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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • I’m not disagreeing with that, but high speed rail from Boston to Miami would be extremely practical. Efficient, fast, convient travel along that corridor reducing dependence on cars for city to city travel. And the area has both the demand and density to support such projects.

    And while its impractical now, if it was built to cheapen regional travel in the region it could grow to high use spurning economic development.

    I’d love to take a train at a reasonable pace from near to DC to my family in Pittsburgh, or to visit New York.

    I might even enjoy a cross country trek to the rockies for skiing on a train, but it’s never going to be an option.




  • Yeah and that’s why I’m not advocating for 100 year cars.

    I’d be pretty happy with 20 years to, but 10 just feels like planned obsolescence.

    I also messed around with the math very loosly, and only accounting for crashes that total a car, they could be expected to go 20 years or more on average.

    And that’s now with all the terrible driving that happens, especially at night. With slight deacrease in accident frequncy that number can increase a lot.

    So maybe 30 is a bit much for now, but I’d still like an ev that would claim to last 20 yeara.



  • But you still have it backwards.

    We could very easily design and build a car that lasts 30 years. But we don’t, because manufacturers don’t want them to last that long.

    Evs don’t have transmissions, or complicated engines, and the wear on brakes is much less with regenerative braking.

    Other things like air conditioning and interior coverings could be easily servicable

    Why should the life of an ev by limited by its battery?





  • The newer technology at that time was cars and roads, and many European countries did try the American system of roads and suburbs.

    Its just that most of them realized it wad a bad idea around 20 years ago and started rethinking their cities.

    Many city centers were even turned into parking lots like American ones.

    Again cities arent supposed to be static, and normally they grow denser, rather than sprawling.

    The problem with American cities is partly zoning, and partly nimbyism, where people don’t want their places to change.

    And sprawl sucks for pretty much everyone. Less arable land for farming, poorer anmeties, longer travel times, and finally huge transportation costs. Cars are by far the most costly method of travel, both personally and for governments.


  • The stupid thing is that fixing it isn’t even that hard.

    Step one Get rid stupid zoning laws like single family housing and reduce parking minimums.

    Step 2 Modify existing roads piece by piece to include alternative transit methods. Add bike lanes, if you can’t slow down roads and people will bike.

    Actually run decent buses where peoole want to go, not oversized 50 person buses on 3 routes that nobody uses becasue it doesn’t go anywhere, and has an hour between the next bus.

    That’s it, the market will build more housing in areas that need it if its profitable, then use that new tax money to drive transit infrastructure.

    There’s a lot of fine details, but we’re bankrupting cities with cars right now.


  • It’s a good point that cities aren’t built anymore, and that’s part of the problem. Our population has grown drastically, but we don’t build hardly any new infrastructure for them outside of roads. So traffic is terrible despite enormous amounts of money from both government and people.

    Cities aren’t supposed to be static, they’re supposed to grow and adapt to the needs of those that live there. There is a large need for non-car transport that is either ignored or sidelined for cars.

    I’m not talking about 90% empty land, that’s not where people are.

    When the car was invented, governments had little issue buildozing entire neighborhoods for highways, but now that some places are realizing that’s a bad decision, its really hard to undo.