471–480 of 590 posts
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No, they certainly don’t all come with AC and heat.
I haven't seen a non-AC bus in ages, even in developing countries.
In 2020, 5% of bus in Paris had AC.
In 2026, they aim for 75%. And a 100% rollout by 2035.
Even subway lines don't all have AC.
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Yes, they're empty, but it's also a catch 22 because it takes urbanization, frequent bus services, and a lot of time for people to adjust to it. Anyone who spent enough time in Europe can tell you about how efficient, convenient, and efficient a bus network can get. Also, most people go to work, so buses tend to be very busy in the morning and at shift changes etc. It's not magic though, there are a lot of places whe…
We solved that several generations ago with cars.
Please travel the Europe and see how they treat their people and how increased mobility creates a great environment and freedom for everyone. I assure you that it’s not a backwards place as some people claim.
As a side note: All this car craze coincided with baby boomers (roughly) and now that they’re losing their physical and cognitive abilities we’re seeing a lot more accessibility support from them (duh) and I wouldn’t be surprised if they started pushing for free public taxi service for themselves but nothing that would serve the public. And we’re not talking about heavily subsidized industries like cars, but something that can be profitable and worthwhile because it allows people to go to work, school, shopping, hospital, theater, and more.
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…
Just my €0.03.
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It is amusing/depressing to consider this as getting punished for having expensive engineering to avoid failures. If you do put in more engineering to get a more robust solution, you wind up not hitting the expensive failures and people start to assume you just spent more money in engineering than you needed to.
Coincidentally, it was just a couple weeks ago that a (non-technical, relatively younger) family member made a point me that Y2K was completely overblown. Sigh.
(And the media is pretty good at it. I'm pretty sure if a comet was about to hit the planet tomorrow and wipe out humanity there would still be an article that somehow manages to make it sound worse)
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Preventative care is free because it saves a tremendous amount of money for the insurance company and physical and emotional hardship for yourself by catching bad things early.
Your view is a commonly-held one, and makes a lot of sense; unfortunately there is very little support for it. One data point to the contrary is the Oregon Health Care Study, which showed that 'free' preventative care increased healthcare spending, but did not improve lifespan or reduce long-term cost.
The idea is that increased primary care services will have benefits 10 or 15 years down the line by preventing chronic disease from reaching a critical state. For example, preventing prediabetes from reaching diabetes and then diabetic end stage renal disease (which would require dialysis at a cost of 5 figures per person per month). You're not going to see that over 2 to 3 years.
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But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities. Some need heat, some need AC, some need both. In Utah there are buses that go up the canyons and they have gearboxes focused on climbing steep hills, while a bus in the valley might never need that ratio and can be optimized for efficiency on the flats. Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were desi…
But they all basically come with AC and heating? At least in basically any semi-modern bus I've ever been in in Europe. No matter if it's -20 or +35 celsius, as long as they turn the AC actually on it's tolerable. And we also have some mountains here, so there's some buses for that (still stock from the factory)
yes, it's expensive, yes, people's revealed presences indicate they don't care for these things, they rather give up QALYs than sitting hours every day in "rush hour traffic"
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…
If your argument were correct, socialized medicine would lead to higher costs, but it usually does the opposite. Insurance profit margins are a small portion of the overall cost in the US. In inelastic markets, when profit is removed, often you can see lower costs because profit by itself is purely extractive and in an inelastic market competitive forces are weaker.
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And congratulations to any of today's lucky ten thousand who are just learning of the Principal-Agent Problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
You've got me wondering about if and to what extent AI could alter the dynamic