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After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

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Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#81

Post by rconti »

T-hawk wrote: post #18

> Near the Pennsylvania border, drivers have long been forced off the interstate and onto other roadways, only to join back 8 miles away. This is a misleading overstatement. This is only true if you want to drive the roads labeled as I-95. There are indeed two segments labeled as I-95 that are discontinuous: the NJ Turnpike south until exit 6, and from Trenton southwards through PA to Delaware. But those segments are…

I still can't follow the pictures on the linked article that somehow have 295 going both east/west and north/south.

I think the confusing part is merely why they word it that way; everwhere else does just fine with understanding that sometimes driving north on a freeway has you going east or west for a time.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#83

Post by apo »

Reminds me of the Growth Ponzi Scheme:

We've done this because, as with any Ponzi scheme, new growth provides the illusion of prosperity. In the near term, revenue grows, while the corresponding maintenance obligations — which are not counted on the public balance sheet — are a generation away.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/11/7/the-infrastruc...

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#84

Post by astine »

RightMillennial wrote: post #66
Dylan16807 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be a good allocation method, but often you get 'premium' roads and weird routing because of splitting things up. Now if there was a toll on all major roads of 2c a mile for cars and ten times that for trucks, then I'd be all for it.

The problem with tolls, and gas taxes and vehicle registrations for that matter, is that they disproportionally affect the poor. I, and many on HN might not give the marginal cost second thought, but for many it adds up.

Does it? Unless you mean the poor will have a harder time shouldering a similar tax rate, I'm not certain why poorer people would be using the roads more often than richer people. That said, there's no reason a toll system couldn't be given a progressive by setting different rates for different tax tiers or something. Rates could be associated with individual vehicles.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#85

Post by selectodude »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #59
jasonlotito wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an issue these days. In this area, EZ-Pass is pushed hard, and makes toll plazas a non-issue for the most part. There is very little need to slow down as most can just capture your license plate number and charge you that way, making the entire experience easy. This ensures that the roads that actually get used get the money from people using them, something that doesn't happen with a gas tax.

>In this area, EZ-Pass is pushed hard Because it has the side benefit of being an easier/cheaper way to track people than license plate cameras. They could just do pay by plate and give people a paperless discount if they only wanted to save money. I bet EZpass gets a cut too so that adds yet another dimension to it. >There is very little need to slow down Yet morons still feel the need to do so creating the same tra…

>Yet morons still feel the need to do so creating the same traffic jams that high speed tolling was supposed to solve...

In Chicagoland, everybody seems to have no issue ripping through toll gates at 75-80 miles per hour. I assure you we are no smarter than anywhere else.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#86

Post by geezerjay »

nostrademons wrote: post #56
geezerjay wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'll likely be the same for high-speed rail, hyperloops, and under-city tunnels. Please don't make the mistake of equating the hyperloop scheme with reputable and tried-and-true railway services. Hyperloop is at best a marketing gimmick based on naive and ill-informed notions of what it takes to run a vehicle in a track, while real railway services are mundane technologies which have been proven to work for at lea…

Railroads were very far from reputable services when they were first being built. The history of these is fascinating; you think tech scams are bad today, you should've seen the machinations of Jay Gould [1] or Thomas Durant [2]. Many early railroads failed to get completed at all, or if they did, the trains would blow up on the tracks and kill a bunch of passengers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould [2] ht…

Apples and oranges. Your examples refer to specific business ventures initiated in a time where steam-powered rail transport was already a century old and with a proven track record, while hyperloop is a pie-in-the-sky scheme that is both technically and economically unfeasible. It's like comparing flying cars with the DeLorean.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#87

Post by mbostleman »

For sixty years, and maybe more, there have been those in either the press or politics that claim America's roads and bridges are disintegrating and the end is near. Yet I have lived in multiple regions of the country, in both dense and sparse populations, and if there's any impression I've had is that there is a very sustained, robust, and aggressive effort to maintain roads and bridges. In fact, it's something that has always amazed me as a visual indication of the magnitude and strength of the economy. Is there reliable data over this period that actually shows a downward trend? If there is, it's not referenced in this article.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#88

Post by JoshCole »

geezerjay wrote: post #46
nostrademons wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wartime. The interstate highway system got built because Eisenhower saw firsthand how effective having a national road network is for logistics in times of war, and so it became a national security concern. The transcontinental railroad was financed by the Department of War and greatly accelerated when the Southern states seceded - Congress had been denying funding for a decade before, but the first season after the…

> It'll likely be the same for high-speed rail, hyperloops, and under-city tunnels. Please don't make the mistake of equating the hyperloop scheme with reputable and tried-and-true railway services. Hyperloop is at best a marketing gimmick based on naive and ill-informed notions of what it takes to run a vehicle in a track, while real railway services are mundane technologies which have been proven to work for at lea…

> at best a marketing gimmick

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is not wisdom. A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. The future can be better than the past. According to the data it has been [1][2][3]. So optimism isn't a fluffy ideal to scoff at.

Newton's laws make it clear that approaching vacuum allows for greater speeds. An object in motion will remain in motion unless an outside force acts upon it [4]. Therefore, the greater part of truth is out of reach of cynicism.

What is more likely, that a man who heads a company that works in the space sector would think that moving through a near-vacuum was honestly more efficient [5]? Or that he would propose it merely as a marketing gimmick? And why can't it be both?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ

[2]: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_and_ola_rosling_how_not_to_be...

[3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/bill-gates-the-world-would-b...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

[5]: https://themysteriousworld.com/top-10-fastest-man-made-objec...

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#89

Post by underhill »

This doesn't really change much unless you spend much time in/around Philly.

As it currently stands, there is no direct interstate highway between Philly and New York. If you ever take a Bolt or Megabus between the two cities you'll notice it usually takes exit 4 on the Turnpike and drives through suburban Cherry Hill NJ to get into Philly. To get between the two cities you have to exit and take a more local road through NJ for a couple miles. This interchange will connect it so you can go directly from "Pennsylvania 95" to I276 to "NJ Turnpike 95". (Except now all called "95")

If you are driving direct from New York/Boston to DC, you'll in all likelihood never see this interchange and continue take the NJ Turnpike all the way down to Delaware in order to bypass Philadelphia traffic and construction.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#90

Post by [deleted] »

geezerjay wrote: post #86
nostrademons wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Railroads were very far from reputable services when they were first being built. The history of these is fascinating; you think tech scams are bad today, you should've seen the machinations of Jay Gould [1] or Thomas Durant [2]. Many early railroads failed to get completed at all, or if they did, the trains would blow up on the tracks and kill a bunch of passengers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould [2] ht…

Apples and oranges. Your examples refer to specific business ventures initiated in a time where steam-powered rail transport was already a century old and with a proven track record, while hyperloop is a pie-in-the-sky scheme that is both technically and economically unfeasible. It's like comparing flying cars with the DeLorean.

[deleted]
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