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After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

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Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#41

Post by gruez »

op00to wrote: post #23
nickthemagicman wrote: post #7

They're really working on making automobiles a lot safer by installing breathalyzers in every car. Exciting times! https://time.com/6086981/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-brea...

100% support this. If you know anyone who has been affected by the callous and careless behavior of drunk drivers, ask them if they agree.

>If you know anyone who has been affected by the callous and careless behavior of drunk drivers, ask them if they agree.

I bet if you asked 9/11 victims whether they want the PATRIOT act, they'd agree as well. That doesn't mean it's a good reason to support it, or that their feelings should be given more weight than anyone else's.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#43

Post by ttyprintk »

semenko wrote: post #28
nickthemagicman wrote: post #7

They're really working on making automobiles a lot safer by installing breathalyzers in every car. Exciting times! https://time.com/6086981/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-brea...

Apparently this is real — fascinating! ( The relevant text of the bill is here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684... ) This builds on an NHTSA-funded pilot program called Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADDS; https://www.dadss.org/ ). DADDS advanced two technologies for passive impaired driving detection: non-contact breath sensors (exhaled EtOH near the driver), and touch sens…

Seems like a little hand sanitizer would fool both.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#44

Post by bluejekyll »

dougmwne wrote: post #24
CalRobert wrote: post #12

This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals. Should we not trying to decommission roads and encourage people to move to denser, walkable and cyclable city centers?

That’s probably a reductive take. This bill is massive, over 2000 pages. It has funding for all kinds of transportation, green, energy and digital infrastructure. Roads are a part of that because once they are built, they need to be maintained or else people will die. There are several examples of bridges and overpasses collapsing and leading to deaths and badly maintained road surface leads to fatal accidents as wel…

An area that I didn’t see talk about was investment in pedestrian and bicycle safety infrastructure. That’s generally a much smaller investment with significant gains in reducing car travel, to the GP’s point.

I would have liked to see spending on bike and pedestrian safety projects as a percentage of any money spend on car infrastructure.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#45

Post by ModernMech »

beervirus wrote: post #14
CalRobert wrote: post #12

This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals. Should we not trying to decommission roads and encourage people to move to denser, walkable and cyclable city centers?

It’s not really about infrastructure like roads and stuff. It’s about “infrastructure.”

I’m confused what you mean with the scare quotes. It seems from the article at least what they passed has a lot of money for roads and stuff. Or do you mean that money will just sort of evaporate with nothing getting done?

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#46

Post by Brian_K_White »

wartijn_ wrote: post #40
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wording in the actual bill looks vague enough that I hope this is more for show than for actual implementation. It specifically requires non-contact sensors that can “accurately” detect blood alcohol level of the driver. It may be possible to detect trace exhaled alcohol in the air, but you’re never going to get accurate blood alcohol measurements from proximity alone. In the unlikely event that such a system mad…

About your last paragraph: the goal of these measurements would of course be to prefect you from driving at all when alcohol is detected. Suggesting that the idea is that people are slowed down on a freeway because of this seems absurd.

failing to project that this would happen all day every day everywhere, is absurd

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#47

Post by mym1990 »

mrweasel wrote: post #18
CalRobert wrote: post #12

This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals. Should we not trying to decommission roads and encourage people to move to denser, walkable and cyclable city centers?

The US is huge, and people are already migrating to the cities (a bad move in the light of COVID). The remaining cities still need to be connected by roads, even if you’re closing down small communities. You can also improve public transport, build bikelanes and sidewalk, while updating roads to help the parts of the community that will inevitable live outside the inner city limits.

Hasn’t the trend been the opposite during covid, people have actually been moving out of large city centers? I think generally people like to have the space, especially with a family, and it’s just cheaper in the suburbs.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#48

Post by sofixa »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #34
CalRobert wrote: post #12

This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals. Should we not trying to decommission roads and encourage people to move to denser, walkable and cyclable city centers?

You'd still need most of the roads for logistical reasons. Cities need food, a whole lot of food, and it has to come from somewhere it can actually be grown.

Railways can be used for that, quite efficiently (much more so than trucks).

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#50

Post by adam_arthur »

ur-whale wrote: post #27
netcan wrote: post #15

The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination... A roman aquaduct wow factor. Something to marvel at. Am I being shallow? Does it make bad sense to cut a $100bn slice for something epic? A hypersonic monorail perhaps?

> The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination A country running out of money and going into hyperinflation via money printing ? Exciting enough for you ?

I'm definitely personally on the more hawkish side, re inflation.

But this bill may help reduce longer term inflation if it's actually spent wisely.

e.g. if port throughput/efficiency increases, we could process imports more cheaply.

I'm not an expert on the bill, but the skew in the numbers seem a bit strange. Personally I think the cost should have been weighted much more heavily towards logistics/energy aspect of infrastructure, rather than repairs.

I'll have to read the fine print, but the money for "bridges" seems kind of wasteful unless they're actually building net new bridges.

Are the bridges in poor condition actually on the verge of structurally failing? Or just older but serviceable.

E.g. a second bridge connecting VA and MD over the Potomac would be pretty awesome, and greatly alleviate congestion.

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