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

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

#761

Post by sagarm »

twoodfin wrote: post #140
tshaddox wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense I understand what you're saying, but that mode of argument has limitations. Like, you certainly wouldn't say "I don't understand how increasing medical costs doesn't count as success, that means people want to spend their money on medical care, doesn't it?"

If you doubled the number of hospital beds, doctors, nurses, diagnostic equipment, labs … and demand was high enough to keep prices constant, you’ve doubled healthcare access at a rate patients were already willing to pay. “Induced demand” in every other industry is described as “latent demand”.

Induced demand actually does happen in American healthcare: spending goes up with healthcare availability, but health outcomes do not improve past a fairly low level of usage. This is a waste, not productive economic activity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8057171/

The situation with roads is not that different: building more road capacity incentivizes sprawl, leaving the entire network more congested than it was when you started.

Roads just don't scale. The daily commute is like a distributed shuffle: time to complete the shuffle scales superlinearly, probably quadratically given the limited topologies possible with roads. It's not like you can build a hypercube road network.

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

#762

Post by btreecat »

rayiner wrote: post #673
aidenn0 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point we have to treat our infrastructure costs as realities to be planned around rather than solvable problems. I think this is the main point of disagreement in this thread; if we have to spend $500M/mile for light rail in the US, it's fairly obvious that rail is not an option. If there is a large learning-factor for building rail that would bring costs down significantly with more miles built, then rail…

Yes—I think it’s a difference between people who accept that light rail costs us $500 million/mile and subways cost us $5 billion/mile and those who don’t. Also, those who think we can run reliable, efficient public transit even with good funding, and those who accept that we can’t. I used to be a rail fan. Then I rode Amtrak to work for a couple of years. I saw the DC Metro, which is well funded, so badly maintained…

>and those who accept that we can’t.

So prove it with more than your ridiculous anecdotes and metaphors. You do a lot of claiming and literally no sourcing. Try again, this time with data.

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

#763

Post by twhitmore »

pmyteh wrote: post #654
mschuster91 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American won't get any of the policy tweaks you mention without fixing the most glaring issues of my list since almost everything federal requires at least a full congressional majority. Reagan and Bush Sr. had none of eight / four years, Clinton two of eight years, Bush Jr. four of eight, Obama two of eight, Trump two of four and Biden at least two of four. And even when the respective Presidents had a m…

The UK does in fact have such a system (unlike the US). We use first-past-the-post voting, like the US, but our Prime Minister is selected by the majority in Parliament (rather than directly). Consequently, we don't have 'cohabitation', where the PM and Parliament are of different parties (which can happen in France and other Presidential systems), and it's quite rare to have minority government, where the PM relies…

MMP elections, or STV with multi-member districts, result in a broader diversity of parties being elected -- not just two opposing parties.

This allows coalitions to form around shared interests, and results in 1) politics being more representative of what voters want, 2) more moderate politics avoiding wild policy swings, and 3) politics being more constructive.

It really gives a huge quality improvement of politics moving from a binary to a plural system.

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

#764

Post by daveevad »

mannerheim wrote: post #568
daveevad wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1.3 million registered snowmobiles in the US [0] For fun, let's just say those are evenly distributed amongst the states and there are 26,000 snowmobiles available in Virginia at DoorDash's disposal. I'd wager snowmobiles wouldn't be the limiting factor in this operation. [0]( https://www.snowmobile.org/snowmobiling-statistics-and-facts... )

There are probably not very many snowmobiles in Florida.

That is a good point that I had anticipated, but severely under appreciated.

I had presumed a somewhat more normal distribution of snowmobiles.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/420693/us-snowmobile-reg...

I'm adjusting my mental model to the reality that Virginia likely has less than 1000 registered snowmobiles.

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

#765

Post by daveevad »

bagacrap wrote: post #685
mannerheim wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably not very many snowmobiles in Florida.

something tells me Florida Man likes snowmobiling across the swamp a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NySgXKgfICM

This is a remarkable video (there's a helicopter and a snowmobile) but is that really in Florida?

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

#766

Post by dang »

kaesar14 wrote: post #147
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when the jobs are spread out all over the spokes, that model breaks down. So don't spread the jobs out all over the spokes? Is some urban planning really hard to do here? > Rail transit is an anachronism, best suited for the 1950s when life involved a woman staying home with the kids while dad took the train into the city for work. That isn't true at all in much of the world. Rail transit still works in many no…

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we're trying for a different sort of discussion here.

You can make your substantive points thoughtfully, without name-calling, swipes, and the like. If you'd please do that instead, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#767

Post by toomuchtodo »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #608
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re not moving and have a heat pump, well, but like a combustion vehicle will exhaust their energy storage eventually. Resistive heat or suboptimal battery architecture? Poorly. Jerrycans for some, tows to Fast DC chargers for others. Class 8 semis should have sufficient diesel reserves for long loiters, even with truckers using auxiliary power units for heat. If not, it is trivial to refuel them on the road w…

This is a misconception. Heat pumps can improve things a little but often far from as much as people expect. The problem is that in cold conditions most of the loss is from reduced battery performance right from the start. In really cold conditions it can be 50% and more reduction in battery performance. This is energy you're not getting back, heat pump or not. In addition the performance depends on the temperature.…

https://youtu.be/i3E0t0kGeug

Doesn’t appear to be the case.

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

#768

Post by unethical_ban »

nradov wrote: post #706
metabagel wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows the reason for the system. There are 50 states now. Hard to form a coalition of states which will be able to run roughshod over other states, but what we do have is a very unfair system where a minority of the country can block the will of the majority.

What is being blocked? States are still sovereign and can largely run their own affairs. If MA wants to, let's say, give people free public healthcare then TX can't do anything to block it. From a legislative standpoint there are only a few areas that are totally under federal control.

There is a compelling argument that with the state of remote work, familial mobility and whatnot, it is not feasible for the states to tackle certain issues without unconstitutionally blocking non-state residents from using those services.

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

#769

Post by obmelvin »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #507
chiph wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An in-tank pump is typically cooled by being immersed in the liquid gasoline. When the gas level drops too low the pump gets less cooling.

So you've knocked a couple operating hours off the life of something that tens of thousands of operating hours? Big deal. It'll be fine unless you run it dry for a long period but you won't be doing that because cars don't run the pump when the engine isn't running.

I mean, I get your point, but I need to refill my car at some point and there are plenty of gas stations - so why not fill it up early to take care of it?

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

#770

Post by jimmytidey »

benf76 wrote: post #481
jimmytidey wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating that this has generated so many answers, from so many different perspectives. Induced demand is a terrible name for the real issue here. Perhaps the "one more lane fallacy" would be better. The "one more lane fallacy" is not universal, it only applies in cities and other densely populated areas. Imagine you are sitting in a suburban traffic jam, getting slowly more and more annoyed. It's easy to imagine a…

So why bother build any roads larger than one lane?

You need some road capacity for ambulances and Deliveroo.
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