541–550 of 607 posts
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One of the things I found when advocating for transit was that BRT cost savings in the US almost always come from reducing quality at stations, which loses public support faster than you save money. I found that voters are usually willing to spend far more on trains than on BRT, in excess of any savings.
Wow; that's surprising.
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>Trains are great I wonder how much that sentiment is that based on steampunk and 1880's nostalgia?
Also just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
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None of the subjective things you said has any bearing on my lived experience of the past two years I’ve owned it. It off roads well. Holds lots of stuff. Backed up my whole house when we had a power outage. Safest truck ever tested. Drives itself. Looks awesome.
How many times have you been flipped off while driving it? And buying one after Elon lost his mind and did a nazi salute TWICE is pretty gross.
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None of the subjective things you said has any bearing on my lived experience of the past two years I’ve owned it. It off roads well. Holds lots of stuff. Backed up my whole house when we had a power outage. Safest truck ever tested. Drives itself. Looks awesome.
It ~objectively doesn't off-road well or hold lots of stuff compared with other vehicles in its class. That said, unlike the meanie commenter I'm glad you like your vehicle and very jealous of the self-driving! :)
But thank you for the kind words. I do enjoy it a lot!
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Waymo is subsidized. They operate vehicles without paying for the cost of the road, land, or surrounding parking. That's like owning a train system and not paying for the tracks. Yeah... that's a huge part of it. There's also indirect subsidies, for example the cost of land and housing. Cars are extremely space inefficient, so they encourage poor urban design that results in huge amounts of land wasted. Well... the l…
> They operate vehicles without paying for the cost of the road Everyone uses roads, and everyone pays for roads. If you buy a potato from a grocery store, part of the money paid for fuel for the delivery truck. The tax on that fuel paid for part of the road.
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Also just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
But in practice runs empty most of the time, is commonly delayed by any problem on the line or station, and operates on a very limited schedule.
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Also just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
The ability to carry people is worthless if no one wants to use it
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>for ten years Or longer if they show they are unable to reform while in prison. >penalty for being “noisy” on a train That is ignoring the second order effects of the situation. This noise is holding back the flywheel of public transportation that could have economic benefits to millions of people. The penalty is for the enormous cost of holding the rest of society back. The person who has such little regard for the…
You can make this kind of specious argument for any infraction, no matter how minor. Hard pass on your ridiculous dystopia.
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This is an implementation problem, not a problem with the underlying concept. Public transit like buses and lightrail are significantly more efficient per person than personal vehicles. This is because they can transport many more people for the same amount of space and energy. They also typically run on set tracks, which yields more efficiency gains. The US is really, really bad at doing public transit. It doesn't h…
Train-advocates being against self-driving cars will be recognized as being equivalent to environmentalists being against nuclear power. Fortunately, I don't expect train-advocates as being nearly as successful. Once someone has tried Waymo, there's no going back to the old ways.
But self driving cars are not public transit. That's a grift that the people making the self driving cars are selling, so they can sell a bunch of self driving cars. The most prominent example is the hyperloop in vegas.
Self driving cars will not solve the traffic, safety, time, or cost concerns around cars. They will help a little bit, marginal gains. But they will not solve it because it's not a departure from the status quo, it's just a continuation of it.
For context, this is coming in as TriMet is laying off staff, reducing service frequency, eliminating bus lines, and cutting parts of light rail routes due to a $300M budget shortfall. The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners, so the…
Oregon, and Portland in particular, suffered a lot economically after covid due to overprotective laws banning operations. A lot of companies went out of business, people moved, and tax revenue plummeted. Growth since has been slow due to hostile laws. TriMet cuts are due to poor city and state management, which frankly doubling payroll tax would exacerbate.