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Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are talking about California where they didn't build an extensively sufficient subway system.
It must suck to live in a third-world state.
This isnt fucking reddit, take your sensationalism elsewhere. It's really easy to pick on transportation systems when you have absolutely no idea how spread out everything is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are talking about California where they didn't build an extensively sufficient subway system.
Whenever you can land at an airport and take a train (BART) into the heart of the City in under 30 minutes you've got a subway system. BART could always be better (loop the Bay or go across the Golden Gate) but it is a real Subway system.
For people living in very specific parts of the city (see: the Mission) the lack of a real metro has made BART into a pseudo-subway, but at the end of the day it's still commuter rail (the seating arrangements in a BART car is telling as to its intended purpose).
San Francisco doesn't really have a metro system - it has streetcars that don't have exclusive right of way through the majority of their run.
> The backlash in recent months against the self-involvement and frivolity of the new guard has actually been a long time coming. Instagram photos of opulent tech holiday parties have been lambasted, Google buses blockaded In what universe is a carpooling system that gets dozens of cars off the road and allows each passenger to reclaim ten working hours a week classified as frivolous?
Have you not been following any of the discussion about this topic? Here are three frequently voiced objections: 1) If the city decided to put a new bus route outside of your house, with a bus every 10 minutes for the morning and evening rush hours, then you would expect there to be public meetings where people can voice concerns about the routing, increase in large traffic, noise, and so on. Why should private compa…
It's also best to think comparatively: sure, maybe some capital is being allocated stupidly [2]. But lets compare to the second half of the 20th century and its great technological achievements. Technological development was uniformly directed toward the goals of state-building and war-waging. Given a choice between better sexting apps and barbarism, it's not even a real choice. One is clearly a significantly negative-sum game, and the other is neutral to mildly positive. We only ended up ahead after the 20th century through a combination of good luck and technology's tendency to adapt across domains and be used in novel ways.
[1] A minority of the start ups that actually exist, but let's grant it for the sake of argument.
[2] The article makes this entirely about the allocation of labor, even going so far as to imply it's character defects that cause workers to go work on stupid things instead of meaningful things. But fuck that noise: capital is the driving force here. I've never met an engineer who would prefer working on sexting apps to working on deep, fundamental problems. But our present system rewards capital for pursuing short-term profits at the expense of long-term economic growth. If you want that to change, fix the system. Hate the game, not the player.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are talking about California where they didn't build an extensively sufficient subway system.
Whenever you can land at an airport and take a train (BART) into the heart of the City in under 30 minutes you've got a subway system. BART could always be better (loop the Bay or go across the Golden Gate) but it is a real Subway system.
If you want to remove cars from the road and have people live in a larger area, mass transit needs to accomodate them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you not been following any of the discussion about this topic? Here are three frequently voiced objections: 1) If the city decided to put a new bus route outside of your house, with a bus every 10 minutes for the morning and evening rush hours, then you would expect there to be public meetings where people can voice concerns about the routing, increase in large traffic, noise, and so on. Why should private compa…
I think you need to look up the definition of the word "frivolous".
1) It may be "frivolous" if the routing is only made based on the needs of the commuters, and has no input from the people who live on those routes. In an extreme case, if a bus goes down a narrow street in order to save one able-bodied person one block of walking, then that part is definitely frivolous even with the overall savings. Without that local input, neither you nor I have an idea of which parts are frivolous and which are not. And that local input has not occurred.
2) You made assumptions which might not be true. If the net effect of adding buses did not reduce car traffic at all, then your presumed advantages don't exist, and hence the effort is "frivolous."
3) If the goal is to reduce commute time and get cars off the streets, then long-distance bus traffic is not the solution. Improved access to nearby housing is the solution. Instead, long-term busing is a frivolous waste of money which should instead go towards zoning changes. But that involves getting into long-term local politics, which business people don't like doing. Instead, they would rather spend money on a technical solution which is achievable in the short-term, even if it doesn't really help your stated goals.
> The backlash in recent months against the self-involvement and frivolity of the new guard has actually been a long time coming. Instagram photos of opulent tech holiday parties have been lambasted, Google buses blockaded In what universe is a carpooling system that gets dozens of cars off the road and allows each passenger to reclaim ten working hours a week classified as frivolous?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you need to look up the definition of the word "frivolous".
I thought I addressed your "frivolous" criterion directly. 1) It may be "frivolous" if the routing is only made based on the needs of the commuters, and has no input from the people who live on those routes. In an extreme case, if a bus goes down a narrow street in order to save one able-bodied person one block of walking, then that part is definitely frivolous even with the overall savings. Without that local input,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you not been following any of the discussion about this topic? Here are three frequently voiced objections: 1) If the city decided to put a new bus route outside of your house, with a bus every 10 minutes for the morning and evening rush hours, then you would expect there to be public meetings where people can voice concerns about the routing, increase in large traffic, noise, and so on. Why should private compa…
To point 1 - because private citizens do not generally have a democratic voice in the decisions of private companies unless they’re stockholders. You could make the argument that any decision made by any private company could impact the lives of $GROUP, therefore $GROUP should be able to vote on whether that private company should be able to do $THING or not. That’s not how it works, it never has been, and I don’t se…
If companies like Cisco wanted to hire engineers who are going to sexier companies like web startups, maybe they should learn a little more about what web startups have to offer to a hire. Namely, the autonomy to develop a solution to a problem in one's own way, rather than being a single cog in a gigantic organizational wheel.