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In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

nytimes.com

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#501

Post by fragmede »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #496
languagehacker wrote: post #51

I just read Paved Paradise as well as The High Cost of Free Parking. This seems like the current gradual trend towards reversing the hidden subsidy for drivers, first by giving them less affordances at remarkably low prices or for free. A few folks in the comments have mentioned a couple of times that it doesn't make sense to make a policy like this without supporting transit. I believe the argument would be that not…

One solution would be a large fleet of cheap electric self-driving taxis. With current pace of AI development, that could be just 10-20 years away.

Waymo's working in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with Austin coming soon. Maybe it'll take 10 years, but the technology's already here, just needs to get scaled up.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#502

Post by nox101 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #457
nox101 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don’t. plain and simple. Tons of people living together share the costs. the few in the suburbs need to pay for their own infra. They’re not now. The cities are subsidizing the suburbs. that’s not fair. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

Your sentiment can be summarized as "Fuck you, I got mine." Hardly convincing. As an aside, the countryside can survive without cities but cities cannot survive without the countryside. Perhaps consider your dependences before brazenly brushing them off.

no, my sentiment is you’re stealing from me and not even aware of it. you’re taking more than your portion.

Cities need farms (a few people and a few roads) they don’t need suburbs (people wasting resources, living large, and stealing tax resources from the cities to subsidize their lifestyle)

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#503

Post by tonynator »

infecto wrote: post #15

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit. To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#504

Post by tonynator »

SSJPython wrote: post #82
rufus_foreman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy.

> You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy. Infrastructure should not be subject to peoples' opinions. Like utilities and defense, infrastructure is crucial for security and commerce. People simply don't know better.

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#505

Post by ohmyiv »

CalRobert wrote: post #478
ohmyiv wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A city next to me (L.A. area) has some dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes. Unfortunately, they dont have one of the other benefits that you mention, like banning cars in some areas. There are also connections to the train to go farther, but the buses are still mostly empty except for students and laborers who live outside the city. The buses themselves are typically faster and decent, as I ride them a lot. Meanwhile,…

You are not wrong - this is where personal, private, transportation excels. And why Culver city desperately needs a quality network of safe, protected, bike infrastructure. Cars don't scale, but bikes do.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. If there was safe and protected infrastructure, I feel a lot more people, including myself, would bike, especially with all the new e-bikes available. I will give Culver City some credit because they do have some dedicated bike lanes but they're not really protected.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#506

Post by tonynator »

deepsun wrote: post #192
SSJPython wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy. Infrastructure should not be subject to peoples' opinions. Like utilities and defense, infrastructure is crucial for security and commerce. People simply don't know better.

Remember in the movie Don't Look Up they democratically decided that the Comet is not real, and everything will be fine.

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#507

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

gonzo41 wrote: post #498
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One solution would be a large fleet of cheap electric self-driving taxis. With current pace of AI development, that could be just 10-20 years away.

or you know, trains and trams and busses.

Those have fixed stops and schedules, so you need to walk up to the stop and wait for the next arrival. Taxis are more flexible in both space and time.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#508

Post by tonynator »

ocschwar wrote: post #148
mdorazio wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose doing that, though? Mass transit almost everywhere runs at a significant loss already and if we're talking buses then there's a significant driver shortage. In the US the distances and routes required outside of dense urban centers also pretty much necessitate a huge increase in transit time compared to driving, making the whole thing a bad value for people who can afford a car.

> How do you propose doing that, though? Thankfully, Massachusetts has shown how to do that. The governor has to make a public statement that he will not allow any more eminent domain takings for highways on his watch (and issue executive orders to that effect.) After that, the people complaining about traffic have to come up with their own ideas, and if road widening (with eminent domain confiscations) are off the t…

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#509

Post by defrost »

tonynator wrote: post #504
SSJPython wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy. Infrastructure should not be subject to peoples' opinions. Like utilities and defense, infrastructure is crucial for security and commerce. People simply don't know better.

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Mind out the Reds under your bed don't nip your ankles now ...

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#510

Post by nerb »

rayiner wrote: post #410
pkulak wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means cheaper and faster automotive transportation. That is… extremely silly. You can’t make an inherently expensive activity cheap because you’d like it to be. Cars take up so much space that’s expensive to build and maintain. They crash into things and people constantly. The pollute the air, and they are extremely expensive to own and repair, with a total lifetime measured in a couple decades, if you’re luck…

Cars fit in cities just fine. Just got back from Atlanta. Much nicer and cleaner and cheaper than New York City. The only problem is the pollution, which is fixed by EVs. The other stuff, like a few tens of thousands of deaths in car crashes a year, is vastly outweighed by the time saved by everyone else compared to even an excellent public transit system. Trains are not the solution. Even the best train systems are…

> a few tens of thousands of deaths in car crashes a year, is vastly outweighed by the time saved by everyone else compared to even an excellent public transit system.

what in the absolute f** are you talking about? have you ever experienced the sudden death of a loved one? what about the network impact of someone dying? even if you want to look at it through a capitalistic lens, think of the reduction in capability people going through that trauma. the amount of resources it takes in the health care, and public service sectors. you're off loading the immense costs of a person dying onto folks at random like an inverse and more likely lottery.

since you're so confidently in having the empirical measures of what outweighs what, at what point would a public transit system start to be a "good cost tradeoff" in your framework? cause there's a logical end goal you could get to: individualized transport with an experienced driver; and then work backwards from there until you balance the cost of implementation with those tens of thousands of death. would it be $1,000/day/person? $500/day/person?

though more than likely you're speaking like this because you've lived your entire life transported by car, benefiting off of the externalized costs passed off to the less fortunate, and you fear having your subsidized conveniences justifiably going away.

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