271–280 of 490 posts
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Boston to NY is 215m, it should take at most 90 minutes by modern train, 2 hours by century old lines. York to London is 215m and 2 hours, along a line that’s nearly 200 years old. Paris ti Lyon is 290 miles and takes 2 hours on a 40 year old track.
If we could just get rid of that pesky Connecticut in the way
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Roads safe for cycling is half the battle. The other half is around zoning and mixing residential with businesses.
Legalize biking on the sidewalk nationwide. I don’t want to bike on the road for any reason. Bikers have far far lower chances of hurting pedestrians than cars do of bikers.
My point is: if you live in a place where a lot of drivers behave like selfish idiots to other drivers, bikers, and pedestrians, then a lot of bikers will behave like selfish idiots too.
I don’t have a solution, but I just wanted to add the data point because I hate most bikers with about the same intensity I hate most drivers. As a pedestrian, both groups ignore me and put me at risk every single f-word day.
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I hate driving into Manhattan. I'd much rather take rail relative to the alternatives even if it takes longer and maybe costs more (especially leaving aside parking). And many others do as well even if it would be faster to drive. And generally Manhattan is pretty walkable once you're there.
Boston to NY is 215m, it should take at most 90 minutes by modern train, 2 hours by century old lines. York to London is 215m and 2 hours, along a line that’s nearly 200 years old. Paris ti Lyon is 290 miles and takes 2 hours on a 40 year old track.
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I’ve slowly lost my innocence when it comes to public transportation in the US. At this point I can see that 95% of the country is absolutely locked into low-density single occupancy transportation at least till we invent sky cars. We have trillions in sunk cost that covers nearly every road, every home and every business in America. We will never, ever be Europe.
The Netherlands had a very similar problem and made very simple and inexpensive changes to roadway planning. For one thing, I think a lot of American suburbs could be way more bike friendly if people just had a safe path to ride in. We are talking a half a lane worth of pavement. Another thing is that this isn’t all or nothing. Still owning and perhaps needing a car but reducing the number of trips per week is a win.…
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I always wondered just how bad an idea must have been. If Musk didn't go after it. Specially considering that he is the one who published it...
Why risk your reputation on something high-risk or likely impossible if you can crowdsource others to waste their time and money to verify its continued infeasibility for you?
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As someone living in the Northeast and having often made train trips of similar length (Philadelphia -> Boston), I don't see how. If I'm driving and need to stop to use the bathroom, eat something, or so on I'm setting myself back time-wise. Plus I have to stay sitting down the whole time and have to stay focused on the road for hours. If I take the train, I can get up, stretch my legs, grab some food, and I'll still…
I suppose all this hinges on if you want to have a car when you get to the destination. If not, then sure take the train if flying doesn't work. But I usually want to have a car. So I'll be driving until it really doesn't make sense for me. Most people I know spend crazy money for a car, if you compare to how little they could spend. Thus it seems many people are ok shelling out thousands of dollars a year for a cool…
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Yeah, and because of that, today we have mainstream electric cars, an Earth blanketed with Internet from space, and the cheapest spacelift cost ever achieved. Any one of these would have cemented him as a premier industrialist. In the end, there's legions of Internet commenters who complain about Elon Musk in between complaining about their bosses or complain about Google and Facebook or what have you. And then there…
Musk was not instrumental in mainstream EVs. He was on the early wave of it, yes, but other companies had EVs out at the same time or before, and the price drop in lithium was obvious to everyone who was paying attention at the time. It would have happened one way or another. Yes, we've ruined astronomy with a ton of LEO satellites, but we've got some internet in exchange (I'm rural, I have it, I'm quite honestly not…
This is exactly why the stated goal of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of electric cars - in other words, make it happen a lot sooner than it otherwise would have.
I personally think making internet available to people who don't have it is far more important than people who do have home internet complaining about their view of the stars during their camping trip.
China and others have done far, far more to contribute to space junk than SpaceX has.
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A train car carries about a kiloton of cargo. How many zeppelins would that take? Edit: Actually, I can't count. Only a few hundred thousand pounds. That's still probably a bunch of zeppelinworths though.
Hinderburg-like at 100 ton itself can carry about 120 ton payload, ie. payload of 2 train cars.
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> The 8 billion is for a specific portion in a high CoL area with the majority being land acquisition costs. This is exactly the kind of thing I was suspecting was by misleading by the original number. "America can't build affordable high-speed rail" suggests that that their is same lacking capability in engineering. "Land costs make building in dense areas unprofitable" is a completely different story.
Also, the $8 billion includes building the train station under the Transbay Terminal. Train stations, especially underground ones, are really expensive. Plus, it is digging a tunnel for the tracks.
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Yes, and we have generations of people trained to think that walking further than a hundred feet is an extreme workout to be avoided and that transit systems are full of criminals. It seems like that culture is headed for a cliff, however, as the cost of cars continues to increase (the average sale last year was a year’s median pay!), budgets for road infrastructure become tighter, and climate change becomes harder t…
The people of Singapore pay a minimum of 100K for the privilege of owning a bottom tier car and the demand for cars there is overwhelming and insatiable, despite the world class and extremely clean mass transit systems. The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint. Americans are insanely privileged to have cheap, powerful cars.
Another thing: you can have both (ie: Europe). You use public transit to get to places and you use your car when you need space for luggage or taking the family.