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It's a sisyphean effort to build rail in the US, and an even bigger one to drag american suburb dwellers into an urbanist future. Developing autonomous vehicles
by rangestransform 2y ago
It's a sisyphean effort to build rail in the US, and an even bigger one to drag american suburb dwellers into an urbanist future. Developing autonomous vehicles good enough for 90% of trips is probably cheaper than building rail, the total amount invested into waymo so far (11.1B) will build you about 4 miles of subway in manhattan [1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- rglullis 2y agoYou are arguing based on sunk costs, and even if rail was not an alternative, the US could be investing in other modes of transport: light rail (trams), buses and electric bikes. Also, you are not accounting for externalities. Get the suburbanites to pay for all the extra costs they incur on the roads, power/water/waste distribution, healthcare costs incurred by air and environmental pollution from all the cement for roads and parking lots... Quickly they will change their tune and will be willing to become "city dwellers".
- rangestransform 2y agoWhoever makes suburbanites pay for externalities will lose an election unfortunately, stupid ass myopic voters will just see the sticker price and thumb their noses at urbanists Light rail has all the disadvantages of a bus and all the disadvantages of a train, if you’re gonna build rail you might as well spend a bit extra to build elevated, you’re gonna have to fight knuckle draggers in court anyways