491–500 of 770 posts
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> And DC can’t pay for public transit in DC because it’s tax base isn’t big enough. How does DC pay for roads?
Congress allocates funds for roads and other infrastructure in DC.
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Geneva is a special case of cross-border agreements in Europe. The Swiss public transport (TPG) bus service made a bilateral agreement with the French authorities to set up a cross-border bus. A tram service is being built too, next to CERN. It can be done. Possibly as a result of that, the bus ticket machines now accept Euros and Swiss Francs, even on the Swiss side. Quite how this works financially is remarkable to…
> Possibly as a result of that, the bus ticket machines now accept Euros and Swiss Francs, even on the Swiss side. Quite how this works financially is remarkable to me. Legal tender is a currency that has to be accepted (and returns given in) by all merchants in a jurisdictional area. There is no law that prevents merchants from accepting payment in other currencies, which was why the good old Deutsche Mark was wides…
Perhaps digitally? I see a lot of businesses that no longer accept cash in physical locations.
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Geneva is a special case of cross-border agreements in Europe. The Swiss public transport (TPG) bus service made a bilateral agreement with the French authorities to set up a cross-border bus. A tram service is being built too, next to CERN. It can be done. Possibly as a result of that, the bus ticket machines now accept Euros and Swiss Francs, even on the Swiss side. Quite how this works financially is remarkable to…
> Possibly as a result of that, the bus ticket machines now accept Euros and Swiss Francs, even on the Swiss side. Quite how this works financially is remarkable to me. Legal tender is a currency that has to be accepted (and returns given in) by all merchants in a jurisdictional area. There is no law that prevents merchants from accepting payment in other currencies, which was why the good old Deutsche Mark was wides…
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This is still really bad advice. There was a recent instance not a year ago where folks were stuck with 3 feet of snow at night on an interstate interchange. Yes there was a hotel not a mile from where they were but getting out of your car to cross the interstate in 3 feet of snow is a great way to get hit or get lost in the blizzard and get some good hypothermia. Compare this to staying in their car where they were…
For every anecdote you can provide of someone being careless on foot I can find multiple instances of a stopped vehicle being smashed into on a highway. Now we even have the pleasure of anticipating Tesla Autopilot to plow into us while stopped on the shoulder, apparently made even more likely if there's an emergency vehicle present.
> unless you're truly in no mans land without any reachable alternatives for shelter, it's best to lock up the vehicle with a note on the dash and make your way to a shelter out of harms way
The presence of anecdotes that conflict each other is evidence that it is hard to make blanket statements like the above although I would still argue that the default should be stay in or near your vehicle during winter weather related emergencies. Also any anecdotes about AI related disasters are off topic ;)
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Sounds like DC needs to be made a state.
A better option would be to cede most of the residential and commercial areas of DC to surrounding states. Just keep a few blocks containing the key federal government buildings, parks, monuments, and museums.
We're far removed from it historically, but this country was created by groups of people coming together to decide they want to form a state and then joining up with other states. It's literally right there in the name: United States. It's kind of, like, our whole deal as a country.
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does the establishment of washington dc as an unrepresented area make sense today in 2022? it has over 700,000 residents and its own school system… since its inception it has struggled time and time again due to its awkward status… the people living there want it overwhelmingly!
> does the establishment of washington dc as an unrepresented area make sense today in 2022? Many things in the US political system don't make sense in 2022, especially from an European point of view - mining and water rights, inequality of rural and urban votes because of unproportional representation in the Senate, Presidential votes in "stronghold" states being effectively wasted thanks to the Electoral College, t…
Most Americans want the feds to make minor policy tweaks that will make their lives better, more healthcare, federally, minor financial tweaks, fund some things a little more, fund others a little less, minor procedural tweaks on certain government things.
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> does the establishment of washington dc as an unrepresented area make sense today in 2022? Many things in the US political system don't make sense in 2022, especially from an European point of view - mining and water rights, inequality of rural and urban votes because of unproportional representation in the Senate, Presidential votes in "stronghold" states being effectively wasted thanks to the Electoral College, t…
Back when the Constitution was written there were private citizens who owned weapons of war. Specifically they owned large artillery pieces that were used both on land and on sailing vessels. The lack of a recent revolution in the US is a feature, not a bug. Our Constitution isn't perfect, but it can be amended and has been many times.
The House needs to be rid of single member districts, ideally, and move to a multimember party system. Barring that, first-past-the-post should be completely replaced as a voting mechanism.
The Supreme Court should be reformed with term limits of some kind, and/or have a second tier of justices which are appointed unanimously by the politically appointed justices.
The Electoral College needs to be removed entirely, the President should be elected by the people directly. The method of voting should be mandated NOT to be first-past-the-post.
In other words, our national government is fundamentally broken in its representation of the people of this country, and broken in how its members are chosen. At this point, we need a bit of a revolution, though the less blood the better.
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No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...
I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.
If you build a new road and it gets just as congested and it takes just as long to travel from A to B, then what did you accomplish?
The number of people who want to use a road is not the metric we're trying to optimize here. If we wanted to do that we should build as few roads as possible. Then there would be tons and tons of people who want to use each road. Hooray! Success!
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> does the establishment of washington dc as an unrepresented area make sense today in 2022? Many things in the US political system don't make sense in 2022, especially from an European point of view - mining and water rights, inequality of rural and urban votes because of unproportional representation in the Senate, Presidential votes in "stronghold" states being effectively wasted thanks to the Electoral College, t…
Back when the Constitution was written there were private citizens who owned weapons of war. Specifically they owned large artillery pieces that were used both on land and on sailing vessels. The lack of a recent revolution in the US is a feature, not a bug. Our Constitution isn't perfect, but it can be amended and has been many times.
The existence of amendments requires bi-partisan cooperation - something that is completely unfeasible for the near future, with Republicans running unprecedented, pure obstructionism going so far as Mitch McConnell filibustering his own fucking bill - and that was in 2012, when the Republicans had moderate people in their ranks. Now, ten years later, half the Republican voter base and more than enough representatives or candidates openly rally behind QAnon.
I can't see a reasonable way for the US to get out of that mess, as all measures that would help bring politics back to reasonable standards (particularly tackling the PAC/Super PAC problem, voter suppression and reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine) would require Congressional majorities.
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There was an article[1] posted here a while back which changed my perspective on this issue. Indeed, there's nothing wrong with induced demand on its own. In any other market, more demand induced by lower costs (whether those costs be monetary or in the form of commute times) would almost certainly be a good thing . The only reason it's a potential issue for roads is that road use is an externality. Building and main…
The canonical economist solution to this is to introduce road tolls. Make drivers pay at point of use to fund the road.