akgerber

22 ms·

181.
by akgerber 9y ago
A significant component of this is that your (usually free) parking on both ends of the trip is subsidized by its requirement in local zoning, which increases general costs and subsidizes driving (parking spaces often cost $10,000+ apiece t
182.
by akgerber 9y ago
Run an S-bahn ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-train ) through the tunnel for 10x the throughput of humans for a given tunneling cost. Cars are a profoundly inefficient use of space in a dense area. The only way an auto
183.
by akgerber 9y ago
Land in the suburbs was also specifically cheaper to white veterans in the postwar era (when early auto-oriented suburbs were built) because subsidized GI Bill mortgages were essentially exclusive to whites: https://en.wikipedia.
184.
by akgerber 9y ago
Milwaukee, at well under 1/20th the size of Tokyo, spent $1B on a similar system: https://deeptunnelmke.com/impact/cost/
185.
by akgerber 9y ago
Reading at around a page a minute, that's 5000 minutes, or 83 hours. Plenty of people have 83 hours of free time a quarter. I could read that much if I wasted less time online.
186.
by akgerber 9y ago
It pushes the average date out further. Just not everyone's.
187.
by akgerber 9y ago
If the road isn't plowed and salted, as we do for car-oriented roads to make them usable through the winter and ought to do for all transportation-oriented bike infrastructure, one can purchase a set of studded tires very affordably:
188.
by akgerber 9y ago
The incentives weren't just rent control but also white-flight population decline leading to decreased rent rolls leading to reduced property valuations that weren't yet reflected in insurance valuations. And much of that white fl
189.
by akgerber 9y ago
There are parallels in the decline of boomtowns of the Industrial Revolution between the Rust Belt and the Rhine-Ruhr and Northern England, although declining European cities generally saw a lot more investment from their central government
190.
by akgerber 9y ago
The interior is mostly concrete and drywall and there are clearly-lighted exit signs in the photographs. There has been a long history of cultural spaces in ex-industrial space, and it's perfectly safe when basic fire safety regulation
191.
by akgerber 9y ago
There is much more of a network effect with social networks than with app taxis.
192.
by akgerber 9y ago
While in rural Japan, I noticed a lot of tiny combine rice harvesters in tiny rice paddies, as opposed to mega-scale American agriculture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#/media/File:Rice-combine-... Perha
193.
by akgerber 9y ago
Self driving cars can enable both urbanism and sprawl, depending on their deployment— if the existence of self-driving vehicle fleets at a per-mile price competitive with a personal car enables the collapse of personal car ownership in citi
194.
by akgerber 9y ago
The Germans seem to have an interesting middle ground with a government-funded/sponsored volunteer disaster relief organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Hilfswerk It seems like its size may have
195.
by akgerber 9y ago
Most American speed limits are well above a safe speed for neighborhoods with pedestrians and cyclists. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0386111214...
196.
by akgerber 9y ago
The issue with San Diego is not the lack of infrastructure, but the land use— many businesses and offices are in unwalkable office park hellscapes that are designed to make driving easy to the exclusion of any other mode of transit. Since p
197.
by akgerber 9y ago
Public transit generally doesn't reduce congestion, but rather provide an alternative to it.
198.
by akgerber 9y ago
Relatedly, the Toronto housing market that kept shooting up even as the US hit its 2008 housing crisis now have hit their top: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-06/toronto-h...
199.
by akgerber 9y ago
The scandal is that most of the policy research in the US is funded by supposedly-neutral think tanks which are funded this way— which means new laws will usually be designed to serve the big interests that fund think tanks.
200.
by akgerber 9y ago
I've happily used Capital One 360 (neé ING Direct) for the better part of a decade at this point. It seems to provide all the same benefits as Simple (especially no fees for anything ever), while being better at being a bank. And their
201.
by akgerber 9y ago
Good question— their office is at the end of a crumbling backstreet, at least: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4627591,-79.9701442,3a,75y,3...
202.
by akgerber 9y ago
Not necessarily any grosser than a hotel.
203.
by akgerber 9y ago
And Pittsburgh is a far more challenging driving environment than either San Francisco or Phoenix, with far more diversity of weather and a lot messier infrastructure due to terrain and freeze-thaw cycles and reduced maintenance after popul
204.
by akgerber 9y ago
In NYC, Uber drivers are required to be licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and you can report their dangerous driving to the commission, who will fine them. It seems like a much better system.
205.
by akgerber 9y ago
Just as cars would be useless for much of the winter if roads weren't maintained, well-maintained bicycle infrastructure works just fine in the winter. Sensible clothing, just as one needs to walk or ski, is all one needs to bike in th
206.
by akgerber 9y ago
Land use law is, under American constitutional law, permitted to local governments under the 'Police Power': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_power_(United_States_co... In my opinion, using land use law t
207.
by akgerber 9y ago
In much of the world, zoning is enacted at a regional or national level, and serves wider social interests rather than a small group's desire to decide what their neighbors look like. These areas generally have significantly more reaso
208.
by akgerber 9y ago
Because it's unjust, as these 'nice, exclusive areas' are the ones with the best access to employment and educational opportunities. And it creates an urban form that induces long, high-emission solo driver commutes and fewer
209.
by akgerber 9y ago
Neighboring Atherton has a land use goal of 'preserv[ing] the Town's character as a scenic, rural, thickly wooded residential area with abundant open space.'
210.
by akgerber 9y ago
The 'cost of living trap' is due far more to a growing amount of wages (good!) chasing after an essentially-capped housing supply near those jobs. When well-paying manufacturing jobs boomed in Detroit during the 1910s auto boom, i

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