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Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

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Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#641

Post by ThrustVectoring »

dont__panic wrote: post #144
nostromo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they're shifting the goal posts. Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people. So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere . Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends. Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too. Success! I love transit and…

This is a really good point, but I also want to bring up a (small) counterargument: I live in Denver, CO. Cars basically make it impossible to walk around most of the city, even in the more residential areas. Walking is an essential part of the public transit/non-car transportation experience because essentially everyone has to walk a few blocks from a bus stop, train station, bike rack, etc. to complete their trip o…

Speed limits are far less important than the psychological design of the road - any given section will communicate what hazards are more or less likely, and drivers are very responsive to these cues.

As a concrete example, I grew up near Seattle and regularly drove on East Lake Sammamish Parkway. This road was built and designed to efficiently carry traffic between Redmond and Issaquah at a speed of 45 miles per hour. It has smooth gentle curves, good sightlines, few driveways and intersections, etc. Sometime in the 90s or 00s people built a ton of really expensive lakefront houses between the parkway and the lake, and the new homeowners got the city to lower the speed limit to 35 (presumably to make it easier to get onto the road)

People generally drive 45 on it anyways. It is a road that practically screams "45 mph is safe" at you, and 35 feels downright glacial. If you lowered the limit to 25 people would probably still regularly do 40 on it - you need some kind of traffic calming as park of a major overhaul of the road to get speeds that are safe for pedestrians there. (And even if you could do this, most households in Sammamish travel to or through either Redmond or Issaquah anyhow, so they need some thoroughfare to do so - at best you're overloading and overstressing the other roads in the network)

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#642

Post by mschuster91 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #496
mschuster91 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As an American I find it absolutely hilarious that you went off half cocked listing a bunch of issues that are of second and third rate importance to most Americans. 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 thing…

The average American won't get any of the policy tweaks you mention without fixing the most glaring issues of my list since almost everything federal requires at least a full congressional majority.

Reagan and Bush Sr. had none of eight / four years, Clinton two of eight years, Bush Jr. four of eight, Obama two of eight, Trump two of four and Biden at least two of four. And even when the respective Presidents had a majority in Congress, they would usually require not just ordinary majority but filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - and the last president to enjoy that one was Jimmy Carter in 1977-1979.

Every Western country except the US and UK has a system in place that the leader of the government usually has the majority to pass laws in parliament, at least a budget law, without depending on the opposition - we do have some countries that love their minority governments, but even they manage to do just fine. Something like "government shutdowns" resulting out of the legislative chambers being unwilling to do their most basic job of ensuring the government is actually funded is completely unheard of here - and you Americans have had ten of these since 1980 that resulted in furloughs and eight more that did not [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#643

Post by mschuster91 »

pseudo0 wrote: post #486
mschuster91 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> it was not anticipated that civilians would be able to own weapons of war) That was in fact the entire point ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246 ). > (a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the Unite…

> Switzerland, Sweden, and likely a few others I'm forgetting all seem to be doing fine.

They are distinctly not. Switzerland has a massive problem with the right-wing populist SVP, they are slowly breaking apart from the EU [1] as a result of their specific brand of obstructionism involving the direct-democracy voting mechanism, and in Sweden the right-wing populist SD (which stands for Sweden Democrats, not Social Democrats) has been growing and growing, to a point the established parties are seriously considering cooperating with them [2].

As for Australia, NZ and Canada, there have been enough other replies in this thread.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57251681

[2]: https://taz.de/Mitte-Rechts-Buendnis-in-Schweden/!5765511/

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#644

Post by gnopgnip »

chrononaut wrote: post #438
gnopgnip wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth

As ridiculous as it is, this is not a myth; It varies by state whether it's required. > At least 13 states require registration for public urination; of those, two limit registration to those who committed the act in view of a minor; https://www.hrw.org/report/2007/09/11/no-easy-answers/sex-of... Now, it's probably unlikely (considering a normal person is also not generally trying to be purposely seen), but not out o…

In the foot notes it lists CA as one of these 13 states. But in CA "the law requires the prosecution be able to prove you willingly exposed yourself in public with the intent to bring attention to your genitals for the sexual motivation of yourself or another person. In other words, unless you were actively trying to get someone to look at your genitals while you relieved yourself in order to arouse yourself or someone else, you are not guilty of this offense."

https://vistacriminallaw.com/public-urination-laws-and-sex-o...

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#645

Post by Spare_account »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #507
chiph wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An in-tank pump is typically cooled by being immersed in the liquid gasoline. When the gas level drops too low the pump gets less cooling.

So you've knocked a couple operating hours off the life of something that tens of thousands of operating hours? Big deal. It'll be fine unless you run it dry for a long period but you won't be doing that because cars don't run the pump when the engine isn't running.

This is in the same territory as the advice I see sometimes to make sure you don't turn the steering wheel while the car is stationary ("dry steering") because "it will put stress on steering components and shorten their life, and it will damage the tyres".

These pieces of advice are technically correct but catering for edge cases that won't affect 99% of drivers/vehicle owners. Modern cars are designed for the way people use them; people run their tanks to empty all the time.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#646

Post by Spare_account »

pengaru wrote: post #483
_muff1nman_ wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've drifted off topic, and started giving advice about "vehicle broken down on active highway" which isn't the scenario being discussed.

Yes, getting off the highway makes sense if you are in a disabled vehicle on an active highway, assuming there is something solid to shield you from the vehicles/debris that goes flying when your car is hit.

No, getting out of your car in a winter storm when all traffic is halted due to the conditions does not make sense at all.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#647

Post by bryanrasmussen »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #619
vkou wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your city's votes get counted during election years. DC is one of the poster children for taxation without representation.

That’s why they should consider annexation by Maryland.

I hadn't heard the annexation argument before, I suppose the fairest way would be to have an election in DC and people would vote on whether they wanted to be an independent state or part of Maryland, and whichever was chosen would be the way to go.

I personally would expect they would want to be their own state, but who knows? If on the other hand people feel the choose their own state is very likely and Maryland unlikely it would probably save money to just go with become their own state.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#648

Post by torstenvl »

imgabe wrote: post #514
stjohnswarts wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DC shouldn't be a state, it would give that "state" too much power and also make politicians there outsized politically powerful and we have enough of that already with states like rhode island, wyoming, and the dakotas

That's not how this works. We create a government and decide what rights citizens have. We did that, wrote a whole constitution about it. Then we make sure every citizen has those rights. If there are imbalances in the design of the government, that's a separate problem that we fix on its own. Depriving some subset of citizens of their rights is not the answer.

No post body was provided.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#649

Post by _dain_ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #528
_dain_ wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing half the story; "demand" only makes sense with reference to a price. At the moment, that price is zero, but it needn't be. As we all know, market prices are an efficient mechanism to allocate scarce resources. People have a curious blindspot about this when it comes to roads.

> As we all know, market prices are an efficient mechanism to allocate scarce resources. People have a curious blindspot about this when it comes to roads. It's not a blind spot. It's a characteristic of services with a high fixed cost and trivial variable cost. To ask if we should price roads is to ask if the price needed to deter usage enough to relieve congestion without expanding the road would generate less reve…

>To ask if we should price roads is to ask if the price needed to deter usage enough to relieve congestion without expanding the road would generate less revenue than it would take to expand the road. But this is basically never the case because most of the expansion cost is one-time (e.g. buying the land) whereas the congestion charge would have to be collected forever to continue deterring usage.

First of all, that just doesn't follow. You can take out a loan to pay for the up-front cost and pay it back using the revenue you collect from tolls. Second, roads cost a lot of money to maintain. There are the usual ongoing costs to fix potholes and so on, and then they have to be totally replaced after 25-30 years. This is far more than what local taxation can bear in many cases. Replacement costs are chronically underestimated.

(e.g. Winnipeg would have to raise taxes 95% to properly fund their existing road liabilities: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/1/3/death-of-a-car-... )

>But if people value using the road at more than the cost of expanding it, and there are no higher efficiency alternatives, that implies the road should be expanded.

This is wrong, they are not valuing it properly because it is paid for by taxation and debt. A motorist pays exactly the same amount directly as a non-motorist: zero. The true costs are diffuse, invisible, and incomplete.

>And once it has been and there is no congestion even at zero unit price, there is no benefit in charging a unit price to deter congestion that isn't there anyway, and a detriment in deterring use of a public resource for which the same fixed cost has to be paid whether you use it or not.

This situation hardly ever happens. There is almost always more congestion after expansions than predicted by planners. If you wanted to overpower induced demand and get rid of all congestion the roads would have to be utterly gargantuan.

>Charging road tolls is also especially inefficient because the collections process has a high administrative overhead and a high privacy cost. Every dollar spent collecting tolls -- toll tags, gantries, billing, maintenance, customer service -- is a deadweight economic loss not incurred by any alternative that doesn't require them. The privacy cost is the same.

Time spent stuck in traffic is also deadweight loss, and it creates pollution.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#650

Post by MathCodeLove »

jyounker wrote: post #631
MathCodeLove wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not safe to assume. It's ridiculous to assume that there's even some intrinsic "racial hierarchy" to begin with. Some demographics do better on average than others, much like how Asian-Americans have a higher average household income than White-Americans, but despite what twitter says that's largely not due to any deeply rooted systemic issue. I don't think a single readers letter to some local news organiza…

> It's ridiculous to assume that there's even some intrinsic "racial hierarchy" to begin with Yea, it is ridiculous to assume that there is an intrinsic racial hierarchy. That doesn't mean that that US doesn't have one though. If you need evidence, just look at incarceration rates, police shooting rates, property ownership rates, intergenerational wealth, representation in government, hiring disparities, educational…

Current economic consequences of historic oppression are, while unfortunate, not indicative of current, on-going oppression.

It's also quite misleading to throw out statistics like incarceration rates, police shootings, etc and assume it's automatically because of racism and not instead indicative of the violent culture that become pervasive in many black urban communities. I have no doubt that part of it does stem from racial prejudice, but let's not pretend like that's the only or even a major contributor to those statistics.

As for the other disparities, those are largely a result of poverty/low-income, not racism. I hear "well that's still pretty much racism since black americans are the poorest demographic" and that's not true. It's not the same because it isn't racism. It's unfortunate that historic events have made black americans the poorest demographic, but poor white, asian, hispanic, etc families have very much the same issues. Check those same numbers but control for income and see for yourself how it isn't racism but is classism.

Instead of harping on about the imagined ingrained racism in america let's face the real issue, which is cyclical poverty. The black community is the most effected by this due to relatively recent oppression, but they aren't the sole suffering demographic.

Was what happened in the past awful? Yes. Are some people still suffering today as a result? Yes. Does that mean that america still has ongoing systemic racism? No. When controlling for income, we all have very near equal opportunity to succeed or fail.

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