WHAT? I can’t hear you over the noise that the fan makes.
OMG! Tesla Roadster Flying Car!
- Thread starter jrockbridge
- Start date
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
As long as people take personal responsibility. Don’t spend my tax dollars hauling your dumb ass out of the Sarlacc.
Lerxst
spaghetti and blankets
In all seriousness I like the concept of subtracting non-commercial traffic from urban population centers & providing more lower impact personal mobility options w/ mass transit that can be the norm and not just for the poors.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
Bingo. This is my kind of trash.
Bones McHorror
bones
Elon does this because he has to pump his stock up with futuristic-sounding nonsense every few months.
Robots butlers for everyone. IRL Starship Enterprise is going to Mars. Traveling from LA to NYC in five minutes.
It's a lot easier than actually selling very much of anything.
Robots butlers for everyone. IRL Starship Enterprise is going to Mars. Traveling from LA to NYC in five minutes.
It's a lot easier than actually selling very much of anything.
jrockbridge
Stealing Your Riffs
The California high speed rail has been under construction since 2015. They’ve spent about $15 billion so far. It’s expected to cost at least $34.8 billion total to complete the part of the line between Merced and Bakersfield, maybe, by 2034. That covers a distance of about 171 miles. It would cost at least another $100 billion to complete the line to LA and San Francisco. Construction funding could become insufficient as early as 2027.
Talk and typing are cheap. Government regulations aren’t free. Get your checkbooks out and write huge numbers with lots of zeros!
Talk and typing are cheap. Government regulations aren’t free. Get your checkbooks out and write huge numbers with lots of zeros!
jrockbridge
Stealing Your Riffs
Denver has had a light rail system for 32 years. Unfortunately, it operates at a loss each year.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
*record scratch*
Are you saying that a regulatory environment largely followed by the public sector and that gets skirted/handwaved by the private sector that then tips everything towards public-private partnerships while also animating a rotating graft-go-round might be bad? Could it be that entrenched power players in bed with money freaks regardless of party have made doing anything impossible because the status quo is good for the status quo?
Anyway, long-haul high speed rail seems pretty cool from the outside. I’ve taken it in other countries. It’s fine. Same with conventional passenger rail. And every fucking midsized city is obsessed with dinky little light rail projects. These are fine but they’re expensive because they’re massive infrastructure sinks—which is why politicians and their friends like them because there’s a budget there to get your grubby hands on. And the projects stall and underwhelm and then everyone points at them as an example of how nothing ever happens. The system works.
You know what can get the job done cheaper and easier and just as effectively in many cases? BUSSES. And there are alternative fuel busses.
Also, most people are not running long city-to-city commutes on the regular. They just need to get 14 miles from home without it taking 3+ hours. This can be addressed without laying billions of dollars worth of tracks.
We could also make it safer for people to use bikes/ebikes. We could promote density and walkability in new construction/development vs. letting NIMBYs dominate city planning.
The regulatory red tape apparatus is a problem and it hasn’t saved us from *gestures broadly* the obvious horrors. So I’m fine with reviewing the rule set AND doing things to make things better. Rich people placing large deposits on flying cars that are quite possibly vaporware is not fixing anything.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
Public amenities are for the public good. Not everything needs to be for profit. The public library is shitty at making money, but public libraries are awesome. Public schools suck at making money. But we keep teaching brats long division anyway.