4 ms·

Musk can do better than this. We need real subways and trains for transit. We do not need another express freeway lane that's underground. This is just adding m

Musk can do better than this. We need real subways and trains for transit. We do not need another express freeway lane that's underground. This is just adding more room for cars. Building on the existing approach of solving traffic by adding more lanes. This will not help Los Angeles nor America as a whole shift away from car dependency.

iagovar 8y ago
Your cities are very sparsely populated to be cost effective with rail.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  LA already has a pretty large rail network. Problem is when they try to build new subways it takes many many years to go even a mile and is met with the same lawsuits Elon faced. Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time.
  - vinay427 8y ago
    > Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time. That applies to every culture, ever, and I have a hard time identifying some "California culture" that encompasses the state. The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.
    - bbeekley 8y ago
      > The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places. Measure R (2008, 67% in favor) and Measure M (2016, 71% in favor) both passed with supermajorities and raised Los Angeles taxes by billions to pay for rail and other public transit options. To me, that seems to indicate that the majority wants these kinds of projects.
      - vinay427 8y ago
        The majority may want a few projects that cost relatively little, but they clearly don't want as much as people in other cities that spend more on public transit and have more public transit infrastructure per capita. In other words, I'm sure the majority is in favor of some public transit as an alternative, but the bar is far lower for being an alternative. Also, it goes without saying that LA County is not representative of "California culture."
        zjaffee 8y ago
        Measure M is a 120 billion dollar measure, one of the largest regional transit initiatives ever in the history of the united states. The only real problem with it is that LA has to rework itself around transit oriented development for both residential and office space for it to really work.
willio58 8y ago
You are not describing what he wanted to build there..
WillPostForFood 8y ago
Real subways need tunnels.
njarboe 8y ago
These tunnels can have a bunch of buses running in them next to each other (ie a train). Cars are great. When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-point transportation at any time. We should work on making this mode of transportation better, not trying to kill it. Make the cars more energy efficient, underground roads to fix the noise and land use problems, make them automatic to reduce deaths, etc. Would you ban a teleportation system that was energy efficient and insist people take trains and subways? Trains and subways are much inferior mode of transport compared to a functioning road system with vechicles. I wonder why so many people have this car hate? Scared of driving a car? They are dangerous and you have to pay attention to drive them, so that makes some sense to me. Some kind of socialist reason that people should be forced into contact with random other people. Sitting at home is what one should be doing instead of going places? Where did you get this idea that cars where some kind of evil device?
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  I don’t think this should be so downvoted. I think there’s a bunch of people on this thread downvoting anything that’s pro-tunnels.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > I wonder why so many people have this car hate? Cars are one of the least space-efficient transportation option imaginable. In an urban environment, space comes at a premium. At the same time, car infrastructure is quite heavily subsidized. Finally, there is a very large car lobby that absolutely abhors the idea of spending a dime on anything that's not cars such that talking about mass transit is equated with a war on cars. (And quite frankly, you sound much closer to that end of the spectrum). > When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-point transportation at any time. Following on the above point I made about space-inefficiency... it's impossible to allocate enough space in cities to prevent such congestion. And tunnels don't help because it means you have a vertical circulation problem, which is a problem that we struggle to solve with conventional mass transit systems already, and it's even harder with cars. Ultimately, the reason why people like me are so against Loop is because we see it as Musk doing to car owners what Trump does to coal miners: sympathize with their plight, blame it on completely the wrong thing, and then peddle fantasies that he'll be able to make it better.
philwelch 8y ago
Tesla is a long-term play in a business--privately-owned-and-operated automobiles--that doesn't necessarily have a long enough term for the Tesla business plan to play out. Propping up automobile infrastructure and tearing down other forms of transportation infrastructure directly addresses Musk's business interests.

iagovar 8y ago

Your cities are very sparsely populated to be cost effective with rail.

dawnerd 8y ago
LA already has a pretty large rail network. Problem is when they try to build new subways it takes many many years to go even a mile and is met with the same lawsuits Elon faced. Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time.
- vinay427 8y ago
  > Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time. That applies to every culture, ever, and I have a hard time identifying some "California culture" that encompasses the state. The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.
  - bbeekley 8y ago
    > The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places. Measure R (2008, 67% in favor) and Measure M (2016, 71% in favor) both passed with supermajorities and raised Los Angeles taxes by billions to pay for rail and other public transit options. To me, that seems to indicate that the majority wants these kinds of projects.
    - vinay427 8y ago
      The majority may want a few projects that cost relatively little, but they clearly don't want as much as people in other cities that spend more on public transit and have more public transit infrastructure per capita. In other words, I'm sure the majority is in favor of some public transit as an alternative, but the bar is far lower for being an alternative. Also, it goes without saying that LA County is not representative of "California culture."
      - zjaffee 8y ago
        Measure M is a 120 billion dollar measure, one of the largest regional transit initiatives ever in the history of the united states. The only real problem with it is that LA has to rework itself around transit oriented development for both residential and office space for it to really work.

willio58 8y ago

You are not describing what he wanted to build there..

WillPostForFood 8y ago

Real subways need tunnels.

njarboe 8y ago

These tunnels can have a bunch of buses running in them next to each other (ie a train). Cars are great. When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-point transportation at any time. We should work on making this mode of transportation better, not trying to kill it. Make the cars more energy efficient, underground roads to fix the noise and land use problems, make them automatic to reduce deaths, etc. Would you ban a teleportation system that was energy efficient and insist people take trains and subways? Trains and subways are much inferior mode of transport compared to a functioning road system with vechicles. I wonder why so many people have this car hate? Scared of driving a car? They are dangerous and you have to pay attention to drive them, so that makes some sense to me. Some kind of socialist reason that people should be forced into contact with random other people. Sitting at home is what one should be doing instead of going places? Where did you get this idea that cars where some kind of evil device?

mips_avatar 8y ago
I don’t think this should be so downvoted. I think there’s a bunch of people on this thread downvoting anything that’s pro-tunnels.
jcranmer 8y ago
> I wonder why so many people have this car hate? Cars are one of the least space-efficient transportation option imaginable. In an urban environment, space comes at a premium. At the same time, car infrastructure is quite heavily subsidized. Finally, there is a very large car lobby that absolutely abhors the idea of spending a dime on anything that's not cars such that talking about mass transit is equated with a war on cars. (And quite frankly, you sound much closer to that end of the spectrum). > When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-point transportation at any time. Following on the above point I made about space-inefficiency... it's impossible to allocate enough space in cities to prevent such congestion. And tunnels don't help because it means you have a vertical circulation problem, which is a problem that we struggle to solve with conventional mass transit systems already, and it's even harder with cars. Ultimately, the reason why people like me are so against Loop is because we see it as Musk doing to car owners what Trump does to coal miners: sympathize with their plight, blame it on completely the wrong thing, and then peddle fantasies that he'll be able to make it better.

philwelch 8y ago

Tesla is a long-term play in a business--privately-owned-and-operated automobiles--that doesn't necessarily have a long enough term for the Tesla business plan to play out. Propping up automobile infrastructure and tearing down other forms of transportation infrastructure directly addresses Musk's business interests.