6 ms·

IMO: transportation bailouts should be focused on essential everyday services (e.g. public transit, which is currently hemorrhaging money) and not for a mode wh

IMO: transportation bailouts should be focused on essential everyday services (e.g. public transit, which is currently hemorrhaging money) and not for a mode whose purpose is to facilitate business trips and vacations

chrisseaton 6y ago
> a travel mode used for vacations and élites Normal line workers everywhere have to travel for business and don't have any choice about it. These people aren't travelling for fun and aren't elite by any stretch of the imagination.
- monsieurgaufre 6y ago
  Normal line workers mostly take a plane for vacation or family reasons. Specialized workers, i'll give you that, but it's way less than you imply.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Who do you think is filling the hundreds of economy seats on flights between regular cities? It isn't holiday makers, and it isn't executives. It's normal people like you and me trying to get around for work.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Let Them Use Zoom. /s Seriously though, we’ve become extremely accustom to a mode of travel (air travel costs have deflated over the last several decades) that generates ~3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Anything that scales that back so essential travel is the majority of air travel is a good thing. High level, we’re forced by COVID to re-evaluate what we perceive as needs, and what actual needs are. Again, this is a good thing, and pushes back against cultural inertia (open office plans, face to face for biz travel, commuting to work when you could just as easily work from home, etc).
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  If you have to travel for business, the business should be paying for it, not taxpayers.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Should we make all roads toll roads as well? Or how about society works together to support basic infrastructure like roads and air routes.
    - cymbeline 6y ago
      Yes! Tolls are making traffic in a lot of European cities a lot more manageable, and vastly improving air quality. Correctly pricing automobile travel is the only way we can offboard our cities from the insane externalities of single-occupant vehicles (not just air pollution, but all that valuable urban real estate wasted on parking spots and roads [0]). [0] In normal times, 80% of commuters get to Manhattan via transit. ~1,500 rail passengers enter Manhattan’s central business district every six seconds between 8–9AM. Trying to cram all those Manhattan-bound train riders into cars (or AVs) would be impossible. You’d need 324,000 more vehicles to accommodate them, and 100 new bridges or tunnels. [1] [1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2009/08/10/what-if-everyone-drove-to-work/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2009/08/10/what-if-everyone-drov...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      What is the problem with making all roads toll roads? If anything, the unseen costs of driving due to lack of tolls causes significant issues such as traffic, road wear and tear (resulting in pollution), and mid allocation of the public’s resources into infrastructure for private vehicles rather than public transportation. Government is already reading license plates, might as well attach it to a billing system and charge people accordingly. Want to travel during high demand hours? Pay more. Watch businesses and people adjust their habits automatically to better use the shared resource. And if the concern is that poorer people get shafted, then give them a certain amount of cash or credits for road usage.
      - 6y ago
tyingq 6y ago
Without the bailout, if airlines made schedule/service decisions based purely on financial drivers, it would have been pretty bad. Lots of places might have been left with no flights. It's possible the amounts and/or split between grants and loans wasn't right...but some kind of bailout was needed to avoid chaos.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

> a travel mode used for vacations and élites Normal line workers everywhere have to travel for business and don't have any choice about it. These people aren't travelling for fun and aren't elite by any stretch of the imagination.

monsieurgaufre 6y ago
Normal line workers mostly take a plane for vacation or family reasons. Specialized workers, i'll give you that, but it's way less than you imply.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Who do you think is filling the hundreds of economy seats on flights between regular cities? It isn't holiday makers, and it isn't executives. It's normal people like you and me trying to get around for work.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
Let Them Use Zoom. /s Seriously though, we’ve become extremely accustom to a mode of travel (air travel costs have deflated over the last several decades) that generates ~3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Anything that scales that back so essential travel is the majority of air travel is a good thing. High level, we’re forced by COVID to re-evaluate what we perceive as needs, and what actual needs are. Again, this is a good thing, and pushes back against cultural inertia (open office plans, face to face for biz travel, commuting to work when you could just as easily work from home, etc).
fennecfoxen 6y ago
If you have to travel for business, the business should be paying for it, not taxpayers.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Should we make all roads toll roads as well? Or how about society works together to support basic infrastructure like roads and air routes.
  - cymbeline 6y ago
    Yes! Tolls are making traffic in a lot of European cities a lot more manageable, and vastly improving air quality. Correctly pricing automobile travel is the only way we can offboard our cities from the insane externalities of single-occupant vehicles (not just air pollution, but all that valuable urban real estate wasted on parking spots and roads [0]). [0] In normal times, 80% of commuters get to Manhattan via transit. ~1,500 rail passengers enter Manhattan’s central business district every six seconds between 8–9AM. Trying to cram all those Manhattan-bound train riders into cars (or AVs) would be impossible. You’d need 324,000 more vehicles to accommodate them, and 100 new bridges or tunnels. [1] [1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2009/08/10/what-if-everyone-drove-to-work/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2009/08/10/what-if-everyone-drov...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    What is the problem with making all roads toll roads? If anything, the unseen costs of driving due to lack of tolls causes significant issues such as traffic, road wear and tear (resulting in pollution), and mid allocation of the public’s resources into infrastructure for private vehicles rather than public transportation. Government is already reading license plates, might as well attach it to a billing system and charge people accordingly. Want to travel during high demand hours? Pay more. Watch businesses and people adjust their habits automatically to better use the shared resource. And if the concern is that poorer people get shafted, then give them a certain amount of cash or credits for road usage.
    - 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago

Without the bailout, if airlines made schedule/service decisions based purely on financial drivers, it would have been pretty bad. Lots of places might have been left with no flights. It's possible the amounts and/or split between grants and loans wasn't right...but some kind of bailout was needed to avoid chaos.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]