn’t been that much of a push to really do that in the same way that cars have had, mostly because trains and buses aren’t consumer goods like cars are
I don’t know how you bridge that gap but it’s there imo
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You pig. Popeyes is the ultimate luxury. You will be first against the wall.
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yeah for real
though I’m also friends with a bunch of cyclocross heads and bike lane activists because despite my being extremely gauche I do actually live in a very progressive city where I am surrounded by people who fight for objectively good causes, and every time I bike anywhere my ass hurts and I have a profound desire to wash my Prius, so there really is no helping some people
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