Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 783 posts

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#171

Post by thorncorona »

ambyra wrote: post #36
infecto wrote: post #15

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit. To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

Here's a nice study: https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/ They say 10% of traffic being replaced by motorcycles reduces congestion by 40%. California has pretty good weather so it's probably feasible to commute by motorbike almost every day.

I would rather not die.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#172

Post by whythre »

vundercind wrote: post #83
tomrod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not a democracy. Not even at the state level. For many aspects and holons it is a representative republic.

Describing the US as a democracy is totally normal among actual experts in the study of governments (political scientists).

Sounds like terminology slip, then. People use the term democracy to describe the US, often in contrast to authoritarian dictatorships; but that is more of a crude definition, a colloquialism rather than an accurate description of US governance.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#173

Post by ein0p »

someguydave wrote: post #32
ambyra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try a motorcycle! The laws for lane splitting are the best in the country. You could probably fit 6 motorcycles in the space of one car.

Motorcyles have a roughly 30 times higher fatality rate per mile driven compared to cars

Even better if you only worry about CO2. /s

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#174

Post by twoodfin »

wongarsu wrote: post #61
Drakim wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I feel it's fine for them to operate at a loss, it's a public service, akin to the fire department or library. The amount of good it does society to get cars off the road is staggering. The lack of bus drivers simply comes down to an unwillingness to pay more. It's the exact same problem with teachers, where the wage is extremely low but they would rather just have a shortage rather than paying more.

Crucially, the road network also operates at a loss

The difference is that the gas tax or similar user fees could easily (if politically feasible) be scaled up to cover both capital and operating expenses for the entire road and highway network.

If you tried to do that for merely the operating costs of many transit systems, they’d enter a death spiral.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#176

Post by throwup238 »

akira2501 wrote: post #169
infecto wrote: post #15

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit. To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

> Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life How did you quantify this? Or this a purely anecdotal observation?

Not the OP but air quality monitors that measure particulates at different sizes? It's a pretty standard way of measuring air quality.

There's a map of official California monitors: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/applications/air-monitoring-sites-int...

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#177

Post by jseliger »

BurningFrog wrote: post #44

California, always leading the way, has boldly built almost nothing for 5 decades!

LA has actually built a lot of subway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail# and much more than NYC or Chicago during the same period.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#178

Post by baq »

someguydave wrote: post #62
nullindividual wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are driven by the cattle prod. If the government wants to reduce something, it needs to be more painful to acquire or use, i.e. sin taxes. It's worked on cigarettes, alcohol, soda, etc. to varying degrees. The government would likely have a very big uphill battle to out-market the automobile industry given a large segment of the population distrusts or dislikes the government. I ultimately agree with the appro…

Hurting people to teach them your morality certainly has some interesting historical analogies

everyone's morality is different, one would hope the government optimizes for something else, like you paying more to slowly kill yourself because it costs the government money when you stop paying taxes early and use your social security net instead of working

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#179

Post by Gibbon1 »

languagehacker wrote: post #51

I just read Paved Paradise as well as The High Cost of Free Parking. This seems like the current gradual trend towards reversing the hidden subsidy for drivers, first by giving them less affordances at remarkably low prices or for free. A few folks in the comments have mentioned a couple of times that it doesn't make sense to make a policy like this without supporting transit. I believe the argument would be that not…

When it comes to transit I think the lol make driving sucky so people will support mass transit is inane because of the backlash potential. Much better to get ahead of the hose than always be trying to grab it's ass. You're not going to get boomers and GenX to take the bus. You probably could get younger generations to do that especially if there are options.

Really there should be a high speed rail along the front range and subways in places like Denver. And zoning that prioritizes development that utilized that.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#180

Post by baq »

someguydave wrote: post #77
turnsout wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing people to realize their desires is not necessarily a good thing or the role of government. The majority of people would like to pay 0 taxes and never pay for healthcare.

Punishing people into having correct desires is the role of government?

yes? from the perspective of the larger group of people that the government governs? isn't that the purpose of the government?
Post reply on HN