| >> | >>209236
>> if we nail fucking lab meat grown in petridishes,
Well, that would be grand. But we can't plan today's transportation policy based around a biotechnology that doesn't (quite) exist yet. Hope it goes that way though.
>>209237
You aren't the only person posting in the thread, which included at least four suggestions that rural people are worthless. That demonstrates that a lot of people don't understand how dependent their urban lifestyle still is on the rural laborer. We don't have robots picking our berries yet. Also that Americans are intrinsically intellectually inferior, but that's nothing new. It's coming from you too, like in your presumption, because I am talking about the concept of population density, that I have just discovered the concept of population density. I should assume that since you are talking about cars, you just discovered the concept of cars?
Anyway, high-speed rail isn't that great, because of the distances involved, the costs compared to what you would ever recoup in passenger fees; it's a pretty hard sell. The existing passenger rail network hardly gets enough use to maintain its own existence from a profit perspective, so where would we possibly get enough tolls to even put a dent in the cost?
>> and the maintenance and building costs are way lower than highways.
For ordinary passenger rail, which we already have, yes. But for highspeed rail the estimated cost per mile is around 80 million, whereas highways cost at most 10 million a mile, including maintenance.
>>Highways don’t charge any toll, they’re just a continual cost for the government
That are paid for through taxes as public infrastructure, usually through gas taxes so the people using the service pay for it. There are, of course, actually tons of toll highways. If you're really interested in the costs of our transit system I would suggest analyzing it carefully in an itemized way as you will see that while far from perfect it's not as absurd as people are making it out to be. For the most part the solutions we have arrived at are reasonable and the costs of them are in range of what is acceptable.
>>And actually you did act like we were advocating getting rid of cars, go reread your post.
I did, several times. Not seeing it. I guess me saying cars are good must mean you think I think I'm taking some absolutist stance where ONLY cars are good. Oh wait, that's what you already assumed to be the case for ALL Americans in the OP; that they have some fanatical aversion to anything other than cars. Maybe you are reading your own biases into this conversation?
>>No one said anything about “having to build society around hubs of transit”.
If you build everything around vehicles that are tied to fixed routes (like trains) then all your societal services become more and more dependent on being close to the methods of transport. Which is fine for a place where everything important is concentrated anyway. However hyper urbanization and centralization have their own severe problems, which other forms of transportation mitigate.
>> Cars are the most expensive, dangerous, polluting, and noisy means of transport.
And back to my original post, the moral dimension of car use only applies to fossil-fuel burning cars. A fleet of all-alternative-fuel driverless cars would have most of the advantages of advanced mass transit systems, in addition to the benefits of traditional cars. And it would still be a 'car,' so you aren't really against cars, you're against fossil fuels and government subsidies. So say that instead. |
