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Transportation infrastructure is a great investment in the future: where would we be today without our highway system? With air travel becoming more of a hassle

by dkasper 17y ago

Transportation infrastructure is a great investment in the future: where would we be today without our highway system? With air travel becoming more of a hassle each year it'll be great to have an alternative. Note that about 8 billion in total was approved, SF to LA is only one of the routes planned.

patio11 17y ago
I think transportation infrastructure is a great solution to yesterday's problems. Look at the newspaper industry: some commentators think their problem is that delivering news on dead tree is overly expensive relative to what people want to pay for it. Even if you accept that diagnosis, increasing investment into dead tree processing, dead tree distribution, and dead tree delivery is not the way forward. I use trains to commute to my job as a computer programmer. My commute is fairly inexpensive, hassle-free, and uses the best distribution system for human bodies the world has ever seen. My commute is also a jaw-droppingly stupid waste of resources. My company and I waste three hours a day five times a week shuttling a few pounds of grey matter and a pair of eyeballs from one glowing screen to another glowing screen. The glowing screens connect to each other instantly, for so cheap next to my (cheap) train passes it doesn't even make sense to measure.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Your company doesn't waste 15 hours a week, you do. If you weren't commuting, would you work an extra 15 hours per week? That's 15 hours of your life that you're losing, not 15 hours of productivity.. But otherwise, I do agree with you.
  - dlsspy 17y ago
    I'm very productive on trains. Often more productive than in office settings.
- donaldc 17y ago
  Three hours a day five times a week? If I were in that situation, I'd either move closer to my job, or find a job closer to where I live. Unless the train had wifi...
  - patio11 17y ago
    Sort of off-topic: The train is a convenient socially acceptable excuse to leave work: "I'm sorry guys, but I have to catch the last train." This gets me a whole 15 hours a week of leisure time for reading or sleeping which I would not otherwise have. After I separate from my day job (two more months, hopefully) I'll discuss societal insanity and its relationship to being a Japanese salaryman at length.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  Meat-space bandwidth is currently unbeatable. Telecommuting works for some people, in some jobs. If eye contact, body language, serendipitous personal interaction, and shared experiences are not important to the social and communicative aspects of a job, then maybe staying home works well.
  - CalmQuiet 17y ago
    Maybe there is need to develop means/skills for it to work in more jobs. As Pascal hyperbolized: "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. " [If not all human evil... at least we can now append: "burden of transportation infrastructure + CO(2)."]
cmelbye 17y ago
I agree. The experience at the Atocha train station in Madrid and on the Renfe train system is a dream. You go there, buy your tickets, spend maybe 30 seconds going through security, board your train, and enjoy a roomy seat while you're whisked across the country at 300 km/h.
- ramchip 17y ago
  And here in Japan there isn't even security: you buy a ticket at the ticket machine, then go through the gate and get in. No need to speak to a human until the controller checks your ticket during the ride.
dnsworks 17y ago
I do wonder how important the highway system is to our economy. It used to be a great boon to commerce because we made a lot of goods and needed to get them to other regions, and to ports for export. Now we import everything, and the highway system just aids our increased consumption without actually helping create jobs.
- maigret 17y ago
  High-speed rail is for persons, not for goods. With high-speed train you can travel from A to B (with A and B being in the 'right' range of course) cleaner and faster than with the highway. And it may actually create a demand for more travel. In France, Marseille had a big housing price increase as the high-speed train brought Marseille 3 hours from Paris (http://bit.ly/9qPHlM http://bit.ly/9qPHlM).

by dkasper 17y ago

patio11 17y ago

I think transportation infrastructure is a great solution to yesterday's problems. Look at the newspaper industry: some commentators think their problem is that delivering news on dead tree is overly expensive relative to what people want to pay for it. Even if you accept that diagnosis, increasing investment into dead tree processing, dead tree distribution, and dead tree delivery is not the way forward. I use trains to commute to my job as a computer programmer. My commute is fairly inexpensive, hassle-free, and uses the best distribution system for human bodies the world has ever seen. My commute is also a jaw-droppingly stupid waste of resources. My company and I waste three hours a day five times a week shuttling a few pounds of grey matter and a pair of eyeballs from one glowing screen to another glowing screen. The glowing screens connect to each other instantly, for so cheap next to my (cheap) train passes it doesn't even make sense to measure.

dnsworks 17y ago
Your company doesn't waste 15 hours a week, you do. If you weren't commuting, would you work an extra 15 hours per week? That's 15 hours of your life that you're losing, not 15 hours of productivity.. But otherwise, I do agree with you.
- dlsspy 17y ago
  I'm very productive on trains. Often more productive than in office settings.
donaldc 17y ago
Three hours a day five times a week? If I were in that situation, I'd either move closer to my job, or find a job closer to where I live. Unless the train had wifi...
- patio11 17y ago
  Sort of off-topic: The train is a convenient socially acceptable excuse to leave work: "I'm sorry guys, but I have to catch the last train." This gets me a whole 15 hours a week of leisure time for reading or sleeping which I would not otherwise have. After I separate from my day job (two more months, hopefully) I'll discuss societal insanity and its relationship to being a Japanese salaryman at length.
jamesbritt 17y ago
Meat-space bandwidth is currently unbeatable. Telecommuting works for some people, in some jobs. If eye contact, body language, serendipitous personal interaction, and shared experiences are not important to the social and communicative aspects of a job, then maybe staying home works well.
- CalmQuiet 17y ago
  Maybe there is need to develop means/skills for it to work in more jobs. As Pascal hyperbolized: "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. " [If not all human evil... at least we can now append: "burden of transportation infrastructure + CO(2)."]

cmelbye 17y ago

I agree. The experience at the Atocha train station in Madrid and on the Renfe train system is a dream. You go there, buy your tickets, spend maybe 30 seconds going through security, board your train, and enjoy a roomy seat while you're whisked across the country at 300 km/h.

ramchip 17y ago
And here in Japan there isn't even security: you buy a ticket at the ticket machine, then go through the gate and get in. No need to speak to a human until the controller checks your ticket during the ride.

dnsworks 17y ago

I do wonder how important the highway system is to our economy. It used to be a great boon to commerce because we made a lot of goods and needed to get them to other regions, and to ports for export. Now we import everything, and the highway system just aids our increased consumption without actually helping create jobs.

maigret 17y ago
High-speed rail is for persons, not for goods. With high-speed train you can travel from A to B (with A and B being in the 'right' range of course) cleaner and faster than with the highway. And it may actually create a demand for more travel. In France, Marseille had a big housing price increase as the high-speed train brought Marseille 3 hours from Paris (http://bit.ly/9qPHlM http://bit.ly/9qPHlM).