Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night • Hacker News Board

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#451

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:30 AM UTC

stransky wrote: post #232

alistairSH wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I live in Reston and mapped out some options on Goole Maps... Home to IAD by car: 5 miles, 9 minutes Home to IAD by transit: 40+ minutes across 2 bus lines Home to IAD by foot: 10.9 miles, 3+ hours Home to WAS by car: 24 miles, 29 minutes Home to WAS by transit: 90+ minutes across 1 bus line, 2 Metro lines, and a few walking segments to link them. It's sad that walking to the airport is twice as far than driving.…

You forgot to include time to park.

Parking at IAD is a cinch.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#452

Post by ddingus » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #449

ddingus wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We had a family incident a number of years back. Stuck on a mountain pass in the cold for the better part of a day. We've also seen a breakdown in the desert, and that one was a couple days. We always refuel before entering a risky part of travel. Never count on getting there. Make sure. And in a scenario like this that refuel could provide a days worth of heat, depending. No matter what, it's a lot more heat th…

> Rough metric is you get 1 hour of engine idle per gallon. From personal experience that seems extremely conservative, although that may be the point. According to [1], a semi truck or city bus use a little less than a gallon per hour idling. [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-861-february-23-20...

It's totally the point. For a more precise data, I know my Ford Expedition and Chev Suburban both use about 1/2 gallon per hour, and my Honda is about 1/3.

But, when planning like this it pays to be ultra conservative. Shit happens.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#453

Post by ddingus » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:32 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #431

ddingus wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We had a family incident a number of years back. Stuck on a mountain pass in the cold for the better part of a day. We've also seen a breakdown in the desert, and that one was a couple days. We always refuel before entering a risky part of travel. Never count on getting there. Make sure. And in a scenario like this that refuel could provide a days worth of heat, depending. No matter what, it's a lot more heat th…

>Rough metric is you get 1 hour of engine idle per gallon. Some cars do better than that. I have a non-plug in hybrid, that gets almost 50 mpg consistently; I've got to experiment and extrapolate to see if it's much better. I would like to believe so. I recently learned of the existence of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_heater and wonder how efficient they are. These seem to be mostly outdated, but I guess t…

It's gonna be. My normal non / hybrid Honda uses about 1/3 gallon per hour.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#454

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #220

rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Northern VA. Public transit here is a solution looking for a problem. The job centers and commercial are too spread out for public transit to make any sense. Most of the population and jobs in the DC metro area aren’t in DC but spread around in Tysons, Loudoun, Reston, Arlington, Bethesda, etc. The state spent billions building the Silver line out to Tysons, Reston, and Loudoun, and ridership was disappo…

I also grew up in Northern VA. Biggest issue there is how hard it is to build public transit. The silver-line was such a clusterfuck largely because of fights over who should pay[1], how much it should cost and how to balance construction-induced disruption and costs with long-term TCO. If we could build rail miles as cheaply and quickly as Western Europe, everyone in Fairfax Co could commute via rail except perhaps…

> If we could build rail miles as cheaply and quickly as Western Europe, everyone in Fairfax Co could commute via rail except perhaps those work west of there.

I agree. But we can’t. It’s a cluster fuck even when it’s just one state. Maryland spent $7 billion building the Purple line, which is what Western European countries spent for similar amounts of fully automated underground heavy rail.

At some point we have to treat our infrastructure costs as realities to be planned around rather than solvable problems. This is a keen insight Lee Kuan Yew had in building Singapore. He admired many aspects of Anglo culture, but realized that not all of them would work in an Asian country: https://web.colby.edu/eas150/files/2017/11/Zakaria_LeeKuanYe.... America is a decentralized, low cohesion society built around having plenty of space for a bunch of different groups to leave each other alone. America is continually replenished by the people who are antisocial enough to leave their kin and homelands to start new lives thousands of miles away.[1] We aren’t Germans or Swedes or Japanese and shouldn’t beat our selves up trying to be them. Our future is electric cars and freeways, not trains.

[1] Asians are the biggest immigrant group in the US, but when polled, under 10% of people in Asia said they would immigrate to another country if they had the chance. Guess what kind of people end up making the journey?

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#455

Post by GlenTheMachine » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

pirate787 wrote: post #450

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #396

There are a lot of comments here about why public transit in the DC area doesn't work, but nobody that I've seen has put their finger on it. The biggest issue is that the area covers two states, at least ten counties depending on what you count as the “DC area”, plus the District of Columbia, which isn't a state, doesn't have control over its own budget, and has no representation in Congress. Oh, and in Virginia citi…

Arlington VA is a county, not a city, and has the land area and tax base of a county. Indeed Arlington is perhaps the most successful build out of mass transit in a community in the United States in the last 30 years. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/arlingt... Also the DC metro system is in fact organized across state lines and receives generous federal subsidies....DC Metro spends $4.7 billion a…

“ Commuter income tax reciprocity in DC metro is no different than most other regions.”

I hesitate to publish studies from think tanks with explicit political leanings on HN, but Brookings has the most cogent summary I can find of why this is incorrect.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/chapter...

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#456

Post by vel0city » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #400

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #396

There are a lot of comments here about why public transit in the DC area doesn't work, but nobody that I've seen has put their finger on it. The biggest issue is that the area covers two states, at least ten counties depending on what you count as the “DC area”, plus the District of Columbia, which isn't a state, doesn't have control over its own budget, and has no representation in Congress. Oh, and in Virginia citi…

> And because unlike everywhere else in the US DC workers who live in Virginia or Maryland don't pay DC taxes I don't think that's the case. In my experience as a remote worker you always pay where you live, not where you work.

My dad lived in New Jersey and worked in New York City. He paid New Jersey income tax, New York State income tax, and New York City income taxes.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#457

Post by teakettle42 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

gnopgnip wrote: post #420

teakettle42 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in. Emergency drinking water that comes in foil pouches seems to survive freezing; I’m not sure if it’s a requirement of the ISO standard they have to conform to for use on survival craft (I don’t want to pay $250 for the ISO standard just to find out). I keep an emergency sup…

Plastic water bottles won't burst when frozen. You can get a case of water bottles for under $10.

Some will burst or leak, and they leach an unpleasant plastic taste into the water — especially in hot weather.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#458

Post by peterburkimsher » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #396

There are a lot of comments here about why public transit in the DC area doesn't work, but nobody that I've seen has put their finger on it. The biggest issue is that the area covers two states, at least ten counties depending on what you count as the “DC area”, plus the District of Columbia, which isn't a state, doesn't have control over its own budget, and has no representation in Congress. Oh, and in Virginia citi…

Geneva is a special case of cross-border agreements in Europe.

The Swiss public transport (TPG) bus service made a bilateral agreement with the French authorities to set up a cross-border bus. A tram service is being built too, next to CERN. It can be done.

Possibly as a result of that, the bus ticket machines now accept Euros and Swiss Francs, even on the Swiss side. Quite how this works financially is remarkable to me.

Is diplomacy difficult? Of course! Does it take time? Yes! And were there many compromises? Absolutely. But even the little bit that did get finished is very heavily used, and has brought great economic, social, and environmental improvements to the Pays de Gex.

So take heart, it can be done.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#459

Post by Noumenon72 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #179

nostromo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they're shifting the goal posts. Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people. So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere . Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends. Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too. Success! I love transit and…

You realize speed bumps are not there to 'ruin driving'--they are mechanical means to stop drivers from speeding as signs are useless and as soon as people are past the cops they speed again.

Let's say they're put there even though they ruin driving for regular people, because they will also stop the few speeders. I don't really speed, but I take a speed bump as a sign someone in the neighborhood is hostile to drivers.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#460

Post by asoneth » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #337

azylman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way that public transit scales to meet higher demand is different than roads. Whereas roads require more lanes, public transit such as trains can scale by either adding more train cars to existing trains or adding more frequent service. More frequent service, in addition to improving throughput, also helps everyone else using the system by making it more convenient. And, if it "induces" people to move from roads…

I don't buy the lower travel time thing, not unless your trains or whatever are running every five minutes. In practice public transit has always at least doubled my travel time. Waiting at stops (a) introduces substantial latency that (b) is unpredictable, forcing me to pad my travel times further. I mainly use it to avoid parking at the destination. Mostly DC metro rail and a bit of LA buses, FWIW.

Besides NYC that's been my experience as well -- US cities are designed for driving as the primary transportation method. Even mass transit in the US is often pitched as something to make life easier for drivers by lowering traffic.

Lots of places talk about the importance of walkability and mass transit but if you actually look at most transportation budgets the vast majority goes to automobile infrastructure. Even what passes for "pedestrian infrastructure" in many places is there for the benefit of drivers[1]. I mean, it makes sense because everyone in the US drives everywhere, but it's a chicken-and-egg problem.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/1/29/pedestrian-inf...