41–50 of 169 posts
Totally self driving. Well, except for the driver. And also the engineer sitting next to the driver. But otherwise, self driving.
Semi's can't react as quickly to changing conditions as a Tesla. Rolling carnage. This will never work.
"possible solution to the driver shortage and regulatory constraints faced by freight haulers across the country" - mmm, every industry is facing worker shortage huh -.-
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A valuable service which they charge money for, and should generate revenue to cover their costs. Pension funding politics aside, I want to pay USPS postage fees which cover the cost of the service they provide. There’s no reason to be paying below cost postage to USPS. I find that their rates are extremely competitive, particularly priority mail flat rate compared to UPS or FedEx. I think the post office could be do…
You can't put aside the pension funding politics but still want to pay the USPS more, since the price of postage fees is set by federal law and must be approved by Congress. The reason you pay below cost to the USPS is because Congress demands it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trains are super efficient. My uncle is a locomotive engineer. He has one or two conductors with a train that is a couple of miles long. They pay a premium to keep staffing at a minimum -- he can be called with 30 minutes notice to come in and drive a train for a 24 hour period. You'd probably be able to run more smaller trains with automation, but competing with trucks is tough, because the efficiency gains associat…
So I was a bit incredulous at the claim of miles-long trains. If anyone else is - turns out, there's a wikipedia page which has more information on very long trains (it's true): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_trains
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is happening everywhere with all kinds of government services. "Slash budgets" and by firing full time employees and cutting investment, piecemeal it out to the lowest-bid contractor, the quality of service deteriorates, not much money is actually saved, but someone gets rich(er)!
And when the service fails, you can point to it as the reason government solutions don't work and how regulation is bad, which provides convenient reasoning to strip more regulations and privatize more government services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trains are super efficient. My uncle is a locomotive engineer. He has one or two conductors with a train that is a couple of miles long. They pay a premium to keep staffing at a minimum -- he can be called with 30 minutes notice to come in and drive a train for a 24 hour period. You'd probably be able to run more smaller trains with automation, but competing with trucks is tough, because the efficiency gains associat…
So I was a bit incredulous at the claim of miles-long trains. If anyone else is - turns out, there's a wikipedia page which has more information on very long trains (it's true): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_trains
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A valuable service which they charge money for, and should generate revenue to cover their costs. Pension funding politics aside, I want to pay USPS postage fees which cover the cost of the service they provide. There’s no reason to be paying below cost postage to USPS. I find that their rates are extremely competitive, particularly priority mail flat rate compared to UPS or FedEx. I think the post office could be do…
You can't put aside the pension funding politics but still want to pay the USPS more, since the price of postage fees is set by federal law and must be approved by Congress. The reason you pay below cost to the USPS is because Congress demands it.
> It should be noted, however, that the 2006 postal law sought to provide the Postal Service with increased pricing flexibility and to promote simpler, quicker and more efficient process for changing postage prices. [1]
I think by and large current rates cover the costs. There is a weird international looohole which they are closing. We should not be subsidizing free shipping from China.
My point is mainly I don’t want to see taxpayer subsidies in excess of postage. I believe without the pension funding weirdness the USPS would be about break even, but there’s lots of conflicting information.
>TuSimple and the USPS declined to disclose the cost of the program, but Frum said no tax dollars were used and the agency relies on revenue from sales of postage and other products. Really? This is exactly the kind of thing we should be spending tax dollars on. I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget but they provide a lot of valuable services in addition to…
I didn't even know until about a month ago that the USPS is one of the only constitutionally-mandated federal institutions (in school, we focused a lot on the Bill of Rights, not so much on the articles themselves).