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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

#731

Post by selimthegrim »

tomohawk wrote: post #146

I95 in that section is only 3 lanes, when it should have been upgraded to 4 many years ago. Instead, they focused on adding 2 HOV lanes which change direction mid day. They could have added 3 lanes in EACH direction (6 total) given the space required for the HOV, and spent less money doing it. In addition, NIMBY cancelled the eastern bypass (upgrade of US 301 to I97), which would have allowed interstate traffic to by…

It appears from Google Street View they are expanding the 301 bridge at least but it won't be done until 2023.

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

#732

Post by thaumasiotes »

jolux wrote: post #724
torstenvl wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse. If you want rural America to rise up in rebellion again, I mean, I guess go for it. But there's a specific reason the vast majority of state capitals are in comparatively rural areas: to prevent exactly the kind of division yo…

> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse. Totally incorrect. Berlin and Hamburg are states right now.

According to the Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion ), Shays' Rebellion was prompted by taxes being set at a level well beyond farmers' ability to pay. This is an incredibly common motive for revolt.

But it escapes me how torstenvl thinks it's related to cities constituting their own governmental units.

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

#733

Post by ddingus »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #661
ddingus wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much? I have almost no experience with them.

A ton less. Basically it has to do with a diesel throttling the fuel and never having any restriction on the air vs a gas engine throttling the air.

Thanks. Interesting. I understand why people get those little diesel heaters, generators.

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

#734

Post by chiph »

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.

For my car, the pump assembly is $900. And then there's the labor charge to put it on a lift, drain out whatever fuel is in there (saving it for later), dropping the tank, and then to remove/replace the bad pump. I would guess an easy 3 hours labor.

With the average used car on US roads now over 12 years old, having the pump go bad could mechanically total some vehicles (the repair cost would exceed the vehicle's worth), so you're going to want to prolong it's life however you can.

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

#735

Post by dionidium »

rayiner wrote: post #92
azylman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grew up in Northern VA. Public transit here is a solution looking for a problem. The job centers and commercial are too spread out for public transit to make any sense. Most of the population and jobs in the DC metro area aren’t in DC but spread around in Tysons, Loudoun, Reston, Arlington, Bethesda, etc. The state spent billions building the Silver line out to Tysons, Reston, and Loudoun, and ridership was disappo…

This arrangement is the result of one of the biggest social engineering projects in human history. In order to make this happen the federal government had to massively subsidize loans for single-family homes, build enormous interstate highways (that always seem to be adding a lane), and make alternative living arrangements illegal via zoning.

I read your comments downthread, which I think are pretty insightful; it may be the case that the ship has sailed and we're not going back (and it may even be the case that there's something in our national DNA that prevents us from competently building and operating transit). But it should at least be acknowledged that the status quo isn't the result of personal choice or revealed preference; it was quite literally a big-government social engineering project.

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

#736

Post by torstenvl »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #732
jolux wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse. Totally incorrect. Berlin and Hamburg are states right now.

According to the Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion ), Shays' Rebellion was prompted by taxes being set at a level well beyond farmers' ability to pay. This is an incredibly common motive for revolt. But it escapes me how torstenvl thinks it's related to cities constituting their own governmental units.

I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it? It had nothing to do with the level of taxes, but with the insistence on following the urban mercantile paradigm, and, when farmers couldn't, forcibly taking their land from them.

"The economy during the American Revolutionary War was largely subsistence agriculture.... Some residents in these areas had few assets beyond their land, and they bartered.... In contrast, there was a market economy in the more economically developed coastal areas of Massachusetts Bay.... The state government was dominated by this merchant class.... European business partners ... insisted that they pay for goods with hard currency, despite the country-wide shortage of such currency. Merchants began to demand the same from... those operating in the market towns in the state's interior.... The rural farming population was generally unable to meet the demands... and some began to lose their land and other possessions when they were unable to fulfill their debt and tax obligations."

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

#737

Post by flavius29663 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #723
flavius29663 wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> block essentially any progress or legislation A lot of legislation is blocked in the EU, yes. The modus operandi of the EU is to compromise until every state is satisfied. And the US is far from being blocked out of any progress. The gay rights is more advanced than in Europe, infrastructure bills are passing with bipartisan support, COVID relief bills are passing with flying colors and with a much more consistent…

And yet we are more interconnected than ever before. Even the most impoverished can travel across the country in 3 days by car or bus. As diverse as our personal cultures are, our administration of state and infrastructure, our economy, is as interwoven as ever. I argue that there are many things which could have been handled by the states in 1800 that cannot now, or otherwise were not issues or responsibilities of t…

I just gave you examples of EU inner workings. They are also incredibly interconnected, almost as much as the US. Still, they have institutions to give some power to the smaller entities/states. The US institutions are not made the way they are because "people could not travel far enough in a day", they are made as such to provide checks and balances. As an European living in the US, I feel like you have more stable mechanisms that work better than even the modern EU.

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

#738

Post by [deleted] »

flavius29663 wrote: post #737
unethical_ban wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet we are more interconnected than ever before. Even the most impoverished can travel across the country in 3 days by car or bus. As diverse as our personal cultures are, our administration of state and infrastructure, our economy, is as interwoven as ever. I argue that there are many things which could have been handled by the states in 1800 that cannot now, or otherwise were not issues or responsibilities of t…

I just gave you examples of EU inner workings. They are also incredibly interconnected, almost as much as the US. Still, they have institutions to give some power to the smaller entities/states. The US institutions are not made the way they are because "people could not travel far enough in a day", they are made as such to provide checks and balances. As an European living in the US, I feel like you have more stable…

[deleted]

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

#739

Post by thaumasiotes »

torstenvl wrote: post #736
thaumasiotes wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion ), Shays' Rebellion was prompted by taxes being set at a level well beyond farmers' ability to pay. This is an incredibly common motive for revolt. But it escapes me how torstenvl thinks it's related to cities constituting their own governmental units.

I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it? It had nothing to do with the level of taxes, but with the insistence on following the urban mercantile paradigm, and, when farmers couldn't, forcibly taking their land from them. "The economy during the American Revolutionary War was largely subsistence agriculture.... Some residents in these areas had few assets…

> I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it?

You didn't actually give an account. But the quote you pulled describes farmers being taxed at a level they are incapable of paying. It appears that you would like to use that to support the claim "it had nothing to do with the level of taxes", somehow. You'd need to explain how.

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

#740

Post by efxhoy »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #500
efxhoy wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The canonical economist solution to this is to introduce road tolls. Make drivers pay at point of use to fund the road.

We already have this in the form of gas taxes. However, increasing them is politically untenable.

An important distinction between specific tolls per road and a general gas tax is that a gas tax funds all roads, not the specific one you're driving on. A toll on a particular road is an informative signal to the market of which particular stretch of road you want to drive on, in theory allowing more "efficient" allocation of roads.
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