akgerber

17 ms·

151.
by akgerber 9y ago
Or maybe American laws make it essentially illegal to use newly-developed or redeveloped land in a way compatible with high-quality transit service.
152.
by akgerber 9y ago
BART and Muni are good public transit by American standards— which is to say, not particularly good public transit.
153.
by akgerber 9y ago
Japan also has excellent public transportation, and is much less restrictive than Singapore. In major metro areas, its rail systems even make a profit. It has sprawl but it's far less auto-oriented than the US. Some major factors are:
154.
by akgerber 9y ago
Mostly-underground ultra-high-speed railways are nearing commercial implementation in Japan soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen Experientially, it'll probably mostly be like a very long s
155.
by akgerber 9y ago
Elon Musk seems like a rich guy from the California suburbs interested in decarbonizing his lifestyle— a reasonably noble goal, but the California suburbs have a ton of issues totally unrelated to their ecological footprint— not least of wh
156.
by akgerber 9y ago
In a data center in Jersey, at least a few years back.
157.
by akgerber 9y ago
A big part of the issue is what level the decisions are made— in Japan, zoning is largely set by the national government, and in Ontario, at provincial level. In Silicon Valley (and most of the US), the decisions are made at the level of sm
158.
by akgerber 9y ago
I did very well on both tests in high school without much cramming (I skimmed one study book from the library), and scored something like 90th percentile when I took the ACT in middle school. Whether this is correlated to anything important
159.
by akgerber 9y ago
'Bicycle manufacturer' often means 'someone with a garage, framebuilding jig, and TIG welder'.
160.
by akgerber 9y ago
Likely: https://www.fastcompany.com/40419011/how-tiny-bozeman-montan...
161.
by akgerber 9y ago
The reason why consumer/enterprise software is so lightly regulated is that very few people die when mistakes are made. (Embedded, especially medical, is a different story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 )
162.
by akgerber 9y ago
Kids don't walk to school in many modern neighborhoods because they're not designed to be safe for walking, sliced through by wide high-speed arterials that encourage driving at dangerous speeds. I grew up in a 1900-1920s neighbor
163.
by akgerber 9y ago
For me, the Roomba is a forcing function to keep spaces neat enough for it to work. Which is useful.
164.
by akgerber 9y ago
A lot more good phones are available off-contract than in 2012 or so, and plenty come at reasonable prices. (I've always had a prepaid smartphone, and the options were atrocious in 2010 and barely existed beyond the Nexus in 2012)
165.
by akgerber 9y ago
http://cityobservatory.org/the-origins-of-the-housing-crisis... A major reason why housing supply is so inelastic today is that zoning has become much more restrictive in the last two generations.
166.
by akgerber 9y ago
Every time I've looked for one in NYC, there are none around within 5 miles.
167.
by akgerber 9y ago
My sister's path was getting an unrelated Ph.D. in chemistry, getting a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in battery chemistry, and then getting a job at a startup in the field that's commercializing and extending its founder'
168.
by akgerber 9y ago
A classic example: https://www.rentec.com/
169.
by akgerber 9y ago
Public housing is not available to you. Some are probably rent-stabilized. Many are high-floor walkups in tenements. Many buildings in Manhattan have rats. Craigslist has scams but Streeteasy usually doesn't as ads there are paid, thou
170.
by akgerber 9y ago
Tried to list all of short-commute Manhattan and just missed it.
171.
by akgerber 9y ago
A midsized city, when willing to sprawl, build upward, or both, will have housing prices that max out around the cost of construction. Have you ever looked at real estate listings in Houston? Plus the supply of cheap walkable neighborhoods
172.
by akgerber 9y ago
I don't have a Chinese eBay bike frame (though I do have a lovely Taiwenese titanium one ordered from the ORA factory[0] by an American importer that sold for less than many steel bikes)— just a water bottle cage and a random headset s
173.
by akgerber 9y ago
There are a lot of honestly-marketed and fun products that you can buy China-direct on eBay, e.g. nuts and bolts of all types and random titanium or carbon bicycle fabrications, all with shockingly low shipping. But I wouldn't trust th
174.
by akgerber 9y ago
Detroit still seems like an easier environment than Uber/CMU's Pittsburgh, home of barely-maintained brick roadways with blind corners on 20%+ grades and icy winters.
175.
by akgerber 9y ago
The tradeoff is that if you make anything resembling Bay Area wages in Kansas City, you can pay off a lovely older house in a walkable neighborhood in two years or so.
176.
by akgerber 9y ago
Manhattan is more affordable. There are plenty of 1-bedrooms available right now under $2000: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/area:102,139,135%7Cbeds:... Brooklyn is still twice as dense as SF, and much more a
177.
Ten rules for cities about automated vehicles(cnu.org)
2 points by akgerber 9y ago|0 comments
178.
by akgerber 9y ago
Those urban rail systems were built by huge, monopolistic corporations, and were generally ripped out by local governments— e.g. Fiorella LaGuardia used WPA employees to tear out NYC's trolleys: http://www.nytimes.com/1
179.
by akgerber 9y ago
The middle class just needs to draw on its sizable reserves of capital to purchase homes at a fire-sale prices.
180.
by akgerber 9y ago
Those who own automobiles generally prefer to take them to places where parking is easy. Car-owning suburbanites who commute to dense urban neighborhoods where parking is expensive or difficult often take mass transit. Parking is usually ve

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