givemesendies

givemesendies t1_je2okfd wrote

Yes, but I prefer bike or walking for moving around in the city. I'm not sure why you hate bike lanes so much. Bikes means less traffic. Plus, if people could get around safely on bikes, they wouldn't have to spend all their money on cars. I always see you talking about how we should help the poor instead of building bike lanes, but bikes are WAY cheaper than cars and would make a lot of peoples financial life easier.

A beater car is $3000, will need a ton of money to keep going, and needs inspection and insurance and other bullshit. $3000 gets you an a high quality ebike that will need $200 of maintenance a year, and no insurance or gas. Hell, you could get a bike for 1000 and save the other 2000.

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givemesendies t1_jdxrr6n wrote

IMO the barrier right now is the fact there are still so many empty lots around the city. People were asking why a building on Spring Garden wasn't taller the other day, without considering there were two empty lots about a block away. Why take the risk on a taller, more expensive building the the area still as empty land?

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givemesendies t1_iyxwjpu wrote

My point is that getting people to alter their behavior is very difficult. In addition, no one does anything for free. We "should just" do many things, but anytime a plan of action is prefaced by "should just", it generally is ignoring all the people who have an interest in avoiding the plan.

> There is no reason to have intracontinental air travel when we have miles and miles of underutilized rail.

Who will spend the money to fix it and make it usable for passenger travel? Does it go where passengers want to go? When will the rail route be marketplace competitive with air travel?

> Nevermind the fact that since the pandemic we don't necessarily need to be tied to the desk or home to get work done.

Not everyone is an office worker.

> I'd love to take a week to cross the country by slower, less energy-intensive forms of travel.

That's your choice, but many people do not have the patience or time.

> Reducing working hours with a more equitable system of employment can easily accommodate that.

How would this even connect with financially competitive rail?

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givemesendies t1_iyxq7m5 wrote

We should reduce, and we can reduce, but the consumption cat is out of the bag.

Ask yourself, what is easier: getting 2 billion people to stop eating beef OR bio engineering a cow that doesn't fart methane? Same applies to airplanes. It's easier to build a carbon neutral airplane than getting rid of air travel.

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