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Old 03-16-2023, 05:51 PM
 
15,194 posts, read 7,243,832 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by albert648 View Post
Then subsidize it out of your own pocket.
Only when you pay the subsidy for roads out of your pocket. No one pays the full cost of roads or public transit. Which means we should go to a mileage and vehicle weight based tax for roads. That way, you can pay the full cost of your road use.
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Old 03-16-2023, 07:03 PM
 
19,557 posts, read 17,824,718 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bluesclues5 View Post
These people are so dense that they don't understand the economic value have an efficient mass transit system adds to the economy of the city.
Imagine how much productivity is lost because people are stuck in gridlock getting to work.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an audit to see where savings can be had, a lot of it probably lost to theft from OT fraud and poor management that enables this.
Depends. Public transportation has become a rubber stamped requirement for most people on the left and urban planning types in particular. And there is no question that significant public transportation is more or less required in dense cities.

However, take Dallas' DART. DART has spent many billions and committed many more billions on busses that people don't ride and light rail, around $7.5 billion on light rail alone, and commuter rail that people don't use.....FWIIW DART has the most light rail miles of any US city all this yields recent ridership of about 140K daily as of late last year.


If a private business spent similar billions on something used by so few everyone would go to prison or an asylum.
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Old 03-16-2023, 08:56 PM
 
15,194 posts, read 7,243,832 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
Depends. Public transportation has become a rubber stamped requirement for most people on the left and urban planning types in particular. And there is no question that significant public transportation is more or less required in dense cities.

However, take Dallas' DART. DART has spent many billions and committed many more billions on busses that people don't ride and light rail, around $7.5 billion on light rail alone, and commuter rail that people don't use.....FWIIW DART has the most light rail miles of any US city all this yields recent ridership of about 140K daily as of late last year.


If a private business spent similar billions on something used by so few everyone would go to prison or an asylum.
Yeah, the Houston light rail carries passengers more efficiently than DART, and cost far less. The big difference being DART used existing rail right of way, which didn't have people around it, while Houston built light rail where there are a decent amount of people.

NYC couldn't exist without mass transit. Neither could London, Paris, and other dense cities.
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Old 03-16-2023, 09:24 PM
 
Location: Knoxville, TN
10,964 posts, read 5,657,489 times
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Infrastructure.

50 to 100 years ago, American governments were benevolent dictators and infrastructure came with little overhead. Building a new freeway meant drawing a line on the ground that seemed to take best advantage of terrain, grading the earth, and placing all roadway components.

Today you have prohibitive overhead costs. You have to do several successive studies just to add a lane to an existing freeway, let alone build a completely new route. You have to start with a basic study, move on to a Project Study Report, and finally a Project Report. You spend 5 to 15 years going through this expensive process.

The environmental studies alone are slow and expensive throughout this entire process. So you waste massive amounts of money with agencies going through the entire planning and development process, long before you ever get to the point where the project is bid and then awarded for constrtuction.

You have to have a parade of public hearings to get buy in from the public and local governments. Meanwhile, every environmental group in the book will slow the project down with successive batteries of lawsuits. Heaven forbid you run into a vernal pool, fairy shrimp, or a snail darter.

In the olden days, you just went out and built the road. Today, we spend godawful massive amounts of money just getting to that point. It is brutally inefficient and wasteful.

There is a reason infrastructure is cost prohibitive today and has nothing to do with our ability to tackle the construction job in the field. It is all about the politics getting to that point. Getting permission and buy-ins, getting input from every local government agency along the way, getting through all of the various studies, settling all the lawsuits.

It is comical. It is sinful how little taxpayers get for thier money today.

Example -- The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge took 7 years from conception to completion, from 1929 to 1936. 1929 saw the law passed commisioning the bridge. Construction began 2 years later in 1931, completed in 1936.

This is how we used to build infrastructure in America - very straightforward and efficient. And this is all but impossible in today's politicized, bureaucratic, environmentally sensitive climate.
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Old 03-16-2023, 09:45 PM
 
Location: moved
13,584 posts, read 9,614,242 times
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Infrastructure has a finite lifespan, even with the most assiduous and lavishly funded maintenance. Eventually, it’s cheaper to build new, than to update/repair.

And even if populations aren’t growing, they are concentrating… more and more people are moving from the countryside into the urban areas, be those the urban cores themselves, or the suburbs. Those populations need infrastructure… energy, transportation, sanitation. Even if we all work from home, order our groceries from Amazon and watch Netflicks instead of going to the cinema, the delivery of those products requires transportation. And we home “workers†still need electricity and running water. Short of everyone switching to wells, septic tanks and home-generators (or solar cells?), there is going to be a need for more infrastructure. Decentralizing these services is foolish, because it reverses the trend of specialization. Should we all also farm our own grains and raise our own livestock?

So much of America’s housing stock dates from the mid 20th century, or earlier. What is the lifespan for a mass-produced residential house? Grand mansion from Colonial days may still be standing, but it’s hard to see how a cookie-cutter house, of light-timber construction, can safely see its second century. Tens of millions of houses will need to be replaced… as will the roads leading to them.

As for rail, the advantage is energy efficiency and reduction of environmental impact.
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Old 03-17-2023, 07:46 AM
 
7,395 posts, read 3,580,718 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by prospectheightsresident View Post
If it actually saved us money, I'd say yes. Instead, our inability to build infrastructure often manifests itself with overpaid and corrupt projects that cost more than they should and that break down sooner than they should. In Honolulu, we have the disaster of the rail project, that is already billions over budget and already full of structural and other issues.
I'd love to see a constitutional amendment to State constitutions that say, in essence if there is a cost overrun in a major public works project, the pensions of all elected officials will be stripped from them. Ditto for all the political appointees. Ditto for all public sector managers of the responsible public sector organizations involved.
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Old 03-17-2023, 08:01 AM
 
7,395 posts, read 3,580,718 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Avondalist View Post
The population will stop growing within a few decades.
No it won't. There is effectively unlimited demand to relocate to the USA.
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Old 03-17-2023, 08:05 AM
 
7,395 posts, read 3,580,718 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
Lots of the normal low information ranting about military spending crowding out infrastructure. That's checkers thinking in a world of chess.

As an allegory. The Superconducting Super Collider was being built south of Dallas. Then a cabal from one side of the political aisle with help from a few on the other plus one who represented the district containing Fermi-Lab in Chicago killed it. The rational was we couldn't afford it........the entire SSC construction budget amounted to less than three weeks of social/human spending.

Most years military spending = about 15% of gov't. spending......"Human Services" = not quite 75%.


So we caved and our Euro buddies built CERN.
Finally, some clear thinking.
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Old 03-17-2023, 08:16 AM
 
7,395 posts, read 3,580,718 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bluesclues5 View Post
Imagine how much productivity is lost because people are stuck in gridlock getting to work.
Are you saying you think the opposite of commute gridlock is commute by train?

So... a 20 minute commute to a train station, 10 minutes trying to find a place to park & get to the track, a 30 minute train trip, waiting 20 minutes for a bus, 20 minutes on a bus, walking 10 minutes... all in the rain.

Compared to a 40 minute car trip including parking & walking.
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Old 03-17-2023, 08:22 AM
 
7,395 posts, read 3,580,718 times
Reputation: 14080
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
Depends. Public transportation has become a rubber stamped requirement for most people on the left and urban planning types in particular. And there is no question that significant public transportation is more or less required in dense cities.
But are dense cities required in the modern era of work-from-home technologies?

I'm fine if the citizens of a dense city wish to tax themselves to provide public transportation, with zero subsidies from the national taxpayers (the Federal Government).
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