231–240 of 278 posts
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Airports. Especially in Europe, many small cities built their own airports, hoping they'd get passenger traffic. Many of those are now closed or have to be sold off for a nominal amount, as flights concentrated on major airports instead of spreading out.
How many people commute by plane? It's not a good comparison.
I thought the current thinking was that building more roads means that there will be more roads to use, and therefore more cars on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
Induced demand often happens, but certainly not always. It just depends on latent demand and network effects. More importantly, the appearance of induced demand is not a general argument against building roads! People get value out of getting to places. If we build road B intending to relieve congestion on road A, but road A stays just as congested, we nevertheless have enabled people to get places with road B that t…
The problem is that people live increasingly elongated lives that lack a grounded sense of place or community. Whole neighbourhoods are just a nuisance in the way between place A and place B. What about place C that is stuck in the middle with the pollution, noise, and congestion?
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> For a city with no alternatives (like no meaningful public transit), it's impossible to induce traffic demand, because demand is already at 100%. Traffic still grows as population grows, but a person can only physically drive one car at a time, it's currently impossible to induce any higher demand than that. This is not true. An example is Houston building a 26 lane highway only to lead to ~40 increased commute tim…
It'd seem in that case it's not that demand increased but that people moved further way from their final destination so their commute time was increased. It may very well be that the same people are still driving or wanting to drive, but simply by living further away the commute times have gone up.
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Spot on with the "still creating value" stuff. With most things, creating more so more people can have it is seen as good. With roads, it's somehow seen as bad. It makes sense if the roads have negative externalities, like noise, or ugliness, or pollution, or destroying pedestrian access. But none of that applies to tunnels used by cars running on clean energy.
> somehow seen as bad I've noticed a certain utopian streak in some urban planning enthusiast communities --- one that's not compatible with the automobile as the primary mode of personal transportation. The general thinking seems to be, "$PROPOSAL reduces the number of cars on the road? Good!" Back when I lived in Buffalo, NY, there was a group of people who'd write editorials in The Stranger (the local alternative…
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The US can easily afford to maintain it's infrastructure. It would make money in doing so. Expense is not the reason the US has infrastructure problems.
If that's true, what is the reason? Is it because roads are public spending and not private development? I guess I do have to clarify that saying we can or can't afford it is overloaded. We may have the money to do it and still not be able to afford it for a variety of reasons including politics and higher priorities. I think it's fair to say we can't afford it when we have debt and we're not fixing the problem. All…
Those maps don't include America's water infrastructure, which is in need of a serious overhaul. The American Water Works Association estimates that the cost of restoring underground pipes will total at least $1 trillion over the next 25 years, without including the cost of constructing new infrastructure or repairing treatment plants.
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Say what you will about BR privatization, but this[0] goes from London to Manchester in 2 hours (takes about 3 by road if you really push it on the M6 toll and M40). They also serve (overpriced) beer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_390
The British government still owns the rails and prioritizes passenger service, though, unlike the US. NR bought it back after Railtrack folded, if memory serves. If Amtrak owned the rails and leased to freight, instead of the other way round, I imagine it'd have a similar level of service. As things stand, there's zero incentive for the track owners (freight companies) to update the lines for speeds higher than they…
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I'm not surprised that people who design boring machines or design tunnels are not regular readers or commentators here on HN :-). Like Musk, I've felt that tunneling is under utilized (unfortunately I don't have the resources he has to bring to bear on it) but there is a wealth of information out there on the current state of tunneling. Three interesting projects that have a number of 'explainers' and various papers…
I design both boring machines and tunnels and am a regular reader on HN. I have worked on tunnels ranging from the smallest to the largest, rock to soil, and all forms of construction. I have stopped commenting on any tunnel related Elon topic due to people refusing to believe my experience and expertise when it does not align with what Elon Musk and his team of "experts" have said or published in their desk studies.
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Awesome! I've got a question that I have not been able to answer. Seattle's "Big Bertha" is surplus once they finish the Alaska Viaduct project in a few months. What process could I use to establish whether or not one could use that machine locally? Assume I can get an inventory of all parts used in the machine. And a related question, is there a way to estimate the cost to retarget a used machine to a new mission?
I doubt Bertha will be purchasable given the litigation on the SR 99 job. I don't know what you would be able or want to use it for - it's 58.5 ft in diameter. It is unlikely that you will get an inventory of all the parts in the machine. If you really want a machine then you would just call the contractor and ask them their price. You would likely have to pay for delivery. The process to establish whether or not one…
> I doubt Bertha will be purchasable given the
> litigation on the SR 99 job.
> I don't know what you would be able or want to
> use it for - it's 58.5 ft in diameter.
Based on my evaluation of the Viaduct plan this plan would use it in substantially the same way.
We can't afford to maintain the surface roads & bridges we already built, and tunnels are more expensive and require more maintenance by like an order of magnitude. (I made that up, but I'm pretty sure it's right, to within an order of magnitude... but if tunnels are 1000x more expensive, then I'm wrong). I can admire someone who has the resources to exclude himself from the traffic problem instead taking action to t…
It's not about having more infrastructure to maintain, it's about replacing the expensive stuff we have with efficient infra instead.