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Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

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Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#41

Post by kijeda »

jbob2000 wrote: post #23
rayiner wrote: post #16

The deeply ironic thing about California HSR is that it's basically going to be most useful for business travelers. Who the hell else needs to go from SF to LA on any regular basis? If you spent that money on regional rail instead, you might actually help out working class people. In cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, tons of middle class people ride the train to/from what used to be streetcar suburbs.…

The stupid thing is that those business travelers won't use the rail line, they'll happily chug along in their self-driving Teslas and ultra comfy Audis/Mercedes/BMWs. Toronto just dealt with this. We built a rail line that goes from our international airport right into the heart of the downtown. The plan was that business travelers could get off the plane, get on the train, and go right into the city without a car.…

Or not. That seems like an awfully large generalization based on one city whose airport rail service hasn't had much time to establish itself.

Counter examples: In London I'll take the Heathrow Express over the alternatives because it is a much more compelling option to get to downtown London. Recently in Johannesburg the airport rail took me to the airport in 14 minutes where as a car would take 90 minutes in commuter traffic. In Germany, I've seen people commute half way across the country every day on high-speed rail because it opened up opportunities to work that didn't exist before.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#42

Post by Lramseyer »

zelon88 wrote: post #29

I'd be happy just to see traffic lights that actually factor traffic congestion. One of my peeves is when a traffic light makes me and a whole line of cars waste brakes to stop then waste gas to sit at a red light just to let one car go when the efficient option would have been to let the line of cars travelling 50mph go first, THEN let the loner who's already stopped go afterwards. It's a problem I've wanted to solv…

Not to mention the amount of CO2 emissions that would be reduced from drivers having to stop and re-accelerate fewer times. While I don't know if it would make much of a change during heavy traffic, I think it would make a huge difference during medium to light traffic.

I like the idea of opening up light timings for public review, however figuring out how to optimize everything would probably take a great deal of computational power, and likely out of the scope of local governments that actually make those decisions. It's also not profitable, so I don't see too many companies going after this problem. If only there was a company that had detailed maps, good traffic statistics, insane computational power, and ambitions to do stuff that may or may not be profitable. Maybe they create tools for municipalities to help time their lights.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#43

Post by gozur88 »

CPLX wrote: post #38
brwr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you mean by "transit oriented development"? As a general rule of thumb, 10-20 story tall buildings are an eye sore. I don't think it makes sense to make things denser if it's going to be so ugly that no one wants to live there.

> As a general rule of thumb, 10-20 story tall buildings are an eye sore. Just FYI, people saying things like this is definitely a key part of why us New Yorkers think the Bay Area has literally gone insane.

You couldn't pay me enough to live in NYC. Those big urban canyons are my idea of hell, and I would really not like to see SF go that direction.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

gozur88 wrote: post #40
jbob2000 wrote: post #3

>We should double our annual infrastructure budget. We can fund this by stopping the high-speed rail, and spend the $68+ billion we are planning to spend on that on better local rapid transit systems, improved bus lines, and new roads instead. This will allow people to live in more affordable housing and have a better quality of life. Bad idea. More roads does not mean less traffic, More roads = more cars. And more i…

If you don't build roads, people will still come. Instead of having more roads = more cars you end up with same road = more cars, which is not ideal. Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas. But allowing CA to become a shitty place to live so as to force people from their cars is the least attractive o…

> If you don't build roads, people will still come. Instead of having more roads = more cars you end up with same road = more cars, which is not ideal.

That's empirically not as true as it intuitively seems; induced traffic is a thing.

> Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas.

But, the HSR project is spending money on regional light rail and conventional rail between metro areas.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#45

Post by ejlangev »

Imagine thinking that "high-speed self-driving cars, electric airplanes, and maybe even Hyperloops" are viable solutions for transit problems of today when none of them exist in any real viable form and have major obstacles to overcome in order to exist. Reminds me of the craze with pneumatic transport in the past. It too was the way of the future and NYC even had a model pneumatic subway line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit. Lost out to the normal train by a long way.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#46

Post by ejlangev »

beguiledfoil wrote: post #34

>If we unclog our infrastructure we can spread out to more of the state and increase the supply of developable land. Really amazing to read that people that live in low density clusterfuck think that the solution is to expand the low density clusterfuck. Also, being against high speed rail but being for a hyper loop is an indication that you have a technology boner that is lasting longer than 4 hours and you should s…

> you have a technology boner that is lasting longer than 4 hours and you should see a doctor.

10/10

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#47

Post by throwanem »

CPLX wrote: post #38
brwr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you mean by "transit oriented development"? As a general rule of thumb, 10-20 story tall buildings are an eye sore. I don't think it makes sense to make things denser if it's going to be so ugly that no one wants to live there.

> As a general rule of thumb, 10-20 story tall buildings are an eye sore. Just FYI, people saying things like this is definitely a key part of why us New Yorkers think the Bay Area has literally gone insane.

You New Yorkers have a unique perspective of your own on such matters! It's a great town, and you folks up there do a wonderful job of making a body feel welcome. But there's too many tall buildings and not enough tall trees for me to ever want to live there, and I can see why people who like SF for what it is wouldn't want it to follow your example, any more than I want Baltimore to.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#48

Post by dbloom »

jbob2000 wrote: post #23
rayiner wrote: post #16

The deeply ironic thing about California HSR is that it's basically going to be most useful for business travelers. Who the hell else needs to go from SF to LA on any regular basis? If you spent that money on regional rail instead, you might actually help out working class people. In cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, tons of middle class people ride the train to/from what used to be streetcar suburbs.…

The stupid thing is that those business travelers won't use the rail line, they'll happily chug along in their self-driving Teslas and ultra comfy Audis/Mercedes/BMWs. Toronto just dealt with this. We built a rail line that goes from our international airport right into the heart of the downtown. The plan was that business travelers could get off the plane, get on the train, and go right into the city without a car.…

The Toronto line failed because it basically only catered to rich business travelers. By only having two stops — downtown and airport — it significantly constrained its TAM just to shave a few minutes off of its travel time.

There is a great write up of why it failed here: http://humantransit.org/2016/03/keys-to-great-airport-transi...

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#49

Post by gozur88 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
gozur88 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't build roads, people will still come. Instead of having more roads = more cars you end up with same road = more cars, which is not ideal. Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas. But allowing CA to become a shitty place to live so as to force people from their cars is the least attractive o…

> If you don't build roads, people will still come. Instead of having more roads = more cars you end up with same road = more cars, which is not ideal. That's empirically not as true as it intuitively seems; induced traffic is a thing. > Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas. But, the HSR project is…

>That's empirically not as true as it intuitively seems; induced traffic is a thing.

It's definitely empirically true. I've watched it happen for decades. There are certainly new cars on the road, but they would have been there anyway, for the most part. If you have a growing economy people immigrate in search of jobs whether the infrastructure is ready or not.

Now, I'd rather we had enough rail to handle all those people and more, but the problem with rail is before your network is built out completely it's not very useful.

>But, the HSR project is spending money on regional light rail and conventional rail between metro areas.

Great. Then all we need to cancel is the HSR itself.

Re: Petition for Smarter Infrastructure

#50

Post by durgiston »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #37

I recently moved to San Diego from the east coast and I really agree with petition. The Trolley here seemed idealistic to be at first, "I can take the train downtown from my apartment in 40 minutes!" I thought. I love driving as much as most people but parking downtown is not fun to find. So I took the train twice, but after being on the train, I won't do it again. There are several people shouting odd things and no…

Or maybe we could invest more in mental health care and public education and the like instead of shunting off the poors somewhere else so you don't have to see them.
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