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The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

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Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#401

Post by jacquesm »

rcconf wrote: post #292
wutbrodo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I hate that I get so stressed from my daily commute, but being able to drive to the countryside on the weekend is so nice." I have truly never understood this line of thinking. These two are not tied together. I grew up in a car-centric city, but moved away in my teens. I've never personally owned a car and haven't had one in the household since I was 17. I hear this supposed "upside" of cars from my friends who a…

In Canada, renting a car when you're under 25 years old is pretty annoying. It's usually an extra $25 a day and that's what turned me off to renting. Some rental companies won't even let you get a car if you're under 25. It's actually a function of age, so I'm currently 24 and in theory, it should be cheaper now.. so let's do some blanket math to entertain your idea. - I drive my car only on weekends, so Friday - Sun…

> It tends to break down every 3 months, at around $1000 a repair each time

That's really not good. Even BMW's are not that expensive to maintain, something is really wrong with your vehicle. Unless it's a classic and you're using it as a daily driver.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#402

Post by CydeWeys »

ShannonAlther wrote: post #396
CydeWeys wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, and even though I dislike cars, I can't help but feel like you're arguing against someone living in an alternate reality. Unless you live in a dense urban core there's no possible way that walking saves more time than driving. The main reasons I don't have a car is that it's very freeing not to have to worry about owning one (from a theft/maintenance/risk perspective), and also because I'm now livin…

If I had the choice to go live in Manhattan and not have a car vs. live somewhere else and be obligated to own a car I would choose Manhattan in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I can't do that (and even if I could, most people cannot).

I'm curious as to why you truly can't do it. Obviously not everyone can, but most individual cases likely can. It's more that you choose not to, which is still perfectly valid.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#403

Post by chrischen »

anovikov wrote: post #267
TulliusCicero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in mu…

Seems like Japan didn't get that memo having been bombed twice.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#405

Post by serhei »

gozur88 wrote: post #269
CodeCube wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people don't bang on about it, nothing will ever change ... seriously, everyone will simply move on and build the next urban sprawl center, and the next shitty road, out to the next desolate subdivision because that's what's easy. No one wants to be agitated. Well, too bad, we _should_ be agitated. Those without the good fortune _should_ raise hell to the city planners, and attend city council meetings, and vote i…

>If people don't bang on about it, nothing will ever change ... It's not going to change anyway. The car haters on HN are in the minority of Americans.

I suspect that part of the reason cities like San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver are so ludicrously expensive in North America are because there are far more people that hate cars than there are cities which are amenable to their preferences.

So, if a minority, then a very under-served one. Those cities are going to stay expensive unless the supply of walkable cities increases.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#406

Post by tooltalk »

deanCommie wrote: post #298
anovikov wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in mu…

Have a source for any of that? Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact. Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day. Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.

Ah, I just did Google on it, and lo and behold:

"... While it is true that various factors contributed to phenomenal growth of the suburbs between 1945 and 1960, historians have thus far paid little attention to policymakers' fears of atomic attack as a significant factor in population dispersal. ..."

The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence K. Tobin, Pages 1-32 | Published online: 06 Sep 2010

I work in tech/finance. I am old enough to remember that, after the 9/11 attack in 2001, banks were required to set up their datacenter/DR sites at least 50 miles away from their main offices to avoid a complete wipe-out in case of nuke attack.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#407

Post by chrischen »

taurath wrote: post #331
deanCommie wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think people in Europe live in suburban or rural areas? The difference is networks of buses and trains that the countries and cities invested in over decades. America went in another direction, and looks no closer to changing it's mind.

Most of Europe doesn't live in what Americans would call suburbs, but villages. They're dense where people live and have train and bus service conveniently, because in postwar Europe there were a lot fewer cars. They also zone such that there's a dense living area surrounded by farmland - when that farmland becomes all housing thenyoull have American style suburbs, but few in Europe want that because it's harder to g…

This is pretty much the norm in orher places such as China and Japan.

New developments havebeen getting more sprawl in China though, as cars have become more popular.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#408

Post by fiblye »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #246
Xeoncross wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume those that live in small cities work there as well. A large number of people living rural areas or small cities drive to big cities to work. There are very few "small" cities on the coasts (<10,000 people) so perhaps that is what you are referring to by small cities for which this works.

If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for? Cars are more useful when people need to go to random places at indeterminate times.

They're all going to the same place, but all coming from different areas. Arranging for them to get to a common point to even board the public transportation you're offering would require them to take a car, since density makes and sheer time makes it prohibitively expensive. If buses did stop in convenient locations for the widely dispersed people in small towns, it'd take hours before they'd even approach their destination after having spent half the day just picking up people from all over.

The only way to fix the problem is to encourage people to move out of the suburbs and small towns and live in denser regions.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#409

Post by ShannonAlther »

CydeWeys wrote: post #402
ShannonAlther wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had the choice to go live in Manhattan and not have a car vs. live somewhere else and be obligated to own a car I would choose Manhattan in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I can't do that (and even if I could, most people cannot).

I'm curious as to why you truly can't do it. Obviously not everyone can, but most individual cases likely can. It's more that you choose not to, which is still perfectly valid.

I'm not American, sadly. I'm from Ontario. You're right, it's not literally impossible but it's way more effort and time than it would be worth.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#410

Post by Thriptic »

serhei wrote: post #398
Thriptic wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but even in Boston they can't get public transportation and infrastructure right. Boston is almost certainly one of the most vibrant economic hubs in America and one of the most compact cities, but the subway absolutely sucks, is completely outdated, and can't adequately service proximal cities like Somerville. The city is also desperately in need of further tunneling and infrastructure expansion to service the…

When I read about proposed public transit projects in Boston that were never built, most of them had actually been _court mandated_ by the Big Dig mitigation lawsuits, but they still didn't get completed. Very mysterious. To be fair about the 'single small bridge', it seems like smaller projects suffer proportionately larger delays due to being considered low priority, ridiculously lax work scheduling, etc. Although…

This single small bridge, the Longfellow Bridge, is a crucial artery connecting Boston with its surrounding cities and towns across the river. I should have emphasized in my initial comment that it is a high priority project.
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