4 ms·

America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

by oblio 2mo ago

Analemma_ 2mo ago
I get what you're saying, but in this particular case we're talking about Texas. The people down there think that bike lanes and walkable neighborhoods are a plot to send in UN soldiers who will forcibly vaccinate them with 5G nanobots. I'm only slightly exaggerating.
eagleinparadise 2mo ago
i know multiple developers with public dollars to build housing $800k-$1.2M per unit. so i don't know, maybe come up with a better solution I'd be happy to hear your idea that is realistic and will deliver more units at a lower cost.
- theappsecguy 2mo ago
  Have you tried "building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods"?
  - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
    Buyers aren't willing to pay for it. Its not really up to the developers anyways. [Edit] I am serious. Homebuyers dont want to pay US construction prices for a 500sqft walkable Parisin style apartment. Nor do they want a xx billion dollar metro cost tacked onto their property tax.
    - eagleinparadise 2mo ago
      I can't tell if this person is joking or actual serious. It's sad, because this is exactly the kind of ridiculousness developers experience day to day by the general public. No, a private citizen does not have the ability to demolish entire neighborhoods to create a new New York City with a beautiful Central Park. Maybe if they own a home, maybe they'd donate their home to some developer to make a community garden. You and I know, that many people would love to do such a thing. But, 99% of people, would reject doing this or demand an infeasible amount of money for this.
- nixass 2mo ago
  You seem braggy too much
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    Eh, the more details they’re willing to reveal the better. It’s probably their reality.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ssl-3 2mo ago
It's important to understand the history, wherein: There was a time when we had all of those things that you mention. But cars quite clearly won; the others lost. Towns and cities then continued to grow. They did this in car-centric ways because that fit the transportation style of the time. And now, it is stuck this way.
- financetechbro 2mo ago
  Cars clearly won… or did the car industry use its monopolistic powers to acquire and shut down our train networks while also relentlessly lobbying for more (and permanent) car infrastructure? Also, just because things are one way today, doesn’t mean they can’t be a different way tomorrow. It’s all a what we we make of it and decide to fight for
  - ssl-3 2mo ago
    Both things are true. Cars won _and_ and it wasn't a fair fight. This was almost certainly not an isolated incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
- jakintosh 2mo ago
  > And now, it is stuck this way. Unless this is sarcasm, isn't it kind of strange to decide that history just happened to end in this moment?
  - ssl-3 2mo ago
    Let's talk about trains. We tore out the light passenger rail lines that once quite commonly connected cities and towns together, and to points within those places. These cities once grew around (and because of) these features, but now it is like like they never even existed. We can't just put them back where they used to be. The landscape has changed. In order to do something different, we'd need to have new routes that are built through cities that have been designed for cars for a very long time. That's a quagmire of nightmarish proportions. Every now and then, someone makes some noise about changing it somewhere -- and almost every single time, it goes nowhere. Where new light rail does get built in a place that had none, the ridership tends to be limited because...sheesh: Folks with jobs and places to go already have cars to use, so they keep using them. So we have cars, because we need cars. And since we need cars, we might as well use them -- which reinforces the issues. Call it what you will (I'm a fan of "self-perpetuating fallacy"), but that's what we've got. And yes: It is stuck this way. It'd be fantastic if it weren't this way, but we don't have an undo button. At this point, we're ~4 score and 7 years too late to preserve what we once had.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
robomartin 2mo ago
> America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods. This isn't a movie. It's real life. In the movies, sure, you can have a wizard reshape entire cities, power distribution, roads, sewers, potable water production and deliver, move entire neighborhoods kilometers away, move businesses, factories, airports, etc. In the real world, once a city is well established, while your ideas might be commendable, they are simply not realizable. It's a fantasy. It will not happen. And this isn't because we are some kind of a horrible society who do not want these things. It's because reality. Nothing less. Nothing more. The other reality is that we can't build anything here any more. My favorite thing to point to is the California high speed train project. I think it has been over a decade now and at least 10x over what they promised it was going to cost. I don't think we have a single mile of usable track built, much less moving trains. The other one is the Los Angeles International airport's automated people mover (SkyLink) which is indefinitely delayed and $1 billion over budget. The project started in 2019...and we are still waiting for it to be usable. Oh, and it's just 2.25 miles of low speed overhead monorail (I think) track like they have in Las Vegas (might be a different design). So, like I said, I love your ideas, but, in the real world, they are fantasy. Sorry.
- vel0city 2mo ago
  You say it can't be done, but it's literally happened several times before. The most recent being when we built all these urban highways. It turns out you don't actually need to tear up sewers and electrical infrastructure to run bus routes. Who knew. Density can change when you change zoning laws.
  - ssl-3 2mo ago
    Busses. I rode on a public bus once while visiting Columbus Ohio. I knew a bus ride was in my future and I'd not done that before, so I asked questions of the various people I know who live there. Not one of them had ever had a ride on the bus in the city they call home, or knew how the bus worked, and all of them made a point of telling me that they were sure that it would be filthy and awful somehow. The COTA website didn't set clear expectations for a new rider and wasn't very helpful. I eventually posted on the local subreddit asking for direction, and got exactly 1 useful response out of many non-useful responses. I don't know if it's just a Columbus thing or what, but it seems clear from this experience that folks there hate the bus. Is there a place in the US where they're appreciated? (Anyway, other than having to walk mile or so to get from the airport to the nearest bus stop because WTF, things went perfectly fine. I had a great chat with some random dude who was waiting a different bus. My bus showed up exactly when Google Maps predicted, I had exact change ready, and the transfer ticket for the next bus on my route was easy to deal with. They were clean, comfortable-enough, and I was the only rider.)
xnx 2mo ago
Self driving cars are public transportation and make areas much more walkable and bikeable.
- TranquilMarmot 2mo ago
  If they are owned and operated by mega-corporations like Alphabet, they are not public
- oblio 2mo ago
  > Self driving cars are public transportation Waymo is literally a private company. > make areas much more walkable and bikeable. How so? Autonomous car companies have every incentive to continue lobbying for car only infrastructure? Why would they want infrastructure that increases competition?

America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

by oblio 2mo ago

America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

Analemma_ 2mo ago

I get what you're saying, but in this particular case we're talking about Texas. The people down there think that bike lanes and walkable neighborhoods are a plot to send in UN soldiers who will forcibly vaccinate them with 5G nanobots. I'm only slightly exaggerating.

eagleinparadise 2mo ago

i know multiple developers with public dollars to build housing $800k-$1.2M per unit. so i don't know, maybe come up with a better solution I'd be happy to hear your idea that is realistic and will deliver more units at a lower cost.

theappsecguy 2mo ago
Have you tried "building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods"?
- s1artibartfast 2mo ago
  Buyers aren't willing to pay for it. Its not really up to the developers anyways. [Edit] I am serious. Homebuyers dont want to pay US construction prices for a 500sqft walkable Parisin style apartment. Nor do they want a xx billion dollar metro cost tacked onto their property tax.
  - eagleinparadise 2mo ago
    I can't tell if this person is joking or actual serious. It's sad, because this is exactly the kind of ridiculousness developers experience day to day by the general public. No, a private citizen does not have the ability to demolish entire neighborhoods to create a new New York City with a beautiful Central Park. Maybe if they own a home, maybe they'd donate their home to some developer to make a community garden. You and I know, that many people would love to do such a thing. But, 99% of people, would reject doing this or demand an infeasible amount of money for this.
nixass 2mo ago
You seem braggy too much
- Barbing 2mo ago
  Eh, the more details they’re willing to reveal the better. It’s probably their reality.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

ssl-3 2mo ago

It's important to understand the history, wherein: There was a time when we had all of those things that you mention. But cars quite clearly won; the others lost. Towns and cities then continued to grow. They did this in car-centric ways because that fit the transportation style of the time. And now, it is stuck this way.

financetechbro 2mo ago
Cars clearly won… or did the car industry use its monopolistic powers to acquire and shut down our train networks while also relentlessly lobbying for more (and permanent) car infrastructure? Also, just because things are one way today, doesn’t mean they can’t be a different way tomorrow. It’s all a what we we make of it and decide to fight for
- ssl-3 2mo ago
  Both things are true. Cars won _and_ and it wasn't a fair fight. This was almost certainly not an isolated incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
jakintosh 2mo ago
> And now, it is stuck this way. Unless this is sarcasm, isn't it kind of strange to decide that history just happened to end in this moment?
- ssl-3 2mo ago
  Let's talk about trains. We tore out the light passenger rail lines that once quite commonly connected cities and towns together, and to points within those places. These cities once grew around (and because of) these features, but now it is like like they never even existed. We can't just put them back where they used to be. The landscape has changed. In order to do something different, we'd need to have new routes that are built through cities that have been designed for cars for a very long time. That's a quagmire of nightmarish proportions. Every now and then, someone makes some noise about changing it somewhere -- and almost every single time, it goes nowhere. Where new light rail does get built in a place that had none, the ridership tends to be limited because...sheesh: Folks with jobs and places to go already have cars to use, so they keep using them. So we have cars, because we need cars. And since we need cars, we might as well use them -- which reinforces the issues. Call it what you will (I'm a fan of "self-perpetuating fallacy"), but that's what we've got. And yes: It is stuck this way. It'd be fantastic if it weren't this way, but we don't have an undo button. At this point, we're ~4 score and 7 years too late to preserve what we once had.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

robomartin 2mo ago

> America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods. This isn't a movie. It's real life. In the movies, sure, you can have a wizard reshape entire cities, power distribution, roads, sewers, potable water production and deliver, move entire neighborhoods kilometers away, move businesses, factories, airports, etc. In the real world, once a city is well established, while your ideas might be commendable, they are simply not realizable. It's a fantasy. It will not happen. And this isn't because we are some kind of a horrible society who do not want these things. It's because reality. Nothing less. Nothing more. The other reality is that we can't build anything here any more. My favorite thing to point to is the California high speed train project. I think it has been over a decade now and at least 10x over what they promised it was going to cost. I don't think we have a single mile of usable track built, much less moving trains. The other one is the Los Angeles International airport's automated people mover (SkyLink) which is indefinitely delayed and $1 billion over budget. The project started in 2019...and we are still waiting for it to be usable. Oh, and it's just 2.25 miles of low speed overhead monorail (I think) track like they have in Las Vegas (might be a different design). So, like I said, I love your ideas, but, in the real world, they are fantasy. Sorry.

vel0city 2mo ago
You say it can't be done, but it's literally happened several times before. The most recent being when we built all these urban highways. It turns out you don't actually need to tear up sewers and electrical infrastructure to run bus routes. Who knew. Density can change when you change zoning laws.
- ssl-3 2mo ago
  Busses. I rode on a public bus once while visiting Columbus Ohio. I knew a bus ride was in my future and I'd not done that before, so I asked questions of the various people I know who live there. Not one of them had ever had a ride on the bus in the city they call home, or knew how the bus worked, and all of them made a point of telling me that they were sure that it would be filthy and awful somehow. The COTA website didn't set clear expectations for a new rider and wasn't very helpful. I eventually posted on the local subreddit asking for direction, and got exactly 1 useful response out of many non-useful responses. I don't know if it's just a Columbus thing or what, but it seems clear from this experience that folks there hate the bus. Is there a place in the US where they're appreciated? (Anyway, other than having to walk mile or so to get from the airport to the nearest bus stop because WTF, things went perfectly fine. I had a great chat with some random dude who was waiting a different bus. My bus showed up exactly when Google Maps predicted, I had exact change ready, and the transfer ticket for the next bus on my route was easy to deal with. They were clean, comfortable-enough, and I was the only rider.)

xnx 2mo ago

Self driving cars are public transportation and make areas much more walkable and bikeable.

TranquilMarmot 2mo ago
If they are owned and operated by mega-corporations like Alphabet, they are not public
oblio 2mo ago
> Self driving cars are public transportation Waymo is literally a private company. > make areas much more walkable and bikeable. How so? Autonomous car companies have every incentive to continue lobbying for car only infrastructure? Why would they want infrastructure that increases competition?