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Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

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Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Christians talk a big game about charity and such. But once I started becoming familiar with LDS folk, I was really impressed. They’re Christians in ways many other denominations only claim to be. KSL-TV (LDS-owned NBC station) has an AppleTV app, and watching the SLC local news is far more interesting than I thought it would be. And there’s far less needless murder and mayhem plus more “good” news than is a…

By definition, there's only one way to be a Christian and LDS aren't Christians. Pedantry aside, Christians are still human and thus succumb to sin and as such are not as charitable as they should be.

> there's only one way to be a Christian and LDS aren't Christians.

What? Do you mean Catholics? There are non-Catholic Christian churches, but they are still Christians.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#112
post #51

I used to ride the bus all the time in Utah valley. Then they tore up all the roads to build lanes for this project, and all the bus schedules went to pot. That's when I stopped riding the bus as often. I'm not sure whether tearing up all the roads for 3+ years to have a bus that connects two places already connected by a new train is that awesome. Just make that stretch of Frontrunner free.

Its not the endpoints that are a big deal but everything in between plus easier access to those end points.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#113
post #81
post #34

Just thought to leave an aside for anyone considering working in Utah. I Lived in Orem, Utah for a long-time super interesting state. Everyone is super conservative, no doubt, but they are the nicest people I've ever met. They can be "accidentally" racist and bigoted but I attribute that for their ignorance as opposed to hate. The church itself governs and operates like a socialist country. Every church member in the…

I've been Mormon my whole life and Utah still feels weird to me. The culture is definitely influenced by the Church, but the culture is distinctly "Utahn". Go meet some Mormons in California, New York, or out of the country, and you'll see the difference.

Indeed. Over half the Mormons live outside of the U.S.

Some places have higher concentrations than others. Tonga for instance is roughly 60%. Even getting out to Idaho, Arizona or California (still higher than average mormon density areas), and you'll encounter a different culture.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, there's only one way to be a Christian and LDS aren't Christians. Pedantry aside, Christians are still human and thus succumb to sin and as such are not as charitable as they should be.

> there's only one way to be a Christian and LDS aren't Christians. What? Do you mean Catholics? There are non-Catholic Christian churches, but they are still Christians.

I'm referring to their doctrine of salvation.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#115
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The higher levels of Catholic hierarchy looks like a medieval institution because it is a medieval institution. Well, it's got pre-medieval, medieval, and post-medieval elements. > There is definitely set dogma Depending on who you believe (yes, there are actually doctrinal disputes over which doctrinal pronouncements are in fact dogmatic, though there are a handful of cases which are dogmatic and not in dispute as…

I think the fact that there is a distinction between doctrine and dogma, both of which exist, and with the boundary between them subject to serious scholarly debate, just shows how dogmatic/doctrinaire (which are synonyms in everyday non-Catholic English) the Catholic Church is.

There's not a boundary between them, one is a subset of the other. And what it really shows is how old and large the Church is (and, specifically how many questions it's been called in to address.)

How doctrinaire the Church is a pastoral question that (in terms of the central authority at least) changes considerably over time and especially with changes in Popes. Because, for all the accumulated history, tradition, and specialized language the Holy See had accumulated, it's still essentially an absolute monarchy, and the approach of the institutions reflects the personality of the person at the head of all of them.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#116
post #12

As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic. Instead, we should be aiming to build more B…

Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.

> Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport.

This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off. The West Busway is an old rail-bed, but it only goes a short ways from the city and servers a couple of communities, after that the airport bus uses the highway.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at a line of 60 cars with 1 person each, taking up quarter of a mile. One car every two seconds. Then look at a bus with 60 people taking up 20 yards. One bus a minute. Then look at a train 200 yards long with 1000 people every 3 minutes. Which is more wasteful?

> One bus a minute The dedicated bus lane we're talking about here appears to have one bus every 30 minutes (GP said it was a line out to the airport). So it's natural to look at a dedicated road lane that sees two vehicles an hour and think "what a waste, would it really hurt to let some cars drive here too?". But nobody looks at a train track the same way since you're used to seeing train tracks without a bunch of…

> The dedicated bus lane we're talking about here appears to have one bus every 30 minutes

The West Busway doesn't go to the airport and has buses serving the communities it runs through ever few minutes.

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.

> Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off. The West Busway is an old rail-bed, but it only goes a short ways from the city and servers a couple of communities, after that the airport bus uses the highway.

Yes. The west busway ends around halfway between downtown and the airport. It ends just shy of I-79, and uses the parkway (I-376) for the rest.

https://www.portauthority.org/rt/28x.pdf

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.

> Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off. The West Busway is an old rail-bed, but it only goes a short ways from the city and servers a couple of communities, after that the airport bus uses the highway.

This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off.

I guess I’m having my first “senior moment.” I remember this quite vividly. I sure hope I’m not confusing it with another city.

I used to keep pretty good expense records back then, so I should have a record of the fare. If not, where do I go to collect my Crazy Old Man badge?

Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

#120
post #6

A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system. Utah is an interesting place. The geography of the Wasatch Front lends itself to public transit in ways that less geographically-constrained places do not. The region is mostly a north-south corridor, with occasional off-shoots to the side, which is how the transit network has developed…

> A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system.

I do not see it this way. Communities with shared values (republican or democratic), usually find it easier to agree on and build public services that they find useful. Getting efficient, inexpensive transport that does not cost too much to the state is pretty easy to justify.

By the same token, most Republicans know that they will eventually get old, likely sick and finally die; thus they are not opposed to public healthcare as long as it is efficient and does not overburden public finances. However, they think (with some justification given past national federal projects) that if the US Federal government designs such a system it will be an inefficient and super costly monster pandering to special interests. And they are dead set against it.

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