Americans are constantly being told that the infrastructure that sustains their way of life is falling apart, or to use the cliche term, crumbling. The term "crumbling" has been used in this context since the late 70s (https://www.aei.org/articles/the-myth-of-americas-crumbling-infrastructure/), a feeling that I'm sure was brought on by high profile disasters that decade like the collapse of the West Side Highway in New York. But how is it possible that infrastructure that was "crumbling" during Jimmy Carter's presidency still works fine today? The short answer is none of it's true.
The FHWA keep track of the quality of our highways. The media likes to hop on the tens of thousands of bridges that are rated as structurally deficient, at last count just over 50,000. But what they don't tell you is that in 1990, it was 125,000 (http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=17926).
Nobody likes potholes and I've got news, you're driving over fewer of them than you were a decade ago, as measured by the International Roughness Index. So, our streets aren't exactly crumbling either.
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news. We already spend on the order of $400 billion a year (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54539) on highways, railroads, airports, and bridges and seeing the sharp decline in dilapidated bridges and improvement in asphalt smoothness, it's clearly more than enough. Don't let politicians sell you a bill of goods.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/US_69_Craig_Co.jpg/800px-US_69_Craig_Co.jpg)
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2020, 06:33:43 PM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/US_69_Craig_Co.jpg/800px-US_69_Craig_Co.jpg)
I don't get it
https://flic.kr/p/Dxhnoq
The plural of anecdote is not data, guys
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2020, 06:33:43 PM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/US_69_Craig_Co.jpg/800px-US_69_Craig_Co.jpg)
:rofl:
Bad-font signage is not the same as bad-quality roads. (Frequent incorrect or missing signage may be, though.)
Quote from: 1 on December 16, 2020, 07:19:29 PM
Bad-font signage is not the same as bad-quality roads. (Frequent incorrect or missing signage may be, though.)
Unless it's a 69, 420, or 666 mile marker or route sign.
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
While our highways aren't crumbling in real time before our eyes, that doesn't mean that more investment in infrastructure is a bad thing or should be condemned.
In other words, I don't buy "we're in an infrastructure crisis" OR "things were worse before, so they're great now". Reality is sandwiched somewhere in the middle.
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 06:15:08 PM
Americans are constantly being told that the infrastructure that sustains their way of life is falling apart, or to use the cliche term, crumbling. The term "crumbling" has been used in this context since the late 70s (https://www.aei.org/articles/the-myth-of-americas-crumbling-infrastructure/), a feeling that I'm sure was brought on by high profile disasters that decade like the collapse of the West Side Highway in New York. But how is it possible that infrastructure that was "crumbling" during Jimmy Carter's presidency still works fine today? The short answer is none of it's true.
The FHWA keep track of the quality of our highways. The media likes to hop on the tens of thousands of bridges that are rated as structurally deficient, at last count just over 50,000. But what they don't tell you is that in 1990, it was 125,000 (http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=17926).
Nobody likes potholes and I've got news, you're driving over fewer of them than you were a decade ago, as measured by the International Roughness Index. So, our streets aren't exactly crumbling either.
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news. We already spend on the order of $400 billion a year (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54539) on highways, railroads, airports, and bridges and seeing the sharp decline in dilapidated bridges and improvement in asphalt smoothness, it's clearly more than enough. Don't let politicians sell you a bill of goods.
Do you have an I Love Potholes bumper sticker?
Quote from: Terry Shea on December 16, 2020, 08:42:30 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 06:15:08 PM
Americans are constantly being told that the infrastructure that sustains their way of life is falling apart, or to use the cliche term, crumbling. The term "crumbling" has been used in this context since the late 70s (https://www.aei.org/articles/the-myth-of-americas-crumbling-infrastructure/), a feeling that I'm sure was brought on by high profile disasters that decade like the collapse of the West Side Highway in New York. But how is it possible that infrastructure that was "crumbling" during Jimmy Carter's presidency still works fine today? The short answer is none of it's true.
The FHWA keep track of the quality of our highways. The media likes to hop on the tens of thousands of bridges that are rated as structurally deficient, at last count just over 50,000. But what they don't tell you is that in 1990, it was 125,000 (http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=17926).
Nobody likes potholes and I've got news, you're driving over fewer of them than you were a decade ago, as measured by the International Roughness Index. So, our streets aren't exactly crumbling either.
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news. We already spend on the order of $400 billion a year (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54539) on highways, railroads, airports, and bridges and seeing the sharp decline in dilapidated bridges and improvement in asphalt smoothness, it's clearly more than enough. Don't let politicians sell you a bill of goods.
Do you have an I Love Potholes bumper sticker?
Or how about a Pure Potholes sticker from Michigan?
The OP argument makes as much sense as I can't be broke because I still have credit cards
Quote from: skluth on December 16, 2020, 08:48:51 PM
The OP argument makes as much sense as I can't be broke because I still have credit cards
Also goes hand in hand with
QuoteLove highways and cars. Hate public transit.
Something being less of a problem is also not an argument against its existence as a problem...This country's infrastructure still lags well behind other countries in the developed world in several different measures.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
That fact alone means nothing. And, in NY, expansion has hardly been healthy.
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 08:59:47 PM
Quote from: skluth on December 16, 2020, 08:48:51 PM
The OP argument makes as much sense as I can't be broke because I still have credit cards
Also goes hand in hand with
QuoteLove highways and cars. Hate public transit.
Something being less of a problem is also not an argument against its existence as a problem...This country's infrastructure still lags well behind other countries in the developed world in several different measures.
By what metric?
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:00:05 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
That fact alone means nothing. And, in NY, expansion has hardly been healthy.
New York is not the center of the universe you know. Try looking across the Hudson River (https://www.njta.com/media/5179/proposed-2020-capital-improvement-program.pdf)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
Just because you like it? Millions of people depend on and could use an expansion to public transit, including but not limited to stuff like high-speed rail which will make jobs more accessible to areas that got shut out of them thanks to the siphoning of commerce away from their areas by the expansion of superhighways. Slapping cars and freeways on top of everywhere and everything is good for nothing but short-term growth and long-term loss and stagnation especially in urban areas. That era is pretty long-gone by now. Public transit, road dieting, highway lids, freeway removal, etc, are all much better solutions. We sowed it with the Interstate system, especially with it tearing through urban areas and now we are reaping the consequences of it through industrial, urban, and rural decay. (Suburbs are also horrible and unsustainable, I have to add that) What do you say to the people who are living in that decay?
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:09:10 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 08:59:47 PM
Quote from: skluth on December 16, 2020, 08:48:51 PM
The OP argument makes as much sense as I can't be broke because I still have credit cards
Also goes hand in hand with
QuoteLove highways and cars. Hate public transit.
Something being less of a problem is also not an argument against its existence as a problem...This country's infrastructure still lags well behind other countries in the developed world in several different measures.
By what metric?
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:12:41 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:00:05 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
That fact alone means nothing. And, in NY, expansion has hardly been healthy.
New York is not the center of the universe you know. Try looking across the Hudson River (https://www.njta.com/media/5179/proposed-2020-capital-improvement-program.pdf)
Every state has a capital program, silly man.
And, NY is the center of the Universe.
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:15:43 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:12:41 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:00:05 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
That fact alone means nothing. And, in NY, expansion has hardly been healthy.
New York is not the center of the universe you know. Try looking across the Hudson River (https://www.njta.com/media/5179/proposed-2020-capital-improvement-program.pdf)
Every state has a capital program, silly man.
And, NY is the center of the Universe.
But not every state is planning such large scale widening of its highways. Also, New York now has fewer people than Florida. Just like Great Britain, New York is a former empire.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:20:15 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:15:43 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:12:41 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 09:00:05 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
That fact alone means nothing. And, in NY, expansion has hardly been healthy.
New York is not the center of the universe you know. Try looking across the Hudson River (https://www.njta.com/media/5179/proposed-2020-capital-improvement-program.pdf)
Every state has a capital program, silly man.
And, NY is the center of the Universe.
But not every state is planning such large scale widening of its highways. Also, New York now has fewer people than Florida. Just like Great Britain, New York is a former empire.
When did New York State have colonies all over the world again?
Quote
High-speed rail
Passenger rail in general
Public transit
To be fair, the average size of many countries with great public transit is about the size of PA. If you're a country as large as the US and try to provide transit to the entire country, it fails. Also, we don't hear about the issues public transit faces in other counties, because it's not newsworthy to us. Here's one example, from a foreign news source you probably never heard of, because its not relevant to us in the USA:
https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-17/commuters-in-spain-complain-of-overcrowding-during-coronavirus-lockdown.html
Quote...In Madrid however, a temporary morning breakdown on the CercanÃas commuter train network at PrÃncipe PÃo station led to long delays on the C1, C7 and C10 lines. Many also complained that buses and the Metro train station were overcrowded, even though Madrid transit authorities maintained that "service was at 100%"
Quote
Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
The US actually has very good access for pedestrians, where sidewalks are provided. Many countries don't have great access for those with disabilities, for example.
Quote
Traffic deaths
Now you're just bullshitting.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 08:17:05 PM
Quote from: Rothman on December 16, 2020, 07:39:36 PM
Well...the OP speaks out of ignorance and a lack of grasp of asset management. NY's conditions are declining and the current statewide level of investment only controls how slow the decline is. How do I know? I worked for the guy that put the analysis together.
And, this is still true despite NY very recently -- and unexpectedly -- no longer having FHWA need to set aside Bridge Penalty funds from its NHP appropriation. Heard some people question the bridge data, but of course NYSDOT will take the win.
The argument that things were worse 30 years ago and therefore we should accept the current state of affairs is just stupid when it comes to asset management.
(personal opinion emphasized).
ETA: The cites of blogs are not compelling (wait, was the number 125,000 or 115,000 in 1992?). And, if anything, the data proves that massive public investment reaps great rewards, if you just go by the data presented. So much for The Antiplanner's mission...?
And that AEI article is ridiculous. Mixing transit anecdotes to make a broad statement on infrastructure in NY in general shows a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding actual transportation funding.
And the idea that federal funds do not pass through State DOTs to Locals is also one made out of complete ignorance...they just ignored about half of NYSDOT's capital program that way. Idiotic.
As I said, we're already spending $400 billion a year on our infrastructure which is clearly paying for maintenance and a healthy amount of expansion. Of course, as you can tell from my tag, I think we should spend less on transit boondoggles and spend more on highways.
Just because you like it? Millions of people depend on and could use an expansion to public transit, including but not limited to stuff like high-speed rail which will make jobs more accessible to areas that got shut out of them thanks to the siphoning of commerce away from their areas by the expansion of superhighways. Slapping cars and freeways on top of everywhere and everything is good for nothing but short-term growth and long-term loss and stagnation especially in urban areas. That era is pretty long-gone by now. Public transit, road dieting, highway lids, freeway removal, etc, are all much better solutions. We sowed it with the Interstate system, especially with it tearing through urban areas and now we are reaping the consequences of it through industrial, urban, and rural decay. (Suburbs are also horrible and unsustainable, I have to add that) What do you say to the people who are living in that decay?
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 09:09:10 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 08:59:47 PM
Quote from: skluth on December 16, 2020, 08:48:51 PM
The OP argument makes as much sense as I can't be broke because I still have credit cards
Also goes hand in hand with
QuoteLove highways and cars. Hate public transit.
Something being less of a problem is also not an argument against its existence as a problem...This country's infrastructure still lags well behind other countries in the developed world in several different measures.
By what metric?
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways (https://www.newgeography.com/content/006415-transport-costs-subsidies-mode) with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1
dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
And as a lifelong suburbanite, I can tell you they are wonderful, which you should know since you live in an exurb of Charlotte, North Carolina
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 16, 2020, 09:53:41 PM
Quote
High-speed rail
Passenger rail in general
Public transit
To be fair, the average size of many countries with great public transit is about the size of PA. If you're a country as large as the US and try to provide transit to the entire country, it fails. Also, we don't hear about the issues public transit faces in other counties, because it's not newsworthy to us. Here's one example, from a foreign news source you probably never heard of, because its not relevant to us in the USA:
https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-17/commuters-in-spain-complain-of-overcrowding-during-coronavirus-lockdown.html
Quote...In Madrid however, a temporary morning breakdown on the CercanÃas commuter train network at PrÃncipe PÃo station led to long delays on the C1, C7 and C10 lines. Many also complained that buses and the Metro train station were overcrowded, even though Madrid transit authorities maintained that "service was at 100%"
Quote
Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
The US actually has very good access for pedestrians, where sidewalks are provided. Many countries don't have great access for those with disabilities, for example.
Quote
Traffic deaths
Now you're just bullshitting.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 06:15:08 PM
Americans are constantly being told that the infrastructure that sustains their way of life is falling apart, or to use the cliche term, crumbling. The term "crumbling" has been used in this context since the late 70s (https://www.aei.org/articles/the-myth-of-americas-crumbling-infrastructure/), a feeling that I'm sure was brought on by high profile disasters that decade like the collapse of the West Side Highway in New York. But how is it possible that infrastructure that was "crumbling" during Jimmy Carter's presidency still works fine today? The short answer is none of it's true.
The FHWA keep track of the quality of our highways. The media likes to hop on the tens of thousands of bridges that are rated as structurally deficient, at last count just over 50,000. But what they don't tell you is that in 1990, it was 125,000 (http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=17926).
Nobody likes potholes and I've got news, you're driving over fewer of them than you were a decade ago, as measured by the International Roughness Index. So, our streets aren't exactly crumbling either.
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news. We already spend on the order of $400 billion a year (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54539) on highways, railroads, airports, and bridges and seeing the sharp decline in dilapidated bridges and improvement in asphalt smoothness, it's clearly more than enough. Don't let politicians sell you a bill of goods.
Also, hemorrhagic strokes are the body's way of just needing a nap. Don't let the medical community rip you off with awareness, health, well-being, and pharmaceuticals!
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 16, 2020, 09:53:41 PM
Now you're just bullshitting.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety (https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety)
I am? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
QuoteSomething being less of a problem is also not an argument against its existence as a problem...This country's infrastructure still lags well behind other countries in the developed world in several different measures
I suggest you calm down and re-read things before you decide to start snapping at people.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Toss it in the water and watch it glug down the stream. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
That's the first time I'd ever heard of IHDI.
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about pointless vanity now? And physical possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Damn, I might live in a country that is one of the least developed in the western world with some of the worst inequality and poverty in the developed world, but hey, at least I'm not some stinky European with their lack of AC and non car-centric civil engineering and urban planning. Take that! We can sit in homes that we're at risk of being evicted from or foreclosed on nice and chilly while they sweat in their heat waves with their stupid fancy buses and trams and rural connectivity. They can't even go anywhere they want in a car! Sure, the Midwest might be in continual decline but at least they can go to McDonald's in this strip mall that's a thirty-minute walk from their house anytime they want.
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about vanity and possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Compared to the median OECD nation, America, per capita, has twice as many MRIs, 3 times as many people on dialysis, 4 times as many coronary bypasses, and 6 times as many coronary angioplasties. (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/04/17/on-popular-health-utilization-metrics/) The person in the Czech Republic may have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll get the care they need. In Britain, the NHS doesn't cover treatments that cost more than 30,000 pounds per Quality Adjusted Life Year added. Can you imagine the uproar if they tried that with Medicare?
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:46:14 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about vanity and possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Compared to the median OECD nation, America, per capita, has twice as many MRIs, 3 times as many people on dialysis, 4 times as many coronary bypasses, and 6 times as many coronary angioplasties. (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/04/17/on-popular-health-utilization-metrics/) The person in the Czech Republic may have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll get the care they need. In Britain, the NHS doesn't cover treatments that cost more than 30,000 pounds per Quality Adjusted Life Year added. Can you imagine the uproar if they tried that with Medicare?
Because this country is in worse health and has higher obesity and diabetes rates (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes) and other factors promoting the necessity of those procedures due to the lack of availability and affordability of high-quality foods in food deserts (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Data_on_food_deserts.png), lack of walking as a form of transit, and higher stress levels, among other things? There is a reason it's predominantly rural states and states in the Rust Belt that have experienced significant losses to their economic potential and infrastructure the highest rates of obesity. Notice how the food desert map lines up with obesity (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg/850px-United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg.png), poverty (https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/visualizations/2018/comm/acs-5yr-poverty-all-counties/jcr:content/map.detailitem.950.high.jpg/1543960909684.jpg), etc in the country.
Infrastructure is the backbone of a nation, and evidently ours is not adequate. Better accessibility to opportunity decreases all the risk factors for these things. Not to mention many people in this country still do not get the care they need. Otherwise we wouldn't have some of the most deaths due to lack of insulin. We also have some of the highest rates of deaths in the developed world for the conditions that those procedures treat. Our rate of death from heart disease as just one example is 2.8 times higher (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819990/) than the next highest country, Germany, and is higher by both the raw amount of deaths and the rate of deaths than many other developed nations. The activity of a healthcare system is not necessarily a good measure of the health or well-being of a country's citizens relative to other nations...Other examples that I could have used to prove that statement would be the fact that y'know, COVID-19, that crazy new virus, is currently pushing our healthcare system over capacity in many states.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:05:58 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:46:14 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about vanity and possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Compared to the median OECD nation, America, per capita, has twice as many MRIs, 3 times as many people on dialysis, 4 times as many coronary bypasses, and 6 times as many coronary angioplasties. (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/04/17/on-popular-health-utilization-metrics/) The person in the Czech Republic may have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll get the care they need. In Britain, the NHS doesn't cover treatments that cost more than 30,000 pounds per Quality Adjusted Life Year added. Can you imagine the uproar if they tried that with Medicare?
Because this country is in worse health and has higher obesity and diabetes rates (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes) and other factors promoting the necessity of those procedures due to the lack of availability and affordability of high-quality foods in food deserts (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Data_on_food_deserts.png), lack of walking as a form of transit, and higher stress levels, among other things? There is a reason it's predominantly rural states and states in the Rust Belt that have experienced significant losses to their economic potential and infrastructure the highest rates of obesity. Notice how the food desert map lines up with obesity (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg/850px-United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg.png), poverty (https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/visualizations/2018/comm/acs-5yr-poverty-all-counties/jcr:content/map.detailitem.950.high.jpg/1543960909684.jpg), etc in the country.
Infrastructure is the backbone of a nation, and evidently ours is not adequate. Better accessibility to opportunity decreases all the risk factors for these things. Not to mention many people in this country still do not get the care they need. Otherwise we wouldn't have some of the most deaths due to lack of insulin. We also have some of the highest rates of deaths in the developed world for the conditions that those procedures treat. Our rate of death from heart disease as just one example is 2.8 times higher (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819990/) than the next highest country, Germany, and is higher by both the raw amount of deaths and the rate of deaths than many other developed nations. The activity of a healthcare system is not necessarily a good measure of the health or well-being of a country's citizens relative to other nations...Other examples that I could have used to prove that statement would be the fact that y'know, COVID-19, that crazy new virus, is currently pushing our healthcare system over capacity in many states.
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:05:58 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:46:14 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about vanity and possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Compared to the median OECD nation, America, per capita, has twice as many MRIs, 3 times as many people on dialysis, 4 times as many coronary bypasses, and 6 times as many coronary angioplasties. (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/04/17/on-popular-health-utilization-metrics/) The person in the Czech Republic may have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll get the care they need. In Britain, the NHS doesn't cover treatments that cost more than 30,000 pounds per Quality Adjusted Life Year added. Can you imagine the uproar if they tried that with Medicare?
Because this country is in worse health and has higher obesity and diabetes rates (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes) and other factors promoting the necessity of those procedures due to the lack of availability and affordability of high-quality foods in food deserts (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Data_on_food_deserts.png), lack of walking as a form of transit, and higher stress levels, among other things? There is a reason it's predominantly rural states and states in the Rust Belt that have experienced significant losses to their economic potential and infrastructure the highest rates of obesity. Notice how the food desert map lines up with obesity (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg/850px-United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg.png), poverty (https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/visualizations/2018/comm/acs-5yr-poverty-all-counties/jcr:content/map.detailitem.950.high.jpg/1543960909684.jpg), etc in the country.
Infrastructure is the backbone of a nation, and evidently ours is not adequate. Better accessibility to opportunity decreases all the risk factors for these things. Not to mention many people in this country still do not get the care they need. Otherwise we wouldn't have some of the most deaths due to lack of insulin. We also have some of the highest rates of deaths in the developed world for the conditions that those procedures treat. Our rate of death from heart disease as just one example is 2.8 times higher (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819990/) than the next highest country, Germany, and is higher by both the raw amount of deaths and the rate of deaths than many other developed nations. The activity of a healthcare system is not necessarily a good measure of the health or well-being of a country's citizens relative to other nations...Other examples that I could have used to prove that statement would be the fact that y'know, COVID-19, that crazy new virus, is currently pushing our healthcare system over capacity in many states.
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
Man, did everything I say just go out the window? A car alone doesn't get you out of the socioeconomic and infrastructural pits of places like Welch, West Virginia, Hazard, Kentucky, or Gary, Indiana. The issues affecting these areas and people are complex and interconnected. Highways can help these areas to an extent, yes, the ADHS was a huge success as one example, but even then, as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, these problems are still massive no matter how you picture it and the approaches that led to growth for these people and places won't work again for a myriad of reasons. Lack of willing contractors, lack of funds, a shrinking tax base, lack of economic potential that could be extracted from these places in their current state, etc, etc. In many cases more cars and roads only siphoned commerce and opportunity from these places. We need new approaches to infrastructure. How insulated are you from the reality of these situations to think that you can just slap a band-aid like that on top of these situations and think they'll go away? You or other people could have been in poor conditions at some point in your life, and our existing situation may have worked for you, but ultimately, those are an exception to the main rule that all the data points lead to.
Take a look beyond the image of 1950s suburbia. You will be surprised to see the poverty in your own area. It's worse than you think. I've volunteered for political campaigns and as such talked to a lot of these people before from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life, literally just a few minutes from me, all their experiences have the same common theme around them. These people are in areas where you largely need a car to get around in many cases. We tried car culture already. It worked in the short term, it has given us so many problems in the long term.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:31:04 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:05:58 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:46:14 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 10:55:07 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 10:02:57 PM
More importantly, those countries are poorer than us. (https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI)
Plain old numbers without any insight into the figures and how they are related to each other/how they apply to their own countries just can't be a valid figure in measuring how well somewhere is doing. Louisiana has a higher human development index and better raw numbers than the Czech Republic. North Carolina has a similar HDI to South Korea and better raw numbers money-wise for individual citizens. A lot of US states also have HDIs comparable to other Western European nations. Consider all the poverty in these places. Take into account the infrastructure, the healthcare, the job opportunity, the standard of living. Think for a moment, do you really think the average lower middle class Louisianan or North Carolinian is better off than the average lower middle class Czhechian or South Korean? This page also goes on to talk about how well off young people in Norway are now despite the US ranking higher in the list. If US states were ranked with inequality in mind as the IHDI does we would see a very different picture being painted.
Quote from: kernals12
If you want public transit, pay for it yourself. We drivers pay for our roads with our gas taxes and registration fees, which contrary to what you may have heard, all but cover the cost of highways with net subsidy only being 1 cent per passenger mile vs 1 dollar per passenger mile for transit. And I'm glad we have urban freeways. Getting to Logan Airport to pick up my sister when she visits us would be much harder without the MassPike.
I'm really glad we have rivers and waterways. It makes it so easy to dispose of my trash, it's just a few steps behind my house. Could you imagine having to go through all the work of waste management and recycling? That would be really hard.
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
So numbers, data, poverty lines, and the individual needs of people with regard to how they affect others mean nothing anymore? It's all about vanity and possessions with no regard to the situation behind it? My mother grew up in a developing nation in abject poverty. She also lived on a farm with a lot of space for livestock and growing small amounts of crops. Her family had a car. By your logic, she was better off as a child than she is now. Some guy who lives in a trailer home in Mississippi with an AC unit sticking out of the window and a beat up truck who can't find a decent paying job, is totally uninsured, is now better off than someone who doesn't have AC, uses public transit, and lives in a studio apartment, but also has insurance and is able to access job opportunities right then and there.
Compared to the median OECD nation, America, per capita, has twice as many MRIs, 3 times as many people on dialysis, 4 times as many coronary bypasses, and 6 times as many coronary angioplasties. (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/04/17/on-popular-health-utilization-metrics/) The person in the Czech Republic may have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll get the care they need. In Britain, the NHS doesn't cover treatments that cost more than 30,000 pounds per Quality Adjusted Life Year added. Can you imagine the uproar if they tried that with Medicare?
Because this country is in worse health and has higher obesity and diabetes rates (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes) and other factors promoting the necessity of those procedures due to the lack of availability and affordability of high-quality foods in food deserts (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Data_on_food_deserts.png), lack of walking as a form of transit, and higher stress levels, among other things? There is a reason it's predominantly rural states and states in the Rust Belt that have experienced significant losses to their economic potential and infrastructure the highest rates of obesity. Notice how the food desert map lines up with obesity (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg/850px-United_States_Map_of_Obesity_Prevalence_by_State_%282013%29.svg.png), poverty (https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/visualizations/2018/comm/acs-5yr-poverty-all-counties/jcr:content/map.detailitem.950.high.jpg/1543960909684.jpg), etc in the country.
Infrastructure is the backbone of a nation, and evidently ours is not adequate. Better accessibility to opportunity decreases all the risk factors for these things. Not to mention many people in this country still do not get the care they need. Otherwise we wouldn't have some of the most deaths due to lack of insulin. We also have some of the highest rates of deaths in the developed world for the conditions that those procedures treat. Our rate of death from heart disease as just one example is 2.8 times higher (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819990/) than the next highest country, Germany, and is higher by both the raw amount of deaths and the rate of deaths than many other developed nations. The activity of a healthcare system is not necessarily a good measure of the health or well-being of a country's citizens relative to other nations...Other examples that I could have used to prove that statement would be the fact that y'know, COVID-19, that crazy new virus, is currently pushing our healthcare system over capacity in many states.
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
Man, did everything I say just go out the window? A car alone doesn't get you out of the socioeconomic and infrastructural pits of places like Welch, West Virginia, Hazard, Kentucky, or Gary, Indiana. The issues affecting these areas and people are complex and interconnected. Highways can help these areas to an extent, yes, the ADHS was a huge success as one example, but even then, as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, these problems are still massive no matter how you picture it and the approaches that led to growth for these people and places won't work again for a myriad of reasons. Lack of willing contractors, lack of funds, a shrinking tax base, lack of economic potential that could be extracted from these places in their current state, etc, etc. In many cases more cars and roads only siphoned commerce and opportunity from these places. We need new approaches to infrastructure. How insulated are you from the reality of these situations to think that you can just slap a band-aid like that on top of these situations and think they'll go away? You or other people could have been in poor conditions at some point in your life, and our existing situation may have worked for you, but ultimately, those are an exception to the main rule that all the data points lead to.
Take a look beyond the image of 1950s suburbia. You will be surprised to see the poverty in your own area. It's worse than you think. I've volunteered for political campaigns and as such talked to a lot of these people before from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life, literally just a few minutes from me, all their experiences have the same common theme around them. These people are in areas where you largely need a car to get around in many cases. We tried car culture already. It worked in the short term, it has given us so many problems in the long term.
It definitely won't be fixed by transit boondoggles. Robert Byrd tried that, it didn't work.
Quote from: 1 on December 16, 2020, 07:19:29 PM
Bad-font signage is not the same as bad-quality roads. (Frequent incorrect or missing signage may be, though.)
Good thing Oklahoma can have both at the same time.
(https://i.imgur.com/02B4cED.png)
Quote from: kernals12
Quote from: indexMan, did everything I say just go out the window? A car alone doesn't get you out of the socioeconomic and infrastructural pits of places like Welch, West Virginia, Hazard, Kentucky, or Gary, Indiana. The issues affecting these areas and people are complex and interconnected. Highways can help these areas to an extent, yes, the ADHS was a huge success as one example, but even then, as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, these problems are still massive no matter how you picture it and the approaches that led to growth for these people and places won't work again for a myriad of reasons. Lack of willing contractors, lack of funds, a shrinking tax base, lack of economic potential that could be extracted from these places in their current state, etc, etc. In many cases more cars and roads only siphoned commerce and opportunity from these places. We need new approaches to infrastructure. How insulated are you from the reality of these situations to think that you can just slap a band-aid like that on top of these situations and think they'll go away? You or other people could have been in poor conditions at some point in your life, and our existing situation may have worked for you, but ultimately, those are an exception to the main rule that all the data points lead to.
Take a look beyond the image of 1950s suburbia. You will be surprised to see the poverty in your own area. It's worse than you think. I've volunteered for political campaigns and as such talked to a lot of these people before from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life, literally just a few minutes from me, all their experiences have the same common theme around them. These people are in areas where you largely need a car to get around in many cases. We tried car culture already. It worked in the short term, it has given us so many problems in the long term.
It definitely won't be fixed by transit boondoggles. Robert Byrd tried that, it didn't work.
His support for Essential Air Service/small community air service, Amtrak, and supporting the infrastructure around those things still benefits a lot of people today. Just like the Interstate system, streamlining travel with airline deregulation in 1978 improved travel and transit for a number of people but caused long term losses in some areas, in this case because airlines were no longer obligated to serve certain areas, so additional investments were needed. That man is a legend in West Virginia and with good reason. Who exactly didn't his projects work for? If you are talking about the ADHS, that brought traffic to rural mountain communities rather than bypassing them, the whole "slap car culture everywhere" theme we normally have wasn't present in that situation. For a number of reasons, losses in infrastructure and industry included, that is no longer the case, and the ADHS has trouble providing, hence why we need a new approach to infrastructure. Rebuild and revitalize it it in areas that need rebuilding, including the roads, in situations where they are clearly beneficial, such as the ADHS, and focus on connecting regions with alternate transit methods.
Cars have their place, but to treat them as the only solution, wanting to take away from public transit and prioritize car culture just doesn't work. Not for LA, not for Atlanta, not for so many others. Simply not sustainable in the long term, will end up doing more harm than good. We need other things. See: Rail and air service in WV. When MARC tried to cut service to West Virginia that was also stopped, because of the benefit that it had to the local community. Much better option than driving for certain demographics and more economical in some cases. It allows people to access jobs in the DC area that otherwise might be inaccessible to them for a number of reasons, many of which may have to do with car commuting.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 16, 2020, 09:53:41 PM
QuoteTraffic deaths
Now you're just bullshitting.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety
I mean, the data there shows that the United States has more traffic fatalities per capita than any other developed nation.
Though I don't think this is an indicator of our roads being less safe or less well-built generally. Rather, I would say it is primarily indicative of 1) Americans driving more miles per capita than most of our developed world peers because our development patterns necessitate it, and 2) The US setting the bar lower for what it takes to get a drivers' license than most of our developed world peers.
I'm regretting putting more thought into my response than the Craig County sign. This thread sucks.
Quote from: Duke87 on December 17, 2020, 01:21:04 AM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 16, 2020, 09:53:41 PM
Now you're just bullshitting.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety (https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/road-safety)
I mean, the data there shows that the United States has more traffic fatalities per capita than any other developed nation.
Though I don't think this is an indicator of our roads being less safe or less well-built generally. Rather, I would say it is primarily indicative of 1) Americans driving more miles per capita than most of our developed world peers because our development patterns necessitate it, and 2) The US setting the bar lower for what it takes to get a drivers' license than most of our developed world peers.
The former reason could also be solved by investing in more efficient infrastructure/public transit/urban design. Less people on the road, less miles driven, and an incentive to save money by not driving, generally equals safer roads by virtue of there being less cars and people driving only out of absolute necessity. Not to mention the whole host of other benefits from new urbanism/mixed use.
On the topic of pedestrian accessibility, which was brought up earlier in the thread, I have to mention it, pedestrian infrastructure in this country is just...objectively bad. Even if some place has a sidewalk that doesn't really mean it's any good for walkability. I have to walk an hour just to get out of residential zoning here and to any point of interest at all, that just can't be called pedestrian accessibility, and the same situation goes for a lot of the country too. Even in business districts here, the sidewalks are a joke. There's one spot in Charlotte where a wall goes up on one and it becomes less than a foot wide. One of the least walkable cities in the country. Not to mention half the sidewalks here literally end at random, are ridiculously narrow and right up against the road, are full of overgrowth that makes them impossible to use, and have no signalized crosswalks. Nobody here knows what a pedestrian is. I have almost got hit several times by drivers who aren't used to even dealing with them, crossing the road, on a white hand signal.
You also can't cycle here unless you have a death wish. Someone I know got sent to the hospital with blood gushing out of his head because of an inattentive driver plowing straight into them. They were following the law, cycling properly, and that still happened.
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2020, 06:33:43 PM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/US_69_Craig_Co.jpg/800px-US_69_Craig_Co.jpg)
I saw a street sign about a month ago it was either in Tuscola County or Genesee County. The road name is called Bray Road but the font on this street sign looked exactly like the Craig County sign font.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:00:35 AM
Quote from: kernals12
Quote from: indexMan, did everything I say just go out the window? A car alone doesn't get you out of the socioeconomic and infrastructural pits of places like Welch, West Virginia, Hazard, Kentucky, or Gary, Indiana. The issues affecting these areas and people are complex and interconnected. Highways can help these areas to an extent, yes, the ADHS was a huge success as one example, but even then, as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, these problems are still massive no matter how you picture it and the approaches that led to growth for these people and places won't work again for a myriad of reasons. Lack of willing contractors, lack of funds, a shrinking tax base, lack of economic potential that could be extracted from these places in their current state, etc, etc. In many cases more cars and roads only siphoned commerce and opportunity from these places. We need new approaches to infrastructure. How insulated are you from the reality of these situations to think that you can just slap a band-aid like that on top of these situations and think they'll go away? You or other people could have been in poor conditions at some point in your life, and our existing situation may have worked for you, but ultimately, those are an exception to the main rule that all the data points lead to.
Take a look beyond the image of 1950s suburbia. You will be surprised to see the poverty in your own area. It's worse than you think. I've volunteered for political campaigns and as such talked to a lot of these people before from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life, literally just a few minutes from me, all their experiences have the same common theme around them. These people are in areas where you largely need a car to get around in many cases. We tried car culture already. It worked in the short term, it has given us so many problems in the long term.
It definitely won't be fixed by transit boondoggles. Robert Byrd tried that, it didn't work.
His support for Essential Air Service/small community air service, Amtrak, and supporting the infrastructure around those things still benefits a lot of people today. Just like the Interstate system, streamlining travel with airline deregulation in 1978 improved travel and transit for a number of people but caused long term losses in some areas, in this case because airlines were no longer obligated to serve certain areas, so additional investments were needed. That man is a legend in West Virginia and with good reason. Who exactly didn't his projects work for? If you are talking about the ADHS, that brought traffic to rural mountain communities rather than bypassing them, the whole "slap car culture everywhere" theme we normally have wasn't present in that situation. For a number of reasons, losses in infrastructure and industry included, that is no longer the case, and the ADHS has trouble providing, hence why we need a new approach to infrastructure. Rebuild and revitalize it it in areas that need rebuilding, including the roads, in situations where they are clearly beneficial, such as the ADHS, and focus on connecting regions with alternate transit methods.
Cars have their place, but to treat them as the only solution, wanting to take away from public transit and prioritize car culture just doesn't work. Not for LA, not for Atlanta, not for so many others. Simply not sustainable in the long term, will end up doing more harm than good. We need other things. See: Rail and air service in WV. When MARC tried to cut service to West Virginia that was also stopped, because of the benefit that it had to the local community. Much better option than driving for certain demographics and more economical in some cases. It allows people to access jobs in the DC area that otherwise might be inaccessible to them for a number of reasons, many of which may have to do with car commuting.
I was referring to the infamous number of pork barrel projects he brought to his state, the most famous one being a transit project, the Morgantown PRT. I think West Virginians prefer their pickup trucks.
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor.
All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 02, 2020, 06:27:35 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on August 30, 2020, 07:13:53 AM
Quote from: TheDon102 on August 29, 2020, 10:50:34 PM
I just don't understand I-778, the Cross Bronx Realignment (Which destroys active Amtrak train tracks) and the Long Beach Expressway which would basically destroy Long Beach, NY.... The original nassau expressway proposal was supposed to end at a bridge going to long beach, not cut it in half.
Although you're Clearview Expressway proposal seems good, obviously the Cross Island and Belt parkways would have to be upgraded.
I got rid of the Long Beach Expressway. I-778 is there because most of the vehicles that used the old West Side Elevated Highway were trucks going from New Jersey to New Jersey. Hardly anyone uses Amtrak, while the Cross Bronx Expressway is always bumper to bumper, so I think it's a good tradeoff to right Robert Moses' wrongs
The boldfaced is a demonstrably false statement in the very busy Northeast Corridor. Go look at the morning lineup in Boston or DC for the early Acela runs to New York or at Penn Station in the afternoon for the return trip (last time I was on the Acela this past January, the train was completely sold out, and that's not too unusual for the 5:00 southbound departure from NYP). I realize you claim to hate public transit, so I assume your comment is consistent with that, but if you dumped all the Amtrak riders in the Northeast Corridor onto the highways, you'd have a lot more traffic in the way.
Certainly in most of the rest of the country Amtrak is not competitive in the same way it is in the Northeast Corridor, which is unique for a host of reasons.
But the point is, we're not talking to someone who claims to be realistic. He has his agenda, summarized in the tagline below his avatar, and it appears from his comments that in his mind that agenda trumps all other considerations (pun completely intended).
Quote from: Flint1979 on December 17, 2020, 06:16:05 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2020, 06:33:43 PM
[img snipped]
I saw a street sign about a month ago it was either in Tuscola County or Genesee County. The road name is called Bray Road but the font on this street sign looked exactly like the Craig County sign font.
Is this (https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2804454,-83.6623304,3a,15.2y,308.62h,96.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seHkIQD8g7m0mZiBLrwhfeA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1) the one you're thinking of? If so, it was a very easy/lucky find. It was the first sign I encountered after I searched Bray Road. The font does roughly match, but the big difference is that the Craig County sign is essentially a variant of aLtErNaTiNg cApS.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 08:28:57 AM
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor. All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 02, 2020, 06:27:35 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on August 30, 2020, 07:13:53 AM
Quote from: TheDon102 on August 29, 2020, 10:50:34 PM
I just don't understand I-778, the Cross Bronx Realignment (Which destroys active Amtrak train tracks) and the Long Beach Expressway which would basically destroy Long Beach, NY.... The original nassau expressway proposal was supposed to end at a bridge going to long beach, not cut it in half.
Although you're Clearview Expressway proposal seems good, obviously the Cross Island and Belt parkways would have to be upgraded.
I got rid of the Long Beach Expressway. I-778 is there because most of the vehicles that used the old West Side Elevated Highway were trucks going from New Jersey to New Jersey. Hardly anyone uses Amtrak, while the Cross Bronx Expressway is always bumper to bumper, so I think it's a good tradeoff to right Robert Moses' wrongs
The boldfaced is a demonstrably false statement in the very busy Northeast Corridor. Go look at the morning lineup in Boston or DC for the early Acela runs to New York or at Penn Station in the afternoon for the return trip (last time I was on the Acela this past January, the train was completely sold out, and that's not too unusual for the 5:00 southbound departure from NYP). I realize you claim to hate public transit, so I assume your comment is consistent with that, but if you dumped all the Amtrak riders in the Northeast Corridor onto the highways, you'd have a lot more traffic in the way.
Certainly in most of the rest of the country Amtrak is not competitive in the same way it is in the Northeast Corridor, which is unique for a host of reasons.
But the point is, we're not talking to someone who claims to be realistic. He has his agenda, summarized in the tagline below his avatar, and it appears from his comments that in his mind that agenda trumps all other considerations (pun completely intended).
I suggest we remove the worthless post-9/11 airport security procedures that have made every flight much longer from door to door.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 09:01:50 AM
I suggest we remove the worthless post-9/11 airport security procedures that have made every flight much longer from door to door.
Before you start attacking kernals12 for this, I agree with him, as does vdeane:
Quote from: vdeane on January 18, 2019, 08:20:02 PM
In my case, it's not a fear of flying. It's a complete and total unwillingness to deal with flight delays, lost luggage, being sandwiched between other people like sardines (honestly, I don't even like dealing with people in general who aren't friends or family), the inability to bring my shampoo/conditioner/contact lense solution/moisturizer/toothpaste, and the loss of dignity inherent in going though modern airport security. Not to mention that all the fees the airlines charge so they can list an artificially deflated price that nobody pays are stupid. Ironically, the cliche reason for not flying (being afraid of a crash) is the one and only part I'd be OK with.
Flying is an abysmal way to travel, and will be unless the system becomes much more reliable, the airlines become civilized, and the TSA is abolished; I'm not really sure why so many people put up with it.
Quote from: vdeane on July 15, 2015, 03:37:56 PM
I don't like the idea of flying either. You get crammed in with annoying people like sardines, the airlines treat non-business travelers like crap, there's the possibility of lost luggage, and you have to endure the TSA's sexual harassment and humiliation, and can't take basic necessities like toothpaste, shampoo/conditioner, and contact lens solution with you. No thanks.
Not everywhere, but some places are (looking at you PA).
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
https://spotlightonpoverty.org/states/west-virginia/
You've never traveled to any poor region of the United States nor have you been to any other country. As someone who has lived, worked, and volunteered in Appalachia most of my life: your argument is bullshit. Come to West Virginia and travel down to McDowell County, or Knott County in Kentucky, or any poor region and you'll find people living in one-room houses, fans (and NOT air conditioning), without cars (especially in urbanized areas). Tell them that they are lying.
While you are at it, go and see how many children receive free breakfast and lunch at schools. At many schools in West Virginia, that is a
majority. Something is screwed up in our nation when we can't even adequately feed our children and they have to go to school just to receive proper nutrition.
But you are also the person who claims that Philly is widening Roosevelt Boulevard into a freeway and insists that nobody rides Amtrak.
Quote from: seicer on December 17, 2020, 09:15:00 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 11:26:25 PM
The Louisianan lives in a larger house, that has air conditioning, and he or she has a car. So yes.
https://spotlightonpoverty.org/states/west-virginia/
You've never traveled to any poor region of the United States nor have you been to any other country. As someone who has lived, worked, and volunteered in Appalachia most of my life: your argument is bullshit. Come to West Virginia and travel down to McDowell County, or Knott County in Kentucky, or any poor region and you'll find people living in one-room houses, fans (and NOT air conditioning), without cars (especially in urbanized areas). Tell them that they are lying.
While you are at it, go and see how many children receive free breakfast and lunch at schools. At many schools in West Virginia, that is a majority. Something is screwed up in our nation when we can't even adequately feed our children and they have to go to school just to receive proper nutrition.
But you are also the person who claims that Philly is widening Roosevelt Boulevard into a freeway and insists that nobody rides Amtrak.
That's not unique to the US.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 09:01:50 AM
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 08:28:57 AM
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor. All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 02, 2020, 06:27:35 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on August 30, 2020, 07:13:53 AM
Quote from: TheDon102 on August 29, 2020, 10:50:34 PM
I just don't understand I-778, the Cross Bronx Realignment (Which destroys active Amtrak train tracks) and the Long Beach Expressway which would basically destroy Long Beach, NY.... The original nassau expressway proposal was supposed to end at a bridge going to long beach, not cut it in half.
Although you're Clearview Expressway proposal seems good, obviously the Cross Island and Belt parkways would have to be upgraded.
I got rid of the Long Beach Expressway. I-778 is there because most of the vehicles that used the old West Side Elevated Highway were trucks going from New Jersey to New Jersey. Hardly anyone uses Amtrak, while the Cross Bronx Expressway is always bumper to bumper, so I think it's a good tradeoff to right Robert Moses' wrongs
The boldfaced is a demonstrably false statement in the very busy Northeast Corridor. Go look at the morning lineup in Boston or DC for the early Acela runs to New York or at Penn Station in the afternoon for the return trip (last time I was on the Acela this past January, the train was completely sold out, and that's not too unusual for the 5:00 southbound departure from NYP). I realize you claim to hate public transit, so I assume your comment is consistent with that, but if you dumped all the Amtrak riders in the Northeast Corridor onto the highways, you'd have a lot more traffic in the way.
Certainly in most of the rest of the country Amtrak is not competitive in the same way it is in the Northeast Corridor, which is unique for a host of reasons.
But the point is, we're not talking to someone who claims to be realistic. He has his agenda, summarized in the tagline below his avatar, and it appears from his comments that in his mind that agenda trumps all other considerations (pun completely intended).
I suggest we remove the worthless post-9/11 airport security procedures that have made every flight much longer from door to door.
I don't necessarily disagree with that statement on the whole, but I don't see how it has anything to do with anything in my comment. In my case, I'd still opt for Amtrak over the airline shuttles for trips to New York because Amtrak drops me at 34th Street in Midtown, directly on the Seventh Avenue Express two stops from my destination, whereas the shuttles take me to LaGuardia and I still have the lengthy hassle of getting from there to Lower Manhattan. I know plenty of other people in the DC area (and some in Boston) who feel the same way, even when their destination is in Midtown–in this particular instance, flying doesn't really save much time, even if you have TSA Pre-Check and can skip the worst of the security queues.
Of course, as long as the pandemic remains an issue, if I need to travel to New York I'll drive.
I don't really understand why lack of access to food is really an issue. I worked at Stop & Shop, which is about 20% more expensive than Market Basket and about the same as Shaw's, independent stores, and everything else.
Bananas: 49¢ per pound, or about 20¢ per banana depending on the size
Plantains (large Hispanic customer base): 25¢ each until about January 2020, where they became 3/$1. I think they're 2/$1 now, but I'm not sure.
Apples and pears: About $1.49 per pound depending on the type, or 60¢ per apple or pear
20 lb rice: $14
Crackers: There's a Hispanic brand that has 99¢ listed on the box, so Stop & Shop can't choose to charge more for it. I think it's about an 8 oz box.
Frozen pizzas: There are some small ones that are $1.
Bread: Anything on clearance is 1/3 off, and there's often quite a lot of it, although that might be because it's a low-volume store. Store brand white bread is 99¢ regular price; healthier bread is obviously more, but even white bread isn't as bad as junk food.
Half gallon Sunny D: $1 (this must be something that Sunny D chose, as there's no way Stop & Shop would choose to set it that low)
Store-brand string cheeses: $7 for a 24 pack. This is 29¢ per cheese stick.
48 oz applesauce: $2.19. If this is 5 servings (about what happens when I have it), that's 44¢ per bowl.
Goya "Maria crackers" (in the Hispanic section): 69¢ for what can be eaten in 15 minutes if you eat quickly, and the only reason I ate it all in 15 minutes is because that's how long break usually lasts as an employee. There are also 4-packs that cost less per cracker.
Water bottles (mainly useful for when you're not at home and want to bring one or two with you): $3 for a 24-pack, much cheaper than getting a single one while you're out.
18 Popsicle brand popsicles (not unhealthy; it's mostly frozen water, and the sugar is the same sugar you would get from eating a fruit): $3.50, or 20¢ per popsicle.
(Gray section added before I saw the reply about it being about accessibility and not price.)
In addition, many customers used EBT (the electronic system of payment that SNAP uses).
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:07:44 AM
I was referring to the infamous number of pork barrel projects he brought to his state, the most famous one being a transit project, the Morgantown PRT. I think West Virginians prefer their pickup trucks.
It's only pork barrel if it's not your state. Gotcha. So while we can expend an ungodly amount of money for projects that aren't wanted even at a local level (your fantasy Roosevelt Boulevard freeway or expanding the US 1 freeway in Crystal City or ramming more freeways in NYC, Boston, and in any developed area), providing decent two- and four-lane roads in a mountainous state is... waste. It's a state that is highly dependent upon the federal government for funding thanks to its low population density, poverty, reliance on a few industries (coal), and terrain, not all the fault of its people.
The Morgantown PRT may be "pork" to some, but it was built as a research project between Boeing and the federal government and carries 16,000 people daily (and 75 million total without any major incident). Because it connects downtown and three WVU campuses across steep and unforgiving terrain, it really does serve the population well that buses would not be able to because of topography and the street grid. The PRT runs on a dedicated right-of-way free of intrusions.
Ignoring your classist comment about the good people of West Virginia.
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 09:42:14 AM
I don't really understand why lack of access to food is really an issue. I worked at Stop & Shop, which is about 20% more expensive than Market Basket and about the same as Shaw's, independent stores, and everything else.
I guess you were replying to
seicer, but between the intermittent posts and the page switch, I almost thought you had the wrong thread.
He specifically pointed out McDowell County, WV, which is ranked 3142/3142 for life expectancy in the nation, and its lone Walmart pulled out in 2016. While poverty rates are very high there, it's not an issue with price so much as accessibility. Many people there have to travel an hour or more on winding Appalachian roads just to get to what most of us would consider a normal grocery store with plenty of fresh produce, etc.
Food deserts are rife in West Virginia, as in any poor area: https://www.wvpublic.org/podcast/inside-appalachia/2015-10-02/whats-an-appalachian-food-desert-and-why-are-they-increasing
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 09:42:14 AM
Goya "Maria crackers" (in the Hispanic section): 69¢
These are actually a solid snack with some peanut butter, as a nice combination of lightly sweet and salty. Cheap eats back in the day!
The cellophane packaging leaves a lot to be desired; they're delicate so you'll get a few that are...crumbling.
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 08:28:57 AM
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor. All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
This 100%. The demand for transportation in the northeast corridor is such that no one mode can handle the load - you need the planes, trains, & automobiles (& buses) to compliment each other!
One example: As congested as the Lincoln Tunnel is in the AM (pre-pandemic, anyway), imagine how much worse it would be if not for the heavy bus ridership and XBL to accommodate it. What if all those bus riders drove by themselves instead? What if (read: when) the North River Tunnels fail and all that rail traffic is pushed to either the PATH, or to the Holland/Lincoln Tunnels?
(Which brings me to another point: infrastructure trouble isn't limited to just highways - look no further than the aforementioned North River Tunnels, nearby Portal Bridge, and the long-stalled Gateway Program. But that's neither here nor there.)
Or perhaps an example closer to home for the OP: How about when an MBTA red line train derailed outside JFK/UMass in June 2019 and took out a bunch of signaling equipment, all during morning rush hour? With the one transportation mode offline, others had to pick up the slack:
-I-93 became far more jammed than normal
-Ubers to downtown spiked to >$100
-The adjacent Commuter Rail honored subway fare to South Station and thus became far more crowded than usual
I'm sure the Mass Pike & I-95 would also be far more congested than they currently are if not for the Framingham/Worcester and Providence/Stoughton commuter rail lines running in those same corridors, respectively. (And I-95 as a whole would certainly be far worse from DC to Boston if not for the Amtrak Northeast Corridor and multiple airline routes.)
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I'm sure the Mass Pike & I-95 would also be far more congested than they currently are if not for the Framingham/Worcester and Providence/Stoughton commuter rail lines running in those same corridors, respectively. (And I-95 as a whole would certainly be far worse from DC to Boston if not for the Amtrak Northeast Corridor and multiple airline routes.)
To add to your point: a 2% decrease in traffic volumes is much more than a 2% improvement in rush hour travel times. (The exact number can't be calculated without knowing the length of rush hour, which varies each day.)
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
So ... poverty lines ... mean nothing anymore? It's all about pointless vanity now?
Actually, I've been really skeptical about poverty lines for quite a while now. For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line, so it's a moving target. But maybe that's beside the point. My real problem is with any figure leading to 13% of Americans living "in poverty", when the federal minimum wage provides enough money to buy a value meal at Chick-fil-A
every hour. Sorry, but I spend a decent amount of time in Mexico, and my perspective leads me to consider the various definitions of "poverty" that are used to be grossly skewed.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
So ... poverty lines ... mean nothing anymore? It's all about pointless vanity now?
Actually, I've been really skeptical about poverty lines for quite a while now. For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line, so it's a moving target. But maybe that's beside the point. My real problem is with any figure leading to 13% of Americans living "in poverty", when the federal minimum wage provides enough money to buy a value meal at Chick-fil-A every hour. Sorry, but I spend a decent amount of time in Mexico, and my perspective leads me to consider the various definitions of "poverty" that are used to be grossly skewed.
This 13% accounts for:
- People who aren't working or are working part-time only; this includes people outside the labor force such as retirees and college students
- People who are paid the federal minimum wage in an area with a higher cost of living (such as southern NH)
- Transportation costs cutting into wages (59¢ per mile driving, and if you're in an area with decent transit, you're probably in an area with a higher cost of living)
- Restaurant workers where the tipped minimum wage is less than regular minimum wage
- If your home is cheaper, it probably needs repairs more often
- Having to pay credit card debt (sometimes by necessity), which often has ridiculous interest rates
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
....
This is an outstanding idea.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 10:47:07 AM
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
....
This is an outstanding idea.
I concur. This is becoming a new forum meme at this point.
I don't think kernals12 is a troll, unlike dzlsabe.
I have a pretty specific vision of how to improve efficiency, and they usually don't work:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=28032 (Removing access to side streets to make something a high-speed road?, November 2020)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=25286 (Idea for subsidizing carpools, July 2019)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=24465 (Freeway rain shields, February 2019)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=23163 (Alternative to bidirectional "green wave" in places where it is impossible, July 2018)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=21432 (Converting railroad tracks to self-driving car lanes, October 2017)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=19092 ("Crosswalk regions" proposal, October 2016)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=16637 (Idea: Straight on red after stop if there is no street to the right, October 2015)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=16279 (My idea for 10 mph (16 kph, 4.5 m/s) pedestrian conveyor belts, August 2015)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=11623 (Idea for different speed limits per lane, February 2014)
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=10418 (Idea to keep cars moving at a stoplight, September 2013)
Is it a problem that I have these grand ideas for improving efficiency that turn out not to work after all? My common theme is to keep cars moving without making the anti-car people get upset.
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 10:56:14 AM
I don't think kernals12 is a troll, unlike dzlsabe.
I agree, I really get the vibe he believes in what he writes and tries to be serious about it. I don't think a lot of it is necessarily well informed nor is free of personal bias though which leads people to think otherwise. To that end I was convinced that this was another DZ situation, but it hasn't played out that way.
This thread is a train wreck.
(Or rather, car crash, since the OP seems to prefer we stick exclusively to that mode.)
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:21 AM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
So ... poverty lines ... mean nothing anymore? It's all about pointless vanity now?
Actually, I've been really skeptical about poverty lines for quite a while now. For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line, so it's a moving target. But maybe that's beside the point. My real problem is with any figure leading to 13% of Americans living "in poverty", when the federal minimum wage provides enough money to buy a value meal at Chick-fil-A every hour. Sorry, but I spend a decent amount of time in Mexico, and my perspective leads me to consider the various definitions of "poverty" that are used to be grossly skewed.
This 13% accounts for:
- People who aren't working or are working part-time only; this includes people outside the labor force such as retirees and college students
- People who are paid the federal minimum wage in an area with a higher cost of living (such as southern NH)
- Transportation costs cutting into wages (59¢ per mile driving, and if you're in an area with decent transit, you're probably in an area with a higher cost of living)
- Restaurant workers where the tipped minimum wage is less than regular minimum wage
- If your home is cheaper, it probably needs repairs more often
- Having to pay credit card debt (sometimes by necessity), which often has ridiculous interest rates
Other than tipped wages for restaurant workers, that entire list also applies to every other non-Communist country.
Also, I had never fully considered the first point. So, when I was a college student living on campus at a private university, with my tuition 80% funded by financial grants and the rest covered by my middle-class parents, with the cost of housing and meals completely covered, with a car on campus in my parents' name, with a little bit of spending money to use for occasional recreational activities... I was officially living in poverty because I had no income? That doesn't exactly make me have
more confidence in the validity of the poverty line.
Also, I'm not so sure about your second point. I used to live in DuPage County, Illinois, where the median list price for a house is north of $300k–but its official poverty line is the same as the federal poverty line.
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 11:35:48 AM
This thread is a train wreck.
(Or rather, car crash, since the OP seems to prefer we stick exclusively to that mode.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:37:00 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:21 AM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 11:36:31 PM
So ... poverty lines ... mean nothing anymore? It's all about pointless vanity now?
Actually, I've been really skeptical about poverty lines for quite a while now. For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line, so it's a moving target. But maybe that's beside the point. My real problem is with any figure leading to 13% of Americans living "in poverty", when the federal minimum wage provides enough money to buy a value meal at Chick-fil-A every hour. Sorry, but I spend a decent amount of time in Mexico, and my perspective leads me to consider the various definitions of "poverty" that are used to be grossly skewed.
This 13% accounts for:
- People who aren't working or are working part-time only; this includes people outside the labor force such as retirees and college students
- People who are paid the federal minimum wage in an area with a higher cost of living (such as southern NH)
- Transportation costs cutting into wages (59¢ per mile driving, and if you're in an area with decent transit, you're probably in an area with a higher cost of living)
- Restaurant workers where the tipped minimum wage is less than regular minimum wage
- If your home is cheaper, it probably needs repairs more often
- Having to pay credit card debt (sometimes by necessity), which often has ridiculous interest rates
Other than tipped wages for restaurant workers, that entire list also applies to every other non-Communist country.
Also, I had never fully considered the first point. So, when I was a college student living on campus at a private university, with my tuition 80% funded by financial grants and the rest covered by my middle-class parents, with the cost of housing and meals completely covered, with a car on campus in my parents' name, with a little bit of spending money to use for occasional recreational activities... I was officially living in poverty because I had no income? That doesn't exactly make me have more confidence in the validity of the poverty line.
Also, I'm not so sure about your second point. I used to live in DuPage County, Illinois, where the median list price for a house is north of $300k–but its official poverty line is the same as the federal poverty line.
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could
actually be living in poverty.
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:54:54 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
If you want my take on it, the poverty line is only a figure for determining
around where an area is doing money-wise. It can never be an exact science. (The way we calculate unemployment rates is also massively flawed, in my opinion. If we also count people who have given up looking for work and those that want to look but are not able, our numbers become much higher) There are a lot of other factors that might inhibit one's economic conditions that the poverty line doesn't account for. Local cost of living, internet access to name two additional factors, along with what 1 mentioned. You might be above the poverty line but you could still barely be cutting it. Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Dug this up:
(https://i.imgur.com/GJzHF8I.png)
Quote from: seicer on December 17, 2020, 09:52:56 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:07:44 AM
I was referring to the infamous number of pork barrel projects he brought to his state, the most famous one being a transit project, the Morgantown PRT. I think West Virginians prefer their pickup trucks.
It's only pork barrel if it's not your state. Gotcha. So while we can expend an ungodly amount of money for projects that aren't wanted even at a local level (your fantasy Roosevelt Boulevard freeway or expanding the US 1 freeway in Crystal City or ramming more freeways in NYC, Boston, and in any developed area), providing decent two- and four-lane roads in a mountainous state is... waste. It's a state that is highly dependent upon the federal government for funding thanks to its low population density, poverty, reliance on a few industries (coal), and terrain, not all the fault of its people.
The Morgantown PRT may be "pork" to some, but it was built as a research project between Boeing and the federal government and carries 16,000 people daily (and 75 million total without any major incident). Because it connects downtown and three WVU campuses across steep and unforgiving terrain, it really does serve the population well that buses would not be able to because of topography and the street grid. The PRT runs on a dedicated right-of-way free of intrusions.
Ignoring your classist comment about the good people of West Virginia.
Hundreds of thousands of people use those roads every day, they are not wasteful.
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 08:28:57 AM
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor. All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
This 100%. The demand for transportation in the northeast corridor is such that no one mode can handle the load - you need the planes, trains, & automobiles (& buses) to compliment each other!
One example: As congested as the Lincoln Tunnel is in the AM (pre-pandemic, anyway), imagine how much worse it would be if not for the heavy bus ridership and XBL to accommodate it. What if all those bus riders drove by themselves instead? What if (read: when) the North River Tunnels fail and all that rail traffic is pushed to either the PATH, or to the Holland/Lincoln Tunnels?
(Which brings me to another point: infrastructure trouble isn't limited to just highways - look no further than the aforementioned North River Tunnels, nearby Portal Bridge, and the long-stalled Gateway Program. But that's neither here nor there.)
Or perhaps an example closer to home for the OP: How about when an MBTA red line train derailed outside JFK/UMass in June 2019 and took out a bunch of signaling equipment, all during morning rush hour? With the one transportation mode offline, others had to pick up the slack:
-I-93 became far more jammed than normal
-Ubers to downtown spiked to >$100
-The adjacent Commuter Rail honored subway fare to South Station and thus became far more crowded than usual
I'm sure the Mass Pike & I-95 would also be far more congested than they currently are if not for the Framingham/Worcester and Providence/Stoughton commuter rail lines running in those same corridors, respectively. (And I-95 as a whole would certainly be far worse from DC to Boston if not for the Amtrak Northeast Corridor and multiple airline routes.)
Some random DOT employee is not a better source of information than the Federal Highway Administration.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:28:57 PM
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 08:28:57 AM
For those who hadn't seen it, the OP is the person who, in a Fictional Highways thread, claims that nobody rides Amtrak, despite also claiming to live in the Boston area. Anyone who lives in the Northeast Corridor knows that (in non-pandemic times, anyway) the claim that "nobody rides Amtrak" is demonstrably false. I'd be riding Amtrak to New York more often than I have been if it weren't for the pandemic. I'm not going to make the absurd argument that Amtrak, or the airline shuttles, are perfect and are all that's needed, but I'm also not so stupid as to argue that simply upgrading and widening the highways is the only capacity that's needed in the Northeast Corridor. All three are important. (Among other issues, while I'm fortunate enough to have parking if I drive to New York for business, for most people parking is a huge expense and problem, and there are always the hassles of driving to where you need to be in the city–that is, kernals12's widened highways might just expedite your access to the backup to get through the Holland Tunnel.)
This 100%. The demand for transportation in the northeast corridor is such that no one mode can handle the load - you need the planes, trains, & automobiles (& buses) to compliment each other!
One example: As congested as the Lincoln Tunnel is in the AM (pre-pandemic, anyway), imagine how much worse it would be if not for the heavy bus ridership and XBL to accommodate it. What if all those bus riders drove by themselves instead? What if (read: when) the North River Tunnels fail and all that rail traffic is pushed to either the PATH, or to the Holland/Lincoln Tunnels?
(Which brings me to another point: infrastructure trouble isn't limited to just highways - look no further than the aforementioned North River Tunnels, nearby Portal Bridge, and the long-stalled Gateway Program. But that's neither here nor there.)
Or perhaps an example closer to home for the OP: How about when an MBTA red line train derailed outside JFK/UMass in June 2019 and took out a bunch of signaling equipment, all during morning rush hour? With the one transportation mode offline, others had to pick up the slack:
-I-93 became far more jammed than normal
-Ubers to downtown spiked to >$100
-The adjacent Commuter Rail honored subway fare to South Station and thus became far more crowded than usual
I'm sure the Mass Pike & I-95 would also be far more congested than they currently are if not for the Framingham/Worcester and Providence/Stoughton commuter rail lines running in those same corridors, respectively. (And I-95 as a whole would certainly be far worse from DC to Boston if not for the Amtrak Northeast Corridor and multiple airline routes.)
Some random DOT employee is not a better source of information than the Federal Highway Administration.
And you're a better source than a DOT employee from the State you're referencing how?
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:54:54 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
If you want my take on it, the poverty line is only a figure for determining around where an area is doing money-wise. It can never be an exact science. (The way we calculate unemployment rates is also massively flawed, in my opinion. If we also count people who have given up looking for work and those that want to look but are not able, our numbers become much higher) There are a lot of other factors that might inhibit one's economic conditions that the poverty line doesn't account for. Local cost of living, internet access to name two additional factors, along with what 1 mentioned. You might be above the poverty line but you could still barely be cutting it. Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Dug this up:
(https://i.imgur.com/GJzHF8I.png)
That's not true
https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
Yes. Of the nations topping
the HDI list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), #2, #8, and #14 have no high speed rail, and #4 has no rail transport at all.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:49:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:54:54 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
If you want my take on it, the poverty line is only a figure for determining around where an area is doing money-wise. It can never be an exact science. (The way we calculate unemployment rates is also massively flawed, in my opinion. If we also count people who have given up looking for work and those that want to look but are not able, our numbers become much higher) There are a lot of other factors that might inhibit one's economic conditions that the poverty line doesn't account for. Local cost of living, internet access to name two additional factors, along with what 1 mentioned. You might be above the poverty line but you could still barely be cutting it. Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Dug this up:
(https://i.imgur.com/GJzHF8I.png)
That's not true
https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en (https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en)
That is the journalistic equivalent for an opinion piece suggesting climate change is not real.
Even federal statistics suggest otherwise: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846)
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/ (https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses (https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/ (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/)
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/ (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/)
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/ (https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846)
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/ (https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses (https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/ (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/)
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/ (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/)
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/ (https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/)
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:57:15 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
Yes. Of the nations topping the HDI list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), #2, #8, and #14 have no high speed rail, and #4 has no rail transport at all.
The United States lacks high speed rail where other developed nations of similar scale have succeeded. Therefore it lags behind other similar nations on high speed rail. That is not a very hard conclusion to make.Hong Kong also has access to high-speed rail. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Express_Rail_Link)
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:57:46 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:49:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:54:54 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
If you want my take on it, the poverty line is only a figure for determining around where an area is doing money-wise. It can never be an exact science. (The way we calculate unemployment rates is also massively flawed, in my opinion. If we also count people who have given up looking for work and those that want to look but are not able, our numbers become much higher) There are a lot of other factors that might inhibit one's economic conditions that the poverty line doesn't account for. Local cost of living, internet access to name two additional factors, along with what 1 mentioned. You might be above the poverty line but you could still barely be cutting it. Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Dug this up:
(https://i.imgur.com/GJzHF8I.png)
That's not true
https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en (https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en)
That is the journalistic equivalent for an opinion piece suggesting climate change is not real.
Even federal statistics suggest otherwise: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/
You didn't read the thread did you? It clearly explained why all of those articles are just clickbait. Just because someone wouldn't pay for a $400 expense in cash doesn't mean they can't. The same survey also found 85% of Americans would be able to pay their bills on time even with a $400 emergency expense.
Quote from: kernals12
You didn't read the thread did you? It clearly explained why all of those articles are just clickbait. Just because someone wouldn't pay for a $400 expense in cash doesn't mean they can't. The same survey also found 85% of Americans would be able to pay their bills on time even with a $400 emergency expense.
"This one statistic has a small technicality associated with it, therefore the economic struggle it depicts for many Americans doesn't actually exist. Checkmate!"
There is a reason that people aren't paying for these. How hard is it to just accept that things in this country suck for a lot of people? No matter how you put the data, we could be doing much better than how we are doing right now. No matter what technicalities you can claim, there's some other factor nullifying that. We lag behind other developed nations. Our traditional approaches are failing now. Otherwise we would not have as much upheaval in this country as we do nor would we be in the political situation we are in. Do you just not see it?
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:05:04 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:03:42 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:57:46 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:49:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 11:54:54 AM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 11:52:22 AM
I'm not sure how the poverty line is defined; the list I gave was reasons that people could actually be living in poverty.
That is very likely due to the fact I pointed out earlier:
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 10:26:35 AM
For one thing, every department seems to have its own definition of the poverty line ...
"The poverty line" doesn't exist. There exists a multitude of poverty lines, each calculated according to the needs of the agency/department publishing the data.
If you want my take on it, the poverty line is only a figure for determining around where an area is doing money-wise. It can never be an exact science. (The way we calculate unemployment rates is also massively flawed, in my opinion. If we also count people who have given up looking for work and those that want to look but are not able, our numbers become much higher) There are a lot of other factors that might inhibit one's economic conditions that the poverty line doesn't account for. Local cost of living, internet access to name two additional factors, along with what 1 mentioned. You might be above the poverty line but you could still barely be cutting it. Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on December 17, 2020, 10:12:16 AM
I propose we merge all these kernals12 threads together and title it "Compilation: kernals12 in one thread". They all seem to have the same format:
-A very specific thread title and initial post with cherry-picked data and baseless claims to back the pro-highway agenda
-Critiques and arguments from those with more intimate knowledge of the issue, such as locals or DOT employees
-These critiques and arguments are then immediately dismissed by the OP with no real counterargument
Reads Fritzowl to me :popcorn:
Dug this up:
(https://i.imgur.com/GJzHF8I.png)
That's not true
https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en (https://twitter.com/i/events/1136337266949931009?lang=en)
That is the journalistic equivalent for an opinion piece suggesting climate change is not real.
Even federal statistics suggest otherwise: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846)
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/ (https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses (https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/ (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/)
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/ (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/)
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/ (https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846)
https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/ (https://thehub.santanderbank.com/60-americans-arent-prepared-unexpected-expense/)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses (https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford-unexpected-expenses)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/ (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/)
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/ (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/05/many-lack-a-financial-backstop-amid-pandemic/)
https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/ (https://www.lend360.org/fed-finds-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-400-emergency-expense/)
You didn't read the thread did you? It clearly explained why all of those articles are just clickbait. Just because someone wouldn't pay for a $400 expense in cash doesn't mean they can't. The same survey also found 85% of Americans would be able to pay their bills on time even with a $400 emergency expense.
"This one statistic has a small technicality associated with it, therefore the economic struggle it depicts for many Americans doesn't actually exist. Checkmate!"
There is a reason that people aren't paying for these.
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Quote from: kernals12
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 (https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0)
And in the end even with these technicalities you get a figure that is still unacceptably high. Raw numbers and data on their own mean nothing. Statistics need context. Just because someone can pay their bills doesn't mean they're not struggling. My own family has been in that situation. I know countless others who have been in that situation. Some number out of that 85% could be around the poverty line, could be overworked, could be in debt, could be on the precipice of eviction, could have had to give some things up in order to pay them, among a number of other things.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 01:17:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities—not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Lack of infrastructure spending is one of many various factors that can make an area not nice to live and take jobs away from the area. Not a tough conclusion.
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Only one column also has data for 22 countries. The US does worse stacked up against developed nations by every other way you measure it. Driving more is part of the reason. Stopping there and thinking that's all there is to the issue is not a reason. Americans drive more because of our lack of investments in other areas and poor urban planning, necessitating it. If we did not have terrible zoning and massive suburban sprawl coupled with public transit availability that is behind many other countries, we would not have those numbers. People would drive less. Not a tough conclusion. If we had greater availability of these things, and better quality of service, people would use them more, and by extremely large margins too.
(https://medium.com/@YannLeriche/learning-from-uber-and-lyft-the-case-for-passenger-experience-in-transit-b9641a35f4c2)
QuoteIn Transdev’s recent “digital travelers” survey (https://fr.slideshare.net/Transdev/transdev-explorer-les-voyageurs-numriques?qid=6676058b-55c9-4c19-abd8-ffcd94705b6d&v=&b=&from_search=1), 42% of respondents declared they would use public transit more often with the availability of new services such as WIFI technology, trip planners and mobile ticketing.
https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678 (https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678)
Quote
Interest in Using Public Transit in the Chapel Hill and Carboro is High. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the residents surveyed indicated that they would use public transit at least once a week if convenient public transportation were made available near their home.
You would then have less miles traveled. Less driving means lower probability of accidents.
https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf
QuoteAnalyzing data from 1984-2012, we found the number of reported weather-related power outages increased dramatically in the 2000s (Figure 2), a conclusion similar to those found in previous studies. There were as many as 10 times more large-scale power outages each year in the 2000s compared to those reported each year in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:40:40 PM
Quote from: kernals12
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 (https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0)
And in the end even with these technicalities you get a figure that is still unacceptably high. Raw numbers and data on their own mean nothing. Statistics need context. Just because someone can pay their bills doesn't mean they're not struggling. My own family has been in that situation. I know countless others who have been in that situation. Some number out of that 85% could be around the poverty line, could be overworked, could be in debt, could be on the precipice of eviction, could have had to give some things up in order to pay them, among a number of other things.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 01:17:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Lack of infrastructure spending is one of many various factors that can make an area not nice to live and take jobs away from the area. Not a tough conclusion.
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Only one column also has data for 22 countries. The US does worse stacked up against developed nations by every other way you measure it. Driving more is part of the reason. Stopping there and thinking that's all there is to the issue is not a reason. Americans drive more because of our lack of investments in other areas, necessitating it. If we did not have terrible zoning and massive suburban sprawl coupled with public transit availability that is behind many other countries, we would not have those numbers. Not a tough conclusion. If we had greater availability of these things, and better quality of service, people would use them more, and by extremely large margins too.
(https://medium.com/@YannLeriche/learning-from-uber-and-lyft-the-case-for-passenger-experience-in-transit-b9641a35f4c2)
QuoteIn Transdev's recent "digital travelers" survey (https://fr.slideshare.net/Transdev/transdev-explorer-les-voyageurs-numriques?qid=6676058b-55c9-4c19-abd8-ffcd94705b6d&v=&b=&from_search=1), 42% of respondents declared they would use public transit more often with the availability of new services such as WIFI technology, trip planners and mobile ticketing.
https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678 (https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678)
Quote
Interest in Using Public Transit in the Chapel Hill and Carboro is High. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the residents surveyed indicated that they would use public transit at least once a week if convenient public transportation were made available near their home.
You would then have less miles traveled. Less driving means lower probability of accidents.
https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf
QuoteAnalyzing data from 1984-2012, we found the number of reported weather-related power outages increased dramatically in the 2000s (Figure 2), a conclusion similar to those found in previous studies. There were as many as 10 times more large-scale power outages each year in the 2000s compared to those reported each year in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Delusional is thinking that people secretly loathe their automobiles and want to ride the bus everywhere.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:40:40 PM
Quote from: kernals12
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 (https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0)
And in the end even with these technicalities you get a figure that is still unacceptably high. Raw numbers and data on their own mean nothing. Statistics need context. Just because someone can pay their bills doesn't mean they're not struggling. My own family has been in that situation. I know countless others who have been in that situation. Some number out of that 85% could be around the poverty line, could be overworked, could be in debt, could be on the precipice of eviction, could have had to give some things up in order to pay them, among a number of other things.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 01:17:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Lack of infrastructure spending is one of many various factors that can make an area not nice to live and take jobs away from the area. Not a tough conclusion.
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Only one column also has data for 22 countries. The US does worse stacked up against developed nations by every other way you measure it. Driving more is part of the reason. Stopping there and thinking that's all there is to the issue is not a reason. Americans drive more because of our lack of investments in other areas and poor urban planning, necessitating it. If we did not have terrible zoning and massive suburban sprawl coupled with public transit availability that is behind many other countries, we would not have those numbers. People would drive less. Not a tough conclusion. If we had greater availability of these things, and better quality of service, people would use them more, and by extremely large margins too.
(https://medium.com/@YannLeriche/learning-from-uber-and-lyft-the-case-for-passenger-experience-in-transit-b9641a35f4c2)
QuoteIn Transdev's recent "digital travelers" survey (https://fr.slideshare.net/Transdev/transdev-explorer-les-voyageurs-numriques?qid=6676058b-55c9-4c19-abd8-ffcd94705b6d&v=&b=&from_search=1), 42% of respondents declared they would use public transit more often with the availability of new services such as WIFI technology, trip planners and mobile ticketing.
https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678 (https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678)
Quote
Interest in Using Public Transit in the Chapel Hill and Carboro is High. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the residents surveyed indicated that they would use public transit at least once a week if convenient public transportation were made available near their home.
You would then have less miles traveled. Less driving means lower probability of accidents.
https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf
QuoteAnalyzing data from 1984-2012, we found the number of reported weather-related power outages increased dramatically in the 2000s (Figure 2), a conclusion similar to those found in previous studies. There were as many as 10 times more large-scale power outages each year in the 2000s compared to those reported each year in the 1980s and early 1990s.
1. It also may just be a sign that they're bad with money.
2. I have convenient public transit near my home. In fact, it's in my driveway. And as the survey predicts, I do use it frequently.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:43:07 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:40:40 PM
Quote from: kernals12
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 (https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0)
And in the end even with these technicalities you get a figure that is still unacceptably high. Raw numbers and data on their own mean nothing. Statistics need context. Just because someone can pay their bills doesn't mean they're not struggling. My own family has been in that situation. I know countless others who have been in that situation. Some number out of that 85% could be around the poverty line, could be overworked, could be in debt, could be on the precipice of eviction, could have had to give some things up in order to pay them, among a number of other things.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 01:17:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities—not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Lack of infrastructure spending is one of many various factors that can make an area not nice to live and take jobs away from the area. Not a tough conclusion.
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Only one column also has data for 22 countries. The US does worse stacked up against developed nations by every other way you measure it. Driving more is part of the reason. Stopping there and thinking that's all there is to the issue is not a reason. Americans drive more because of our lack of investments in other areas, necessitating it. If we did not have terrible zoning and massive suburban sprawl coupled with public transit availability that is behind many other countries, we would not have those numbers. Not a tough conclusion. If we had greater availability of these things, and better quality of service, people would use them more, and by extremely large margins too.
(https://medium.com/@YannLeriche/learning-from-uber-and-lyft-the-case-for-passenger-experience-in-transit-b9641a35f4c2)
QuoteIn Transdev’s recent “digital travelers” survey (https://fr.slideshare.net/Transdev/transdev-explorer-les-voyageurs-numriques?qid=6676058b-55c9-4c19-abd8-ffcd94705b6d&v=&b=&from_search=1), 42% of respondents declared they would use public transit more often with the availability of new services such as WIFI technology, trip planners and mobile ticketing.
https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678 (https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678)
Quote
Interest in Using Public Transit in the Chapel Hill and Carboro is High. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the residents surveyed indicated that they would use public transit at least once a week if convenient public transportation were made available near their home.
You would then have less miles traveled. Less driving means lower probability of accidents.
https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf (https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf)
QuoteAnalyzing data from 1984-2012, we found the number of reported weather-related power outages increased dramatically in the 2000s (Figure 2), a conclusion similar to those found in previous studies. There were as many as 10 times more large-scale power outages each year in the 2000s compared to those reported each year in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Delusional is thinking that people secretly loathe their automobiles and want to ride the bus everywhere.
Delusional is thinking that people choose their means of transit based solely on how much they like it with no other factors considered. Almost as if other factors such as cost, ease of use, traffic, among other things, are also at play. You've demonstrated time and time again you literally don't care about factors other than vanity and dick-measuring with other people's lifestyles to determine what you think is best for everyone. Statistics, investigation into those statistics, conclusions based on these things, all be damned. I don't like it so I don't want it and other people shouldn't want it either! My way is the only way to do things!
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:55:24 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:43:07 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 01:40:40 PM
Quote from: kernals12
Here's a breakdown of what the survey results actually say.
https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 (https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0)
And in the end even with these technicalities you get a figure that is still unacceptably high. Raw numbers and data on their own mean nothing. Statistics need context. Just because someone can pay their bills doesn't mean they're not struggling. My own family has been in that situation. I know countless others who have been in that situation. Some number out of that 85% could be around the poverty line, could be overworked, could be in debt, could be on the precipice of eviction, could have had to give some things up in order to pay them, among a number of other things.
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 01:17:11 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:44:35 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on December 17, 2020, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: index on December 16, 2020, 09:15:32 PM
- High-speed rail
- Passenger rail in general
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas
- The very existence of the Rust Belt
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility
- Public transit
- Road safety
- Traffic deaths
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past
- Among many, many other things.
The decay is very real. Populations in the Midwest and Rust Belt continue to shrink. West Virginia continues to get poorer. Just because there is growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is enjoying that growth. I am experiencing decay itself with the electric grid. I went years without having any major disruptions to my power only to be hit with at least a dozen this year. It doesn't seem like there's very much stopping another 2003-style blackout from happening either.
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/ (https://www.wbtv.com/2020/11/12/charlotte-sees-dramatic-jump-power-outages/)
Citation needed for some of those and the traffic deaths thing is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
Pardon not granted. The statement that the US has some of the worst traffic deaths in the developed world is a factual statement, and your statement is, pardon my English, complete bullshit.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Just like I said earlier in the thread, I suggest that people turn down the aggressive-territorial-animal dial and maybe, I dunno, hold their words before they start to sling shit. Because it could end up getting thrown right back at you.
- High-speed rail Does this have to be proven?
- Passenger rail in general Does this have to be proven?
- Freeways that still tear through urban areas Does this have to be proven?
- The very existence of the Rust Belt Does this have to be proven?
- Pedestrian and cyclist accessibility https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png (https://i.imgur.com/Oxz6FbZ.png) We are now rapidly outpacing Europe by this metric and this figure saw a dramatic spike yet again, surpassing them (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2019-fatality-data-traffic-deaths-2020-q2-projections)
- Public transit Does this have to be proven?
- Road safety Traffic deaths are used to measure this
- Traffic deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
- 70% of our dams will be over 50 years old in five years https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953 (https://spanberger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2953)
- Weather-related power outages are 10 times more frequent than in the 1980s https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2 (https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/weather/weather-blog/weather-related-outages-increasing/97-cec33823-0d2c-4122-8ef1-d8bb9fe052d2) https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages (https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-outages) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf (https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/climate-central.pdf)
- Increasing damage from natural disasters, even when adjusted for inflation comparing to ones of the past https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450 (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21450) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/billion-dollar-natural-disasters-rising-these-states-better-prepare.html) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context)
- Among many, many other things.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 12:41:26 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 12:06:00 PM
Most Americans, more than the poverty line might suggest, can't afford an unexpected expense worth a few hundred bucks without throwing their financial situation into chaos.
But that's not the same thing as living in poverty. At least, that's my take on things. Poverty means you can't afford necessities–not that you don't have enough saved up to cover a hypothetical situation.
In my mind having a safety net is a necessity. If an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars crashes your entire life as you're already hardly making ends meet, you're not in a very good situation.
The link on the power outages speaks nothing of a 10X jump in outages. 67% is not the 900% you cite. The other link that cites the tenfold jump notes improved reporting, and confirms it's likelier that it doubled. 100%.
You seriously think the Rust Belt is due to lack of infrastructure spending? Why? People left the rust belt because it's just not the most pleasant place to live, and when jobs leave, well, so do the people that need them.
Road fatalities are best judged by miles driven, and that wikipedia link has that data for a whopping 22 countries, out of almost 200. We're sandwiched between Belgium and New Zealand on that list. So, yes, you citing that the developed world has some large advantage over us on traffic fatalities is, well, again, bullshit.
Lack of infrastructure spending is one of many various factors that can make an area not nice to live and take jobs away from the area. Not a tough conclusion.
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Only one column also has data for 22 countries. The US does worse stacked up against developed nations by every other way you measure it. Driving more is part of the reason. Stopping there and thinking that's all there is to the issue is not a reason. Americans drive more because of our lack of investments in other areas, necessitating it. If we did not have terrible zoning and massive suburban sprawl coupled with public transit availability that is behind many other countries, we would not have those numbers. Not a tough conclusion. If we had greater availability of these things, and better quality of service, people would use them more, and by extremely large margins too.
(https://medium.com/@YannLeriche/learning-from-uber-and-lyft-the-case-for-passenger-experience-in-transit-b9641a35f4c2)
QuoteIn Transdev's recent "digital travelers" survey (https://fr.slideshare.net/Transdev/transdev-explorer-les-voyageurs-numriques?qid=6676058b-55c9-4c19-abd8-ffcd94705b6d&v=&b=&from_search=1), 42% of respondents declared they would use public transit more often with the availability of new services such as WIFI technology, trip planners and mobile ticketing.
https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678 (https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7678)
Quote
Interest in Using Public Transit in the Chapel Hill and Carboro is High. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the residents surveyed indicated that they would use public transit at least once a week if convenient public transportation were made available near their home.
You would then have less miles traveled. Less driving means lower probability of accidents.
https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf (https://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf)
QuoteAnalyzing data from 1984-2012, we found the number of reported weather-related power outages increased dramatically in the 2000s (Figure 2), a conclusion similar to those found in previous studies. There were as many as 10 times more large-scale power outages each year in the 2000s compared to those reported each year in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Delusional is thinking that people secretly loathe their automobiles and want to ride the bus everywhere.
Delusional is thinking that people choose their means of transit based solely on how much they like it with no other factors considered. Almost as if other factors such as cost, ease of use, traffic, among other things, are also at play. You've demonstrated time and time again you literally don't care about factors other than vanity and dick-measuring with other people's lifestyles to determine what you think is best for everyone. Statistics, investigation into those statistics, conclusions based on these things, all be damned. I don't like it so I don't want it and other people shouldn't want it either! My way is the only way to do things!
Here are some statistics for you to investigate:
https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 02:01:19 PM
Here are some statistics for you to investigate:
https://www.statista.com/chart/14773/can-i-afford-that/
Those are average values, not values for people living in poverty.
Also, that 13% poverty measure doesn't count food stamps, medicaid, employer provided health insurance, or the EITC or the CTC. If you count all of that, the poverty rate is actually 2%. (http://ftp.iza.org/dp12855.pdf)
I like to drive. My wife and I have no kids, yet we have four cars, three of them manual shift. Yet there are also times when I prefer not to drive for various reasons, and I certainly recognize the value of public transportation in a large metropolitan area like DC or New York. One of the two subway stations closest to my house has a parking garage with around 5100 spaces, most of which are filled every day in normal times. If you took all the subway stops with filled-up parking garages here in the DC area and added all of those cars to the roads into the District, traffic would be substantially worse than it is, especially coming from Virginia (this due the natural chokepoints that come from everyone having to funnel down to the bridges across the Potomac).
In other words, as I said before, anyone (not just kernals12) who thinks that one mode of transportation is the panacea and the only one we need is simply delusional.
But, of course, he'll come back with a one-sentence non sequitur.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 02:21:55 PM
I like to drive. My wife and I have no kids, yet we have four cars, three of them manual shift. Yet there are also times when I prefer not to drive for various reasons, and I certainly recognize the value of public transportation in a large metropolitan area like DC or New York. One of the two subway stations closest to my house has a parking garage with around 5100 spaces, most of which are filled every day in normal times. If you took all the subway stops with filled-up parking garages here in the DC area and added all of those cars to the roads into the District, traffic would be substantially worse than it is, especially coming from Virginia (this due the natural chokepoints that come from everyone having to funnel down to the bridges across the Potomac).
In other words, as I said before, anyone (not just kernals12) who thinks that one mode of transportation is the panacea and the only one we need is simply delusional.
But, of course, he'll come back with a one-sentence non sequitur.
I have yet to see any sound arguments for why we need rail based transportation except in a few high density cities. For every other place, buses will do just fine for the small number of people who don't drive.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
91% of Americans don't own a car. 91% of American *households* own a car.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...Less people on the road, less miles driven, and an incentive to save money by not driving, generally equals safer roads by virtue of there being less cars and people driving only out of absolute necessity. Not to mention the whole host of other benefits from new urbanism/mixed use.
Well, that actually hasn't proven to be true, and we only have to look at the first 6 months of this year. While the link below isn't my favorite due to the source, it apparently is factual. Fewer people on the roads equaled more accidents and deaths when Covid-19 forced many to stay at home.
https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...I have to walk an hour just to get out of residential zoning here and to any point of interest at all, that just can't be called pedestrian accessibility, and the same situation goes for a lot of the country too.
I take issue with this because either you or the people you live with (friends/parents/whomever) made a very specific choice to live there, knowing full well that businesses were not in that area and may not be in that area in the future. However, that does not make pedestrian accessibility an issue in this country. Everyone has a choice where they want to live. Some areas may not meet their needs in safety, affordability, etc, but that's a choice you have to weigh when looking for a home. In fact, maybe for some people, being away from businesses was the appeal of the area. Maybe, even, you're complaining to us because you couldn't win your argument with the people you live with who wanted to move where you moved to.
The good news...guess what - you're 18! You can make that decision on your own to move out now!
Also, your one-off examples are not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. Yes, it's stupid whenever a sidewalk isn't 'wheelchair width'. I cringe when I see a utility pole or traffic light post stuck in the middle of a sidewalk. But citing 1 area in an entire city shouldn't be used as an example of the city as a whole. Same thing with this person you know that had a bicycle accident. It's very unfortunate, but again, not something that's exclusive to the US.
^ Same here, with two cars for one person (for now, until my elderly Prius bites the dust). But a decent transit system (both bus and rail) is a useful backstop, for when I have a car in the shop, or when I can't drive for medical reasons (such as after one of my several eye surgeries).
Then there are the people who just hate to drive. My county encourages their "car-free diets". So do I, more room for me on the road.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 06:15:08 PM
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news.
Ignoring most of the rest of this thread and the comments made therein, he speaks a couple of truths here.
There are advocates for a gasoline tax increase in Kentucky. Their ranks don't come from average motorists, most of whom are happy that gas prices are as low as they are and would actually like to see them go down, not go up. Here, around 17 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas goes for taxes. (I believe the current figure is something like 34.8 cents per gallon, and gas is running slightly above $2 a gallon in most places in this area).
The main cheerleaders for gas tax increases are ... you guessed it ... highway contractors. Having seen the way they operate, they as a group are an industry with whom I'm increasingly disgusted. They act as if we work for them and our primary purpose is to give them business, instead of them working for us and providing services. They don't follow guidelines for public notice of traffic disruptions or changes, even if such policies are written into contracts. Even transportation agencies seem to practice the notion that they're in charge, not us. And as governments have farmed even more business out to them over the years (strip patching, guardrail repair, striping, sometimes sign installation), they hold even more power. It's why I'm very much an advocate for reining them in, lowering construction estimates and rejecting more bids that come in over estimate. Federal prevailing wage laws (Davis-Bacon Act) further complicate this when projects are federally funded.
Chambers of commerce also get behind pushes to increase gas tax in the holy name of "infrastructure." I guess they don't realize that if people are paying more out of their pocket in taxes, they'll have less money available to buy the goods and services their member businesses offer.
As for the media -- yes, they're always looking for shock value in a story. I remember several years ago when a bridge collapsed in one of the west coast states. It was a truss bridge on I-5, I believe. It wasn't that long after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. We got all sort of press calls about that from reporters wondering if we had any bridges in danger of falling in. Once word got out that the collapse was caused by an oversized load hitting a truss beam, those calls ceased. The alarm factor of a "crumbling infrastructure" story got destroyed.
QuoteAmtrak
I've ridden Amtrak once, as a bit of a novelty. My brother wanted to do a cross-country trip. We boarded the Cardinal in Cincinnati, rode to Chicago, and switched to the California Zephyr for trip west. He paid for the trip, and they were offering a sale on their prices, but it was still outrageously expensive. It was a good thing meals were included, because the menu prices in the dining car were astronomical. Even the snack prices in the cafe car were extremely high. $2.25 for a can of pop. The schedule wasn't convenient, as we had to board in Cincy at 2:30 a.m. And we were 13 hours late arriving in California.
My brother rode the Cardinal to DC a few times for work, as opposed to flying or driving, but he rode in the coach car, not the sleeper.
I can't imagine depending on Amtrak for a regular commute along the eastern seaboard, the way Joe Biden did traveling between Wilmington and DC on a regular basis.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 17, 2020, 02:36:11 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
91% of Americans don't own a car. 91% of American *households* own a car.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...Less people on the road, less miles driven, and an incentive to save money by not driving, generally equals safer roads by virtue of there being less cars and people driving only out of absolute necessity. Not to mention the whole host of other benefits from new urbanism/mixed use.
Well, that actually hasn't proven to be true, and we only have to look at the first 6 months of this year. While the link below isn't my favorite due to the source, it apparently is factual. Fewer people on the roads equaled more accidents and deaths when Covid-19 forced many to stay at home.
https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...I have to walk an hour just to get out of residential zoning here and to any point of interest at all, that just can't be called pedestrian accessibility, and the same situation goes for a lot of the country too.
I take issue with this because either you or the people you live with (friends/parents/whomever) made a very specific choice to live there, knowing full well that businesses were not in that area and may not be in that area in the future. However, that does not make pedestrian accessibility an issue in this country. Everyone has a choice where they want to live. Some areas may not meet their needs in safety, affordability, etc, but that's a choice you have to weigh when looking for a home. In fact, maybe for some people, being away from businesses was the appeal of the area. Maybe, even, you're complaining to us because you couldn't win your argument with the people you live with who wanted to move where you moved to.
The good news...guess what - you're 18! You can make that decision on your own to move out now!
Also, your one-off examples are not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. Yes, it's stupid whenever a sidewalk isn't 'wheelchair width'. I cringe when I see a utility pole or traffic light post stuck in the middle of a sidewalk. But citing 1 area in an entire city shouldn't be used as an example of the city as a whole. Same thing with this person you know that had a bicycle accident. It's very unfortunate, but again, not something that's exclusive to the US.
My town has sidewalks on pretty much all streets and it has an extensive network of footpaths. One annoyance is they give pedestrians a separate cycle to cross rather than having them cross when traffic in a parallel direction goes. That means less time for everyone to move.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
I can't imagine depending on Amtrak for a regular commute along the eastern seaboard, the way Joe Biden did traveling between Wilmington and DC on a regular basis.
Wilmington is almost within commuter rail range of DC (the commuter rail line ends at the east side of the Susquehanna River in Maryland). It's not a long trip.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
As for the media -- yes, they're always looking for shock value in a story. I remember several years ago when a bridge collapsed in one of the west coast states. It was a truss bridge on I-5, I believe. It wasn't that long after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. We got all sort of press calls about that from reporters wondering if we had any bridges in danger of falling in. Once word got out that the collapse was caused by an oversized load hitting a truss beam, those calls ceased. The alarm factor of a "crumbling infrastructure" story got destroyed.
I'm not sure what role, if any, the media played in this, but our Bay Bridge (https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2116351,-77.5339209,3a,90y,204.54h,89.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssZcMFamUw3J2EmapSc3ukQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1) was built in the same year as the I-35W one that collapsed, and I once had a co-worker who literally carried a life vest every time she crossed it because she was so scared the same thing would happen while she was on it!
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 02:29:22 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 02:21:55 PM
I like to drive. My wife and I have no kids, yet we have four cars, three of them manual shift. Yet there are also times when I prefer not to drive for various reasons, and I certainly recognize the value of public transportation in a large metropolitan area like DC or New York. One of the two subway stations closest to my house has a parking garage with around 5100 spaces, most of which are filled every day in normal times. If you took all the subway stops with filled-up parking garages here in the DC area and added all of those cars to the roads into the District, traffic would be substantially worse than it is, especially coming from Virginia (this due the natural chokepoints that come from everyone having to funnel down to the bridges across the Potomac).
In other words, as I said before, anyone (not just kernals12) who thinks that one mode of transportation is the panacea and the only one we need is simply delusional.
But, of course, he'll come back with a one-sentence non sequitur.
I have yet to see any sound arguments for why we need rail based transportation except in a few high density cities. For every other place, buses will do just fine for the small number of people who don't drive.
I didn't say we do need it everywhere, did I? Don't put words in other people's mouths (or keyboards, as the case may be).
Like Oscar says in reply #93, I very much like having the alternate transportation available for times when I have to leave the car at the mechanic overnight, or when something is going on that makes driving impractical. A good DC-area example of the latter is in December when the President lights the National Christmas Tree and there are a bunch of street closures throughout rush hour. It causes massive traffic jams. The subway is essential on that day, even back when I normally drove downtown to work.
My problem with the bus service here is that it's not frequent enough to be a viable option. There's a stop half a mile from home, but the bus only comes once an hour for most of the day. So for the commute home, if there's any delay on the train, you miss the bus, which for me would mean either pay for a cab or walk two miles up a steep hill.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 16, 2020, 06:15:08 PM
So yeah, the great American infrastructure crisis does not exist. It's perpetuated by construction companies looking for projects and the media's need for bad news.
Ignoring most of the rest of this thread and the comments made therein, he speaks a couple of truths here.
There are advocates for a gasoline tax increase in Kentucky. Their ranks don't come from average motorists, most of whom are happy that gas prices are as low as they are and would actually like to see them go down, not go up. Here, around 17 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas goes for taxes. (I believe the current figure is something like 34.8 cents per gallon, and gas is running slightly above $2 a gallon in most places in this area).
The main cheerleaders for gas tax increases are ... you guessed it ... highway contractors. Having seen the way they operate, they as a group are an industry with whom I'm increasingly disgusted. They act as if we work for them and our primary purpose is to give them business, instead of them working for us and providing services. They don't follow guidelines for public notice of traffic disruptions or changes, even if such policies are written into contracts. Even transportation agencies seem to practice the notion that they're in charge, not us. And as governments have farmed even more business out to them over the years (strip patching, guardrail repair, striping, sometimes sign installation), they hold even more power. It's why I'm very much an advocate for reining them in, lowering construction estimates and rejecting more bids that come in over estimate. Federal prevailing wage laws (Davis-Bacon Act) further complicate this when projects are federally funded.
Chambers of commerce also get behind pushes to increase gas tax in the holy name of "infrastructure." I guess they don't realize that if people are paying more out of their pocket in taxes, they'll have less money available to buy the goods and services their member businesses offer.
As for the media -- yes, they're always looking for shock value in a story. I remember several years ago when a bridge collapsed in one of the west coast states. It was a truss bridge on I-5, I believe. It wasn't that long after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. We got all sort of press calls about that from reporters wondering if we had any bridges in danger of falling in. Once word got out that the collapse was caused by an oversized load hitting a truss beam, those calls ceased. The alarm factor of a "crumbling infrastructure" story got destroyed.
QuoteAmtrak
I've ridden Amtrak once, as a bit of a novelty. My brother wanted to do a cross-country trip. We boarded the Cardinal in Cincinnati, rode to Chicago, and switched to the California Zephyr for trip west. He paid for the trip, and they were offering a sale on their prices, but it was still outrageously expensive. It was a good thing meals were included, because the menu prices in the dining car were astronomical. Even the snack prices in the cafe car were extremely high. $2.25 for a can of pop. The schedule wasn't convenient, as we had to board in Cincy at 2:30 a.m. And we were 13 hours late arriving in California.
My brother rode the Cardinal to DC a few times for work, as opposed to flying or driving, but he rode in the coach car, not the sleeper.
I can't imagine depending on Amtrak for a regular commute along the eastern seaboard, the way Joe Biden did traveling between Wilmington and DC on a regular basis.
Thank you.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 03:03:18 PM
Like Oscar says in reply #93 ...
Goodness gracious. The original post is not yet 24 hours old. This has to be a forum record.
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 02:45:19 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
I can't imagine depending on Amtrak for a regular commute along the eastern seaboard, the way Joe Biden did traveling between Wilmington and DC on a regular basis.
Wilmington is almost within commuter rail range of DC (the commuter rail line ends at the east side of the Susquehanna River in Maryland). It's not a long trip.
Well...it kinda is.
A 1 way trip on Amtrak is, at minimum, about an hour and a half. It's only that fast due to limited stops, unlike a commuter train. A one month pass costs $876. And unless you live and work at the train stations, you will need to extend your commute to get to the station, and then from station to office.
If you haven't looked up the schedule for Amtrak from Wilmington, you're not going to like the timing. There's one train that leaves Wilmington to get you to DC by 7am. The next train doesn't get you there until 9:30am. Then 10:45am.
Maryland's commuter train may reach up to the Susquahanna River. But how many people truly ride it from there all the way to DC? Just because the commuter train extends to an area, doesn't really make the trip worthwhile.
I've often thought, the worst thing NJ Transit did was build the Hamilton, NJ train station. It made that area a bedroom suburb of NYC. Heck, it made Bucks County, PA a bedroom suburb of NYC. And those people grumble about the cost of a train ticket, while ignoring that they have a one seat ride for 60 miles into the city. And along with that, people that move into the area to take the train to NYC may ultimately find other jobs that require driving, further congesting the roads.
Don't get me wrong...I'm not against mass transit. But the reasonableness factor for such long commutes tends to be an issue.
Quote from: webny99 on December 17, 2020, 03:09:13 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 03:03:18 PM
Like Oscar says in reply #93 ...
Goodness gracious. The original post is not yet 24 hours old. This has to be a forum record.
If the arguments were constructed slightly different, this would be a very good thread. I wouldn't call it a train wreck, but more like a Red MTA car in the 1980's...not very pretty to look at.
Hey, what happened? Can we please get back to quoting huge blocks of text and replying with a single sentence and link to a clearly biased article?
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 17, 2020, 02:36:11 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
91% of Americans don't own a car. 91% of American *households* own a car.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...Less people on the road, less miles driven, and an incentive to save money by not driving, generally equals safer roads by virtue of there being less cars and people driving only out of absolute necessity. Not to mention the whole host of other benefits from new urbanism/mixed use.
Well, that actually hasn't proven to be true, and we only have to look at the first 6 months of this year. While the link below isn't my favorite due to the source, it apparently is factual. Fewer people on the roads equaled more accidents and deaths when Covid-19 forced many to stay at home.
https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines (https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines)
If drivers are taking more risks due to emptier roads, that is fixed by educating drivers. Easy solution. Cramming cars onto roads to force drivers to not take as many risks is a workaround, not a solution.
Quote
...I have to walk an hour just to get out of residential zoning here and to any point of interest at all, that just can't be called pedestrian accessibility, and the same situation goes for a lot of the country too.
I take issue with this because either you or the people you live with (friends/parents/whomever) made a very specific choice to live there, knowing full well that businesses were not in that area and may not be in that area in the future. However, that does not make pedestrian accessibility an issue in this country. Everyone has a choice where they want to live. Some areas may not meet their needs in safety, affordability, etc, but that's a choice you have to weigh when looking for a home. In fact, maybe for some people, being away from businesses was the appeal of the area. Maybe, even, you're complaining to us because you couldn't win your argument with the people you live with who wanted to move where you moved to.
The good news...guess what - you're 18! You can make that decision on your own to move out now!
I moved here in 2005, smartass.
In what world are you living in where you think people fresh into adulthood can suddenly just start instantly living on their own? (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/)Have you been living under a rock since the Great Recession? The COVID-19 Recession? The world is a very different place than your experience in the early 90s. You know, that crazy event that did things like trapped homes on the rental market, created the worker's hellhole known as the gig economy that we know today, further reduced the amount of use that college degrees have, hit youth as soon as they were coming of age, and shut many young people out from upward mobility in the near future (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html)? And in what kind of world is that an argument against inadequate infrastructure? This isn't the 20th century anymore. People can't just catapult themselves out of their mother's womb, shake someone's hand, and immediately get a job and a house wherever they want. The world that this country is in simply does not work like that.
QuoteAlso, your one-off examples are not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. Yes, it's stupid whenever a sidewalk isn't 'wheelchair width'. I cringe when I see a utility pole or traffic light post stuck in the middle of a sidewalk. But citing 1 area in an entire city shouldn't be used as an example of the city as a whole. Same thing with this person you know that had a bicycle accident. It's very unfortunate, but again, not something that's exclusive to the US.
There is a pattern that has been clearly pointed out that is detrimental to those who travel on foot.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-16/it-s-time-to-fix-america-s-urban-sidewalk-gap
https://americawalks.org/americas-worst-walking-city-gets-back-on-its-feet/
https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/7/16980682/city-sidewalk-repair-future-walking-neighborhood
https://www.popsci.com/politics-versus-sidewalks/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/05/24/dangerous-by-design-how-the-u-s-builds-roads-that-kill-pedestrians/
It is also no coincidence that the states with the roads worst for pedestrians are in the Sun Belt...which has been experiencing lots of suburban sprawl in its growth. Some of the cities with the worst sprawl are located in this region.
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8PeKfOhoiy4/v0/600x-1.png)
It is impossible to deny this issue exists.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 17, 2020, 03:15:25 PM
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 02:45:19 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
I can't imagine depending on Amtrak for a regular commute along the eastern seaboard, the way Joe Biden did traveling between Wilmington and DC on a regular basis.
Wilmington is almost within commuter rail range of DC (the commuter rail line ends at the east side of the Susquehanna River in Maryland). It's not a long trip.
Well...it kinda is.
A 1 way trip on Amtrak is, at minimum, about an hour and a half. It's only that fast due to limited stops, unlike a commuter train. A one month pass costs $876. And unless you live and work at the train stations, you will need to extend your commute to get to the station, and then from station to office.
....
In Biden's case, as I type this Google Maps is estimating it's a 15-minute drive between his house and the Amtrak station. (How do I know where he lives? A few years ago when some guy was sending mail bombs or something to various officials, the one that was sent to him appeared on the news and they inadvertently failed to fuzz out his address.) That's not too bad.
A lot of people who make those longer commutes use the time to work. I certainly do when I take the train to and from New York. That is indeed one reason why I typically opt for the train instead of driving.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:19:53 PM
Hey, what happened? Can we please get back to quoting huge blocks of text and replying with a single sentence and link to a clearly biased article?
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
Quote from: webny99 on December 17, 2020, 02:51:39 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on December 17, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
As for the media -- yes, they're always looking for shock value in a story. I remember several years ago when a bridge collapsed in one of the west coast states. It was a truss bridge on I-5, I believe. It wasn't that long after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. We got all sort of press calls about that from reporters wondering if we had any bridges in danger of falling in. Once word got out that the collapse was caused by an oversized load hitting a truss beam, those calls ceased. The alarm factor of a "crumbling infrastructure" story got destroyed.
I'm not sure what role, if any, the media played in this, but our Bay Bridge (https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2116351,-77.5339209,3a,90y,204.54h,89.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssZcMFamUw3J2EmapSc3ukQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1) was built in the same year as the I-35W one that collapsed, and I once had a co-worker who literally carried a life vest every time she crossed it because she was so scared the same thing would happen while she was on it!
Reading these 2 posts reminded me of a segment John Oliver once did about infrastructure, where he used the since-replaced Greenfield Bridge in Pittsburgh as a poster child for decaying infrastructure. Obviously the old Greenfield Bridge was an absolute extreme (what with the netting around the concrete arch and "bridge under a bridge" to catch loose concrete before it reached I-376 below), but I remember thinking it was an interesting piece when I first watched it.
But at the same time, it is indeed a media piece that used an extreme case to further the point, so there is also that side to it. Not every structurally-deficient bridge is as severe (or dangerous) as that old Greenfield Bridge - if it was, we'd have ourselves a much bigger problem!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8&list=PLgiGp52farbZWWVIfrIw1bQ50lt0RObO9
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8PeKfOhoiy4/v0/600x-1.png)
Ooh! A color-coded map!
(https://i.imgur.com/RkD3Gll.png)
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on December 17, 2020, 02:36:11 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 12:12:47 AM
With 91% of Americans owning a car, we don't lack that.
91% of Americans don't own a car. 91% of American *households* own a car.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:21:54 AM
...Less people on the road, less miles driven, and an incentive to save money by not driving, generally equals safer roads by virtue of there being less cars and people driving only out of absolute necessity. Not to mention the whole host of other benefits from new urbanism/mixed use.
Well, that actually hasn't proven to be true, and we only have to look at the first 6 months of this year. While the link below isn't my favorite due to the source, it apparently is factual. Fewer people on the roads equaled more accidents and deaths when Covid-19 forced many to stay at home.
https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines (https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-estimates-us-saw-a-20-jump-in-motor-vehicle-death-rates-in-first-six-months-of-2020-despite-quarantines)
If drivers are taking more risks due to emptier roads, that is fixed by educating drivers. Easy solution. Cramming cars onto roads to force drivers to not take as many risks is a workaround, not a solution.
Quote
...I have to walk an hour just to get out of residential zoning here and to any point of interest at all, that just can't be called pedestrian accessibility, and the same situation goes for a lot of the country too.
I take issue with this because either you or the people you live with (friends/parents/whomever) made a very specific choice to live there, knowing full well that businesses were not in that area and may not be in that area in the future. However, that does not make pedestrian accessibility an issue in this country. Everyone has a choice where they want to live. Some areas may not meet their needs in safety, affordability, etc, but that's a choice you have to weigh when looking for a home. In fact, maybe for some people, being away from businesses was the appeal of the area. Maybe, even, you're complaining to us because you couldn't win your argument with the people you live with who wanted to move where you moved to.
The good news...guess what - you're 18! You can make that decision on your own to move out now!
I moved here in 2005, smartass.
In what world are you living in where you think people fresh into adulthood can suddenly just start instantly living on their own? (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/)Have you been living under a rock since the Great Recession? The COVID-19 Recession? The world is a very different place than your experience in the early 90s. You know, that crazy event that did things like trapped homes on the rental market, created the worker's hellhole known as the gig economy that we know today, further reduced the amount of use that college degrees have, hit youth as soon as they were coming of age, and shut many young people out from upward mobility in the near future (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html)? And in what kind of world is that an argument against inadequate infrastructure? This isn't the 20th century anymore. People can't just catapult themselves out of their mother's womb, shake someone's hand, and immediately get a job and a house wherever they want. The world that this country is in simply does not work like that.
QuoteAlso, your one-off examples are not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. Yes, it's stupid whenever a sidewalk isn't 'wheelchair width'. I cringe when I see a utility pole or traffic light post stuck in the middle of a sidewalk. But citing 1 area in an entire city shouldn't be used as an example of the city as a whole. Same thing with this person you know that had a bicycle accident. It's very unfortunate, but again, not something that's exclusive to the US.
There is a pattern that has been clearly pointed out that is detrimental to those who travel on foot.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-16/it-s-time-to-fix-america-s-urban-sidewalk-gap
https://americawalks.org/americas-worst-walking-city-gets-back-on-its-feet/
https://archive.curbed.com/2018/2/7/16980682/city-sidewalk-repair-future-walking-neighborhood
https://www.popsci.com/politics-versus-sidewalks/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/05/24/dangerous-by-design-how-the-u-s-builds-roads-that-kill-pedestrians/
It is also no coincidence that the states with the roads worst for pedestrians are in the Sun Belt...which has been experiencing lots of suburban sprawl in its growth. Some of the cities with the worst sprawl are located in this region.
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8PeKfOhoiy4/v0/600x-1.png)
It is impossible to deny this issue exists.
I feel much safer in the streets of my suburb than I did when I lived in Manhattan because the low density means there's hardly on cars on my street.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 17, 2020, 03:23:30 PM
A lot of people who make those longer commutes use the time to work. I certainly do when I take the train to and from New York. That is indeed one reason why I typically opt for the train instead of driving.
The Living Bible was written on Metra.
Ken Taylor noticed his kids weren't really tracking during family devotions at home. So, on his commute from Wheaton to downtown Chicago and back, he sat with a bible on one leg and a notebook on the other, paraphrasing scripture. When he first started selling copies, the "warehouse" was the space underneath his eldest son's bed. That eventually turned into a multi-million dollar Christian publishing company.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:32:23 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8PeKfOhoiy4/v0/600x-1.png)
Ooh! A color-coded map!
(https://i.imgur.com/RkD3Gll.png)
Almost as if the colors have a clearly implied meaning, associated with the graph, unlike the map you posted to try and take my point down, which lacks any of that. You should really look closer, man.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/01/29/sun-belt-states-top-20-most-dangerous-states-pedestrians-again
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dangerous-by-Design-2019-FINAL.pdf
(https://i.imgur.com/yp3KlTr.png)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 03:36:02 PM
I feel much safer in the streets of my suburb than I did when I lived in Manhattan because the low density means there's hardly on cars on my street.
And cars are safer than planes because I feel safer when I'm driving than I do when I'm flying. Statistics don't matter, it's all about feelings.
Quote from: webny99 on December 17, 2020, 08:48:10 AM
Quote from: Flint1979 on December 17, 2020, 06:16:05 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2020, 06:33:43 PM
[img snipped]
I saw a street sign about a month ago it was either in Tuscola County or Genesee County. The road name is called Bray Road but the font on this street sign looked exactly like the Craig County sign font.
Is this (https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2804454,-83.6623304,3a,15.2y,308.62h,96.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seHkIQD8g7m0mZiBLrwhfeA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1) the one you're thinking of? If so, it was a very easy/lucky find. It was the first sign I encountered after I searched Bray Road. The font does roughly match, but the big difference is that the Craig County sign is essentially a variant of aLtErNaTiNg cApS.
That's one of them I think there's more than one. Check out the one about 3 miles north of there at Ormes Road.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:54:04 PM
2. I have convenient public transit near my home. In fact, it's in my driveway. And as the survey predicts, I do use it frequently.
check it out, this dude stole a bus
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:18:46 PM
Almost as if the colors have a clearly implied meaning, associated with the graph, unlike the map you posted to try and take my point down, which lacks any of that. You should really look closer, man.
My map is the same as yours. Just with less-scary colors. I could add a bar graph to go at the bottom too, if I felt like taking the time.
The fact that states are colored red on a map doesn't make them inherently "dangerous". More dangerous than another state, OK. But that's not the same thing as objectively dangerous.
In a similar way... Saint Louis has a murder rate more than twice that of KCMO. But that doesn't make it "dangerous". It just makes it more dangerous than KCMO. Yet, if I put a red dot there on a map of Missouri and titled it "Most dangerous cities", can I expect you to be convinced that Saint Louis is "dangerous"?
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 04:30:13 PM
The fact that states are colored red on a map doesn't make them inherently "dangerous". More dangerous than another state, OK. But that's not the same thing as objectively dangerous.
Thank you for admitting states colored red are more dangerous than other states.
On the other hand, Georgia and Arizona may have stopped being red on one specific map, but nothing changed at the state level...
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 04:30:13 PM
More dangerous than another state, OK.
Scott5114, what is your opinion on this?
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 04:30:13 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:18:46 PM
Almost as if the colors have a clearly implied meaning, associated with the graph, unlike the map you posted to try and take my point down, which lacks any of that. You should really look closer, man.
My map is the same as yours. Just with less-scary colors. I could add a bar graph to go at the bottom too, if I felt like taking the time.
The fact that states are colored red on a map doesn't make them inherently "dangerous". More dangerous than another state, OK. But that's not the same thing as objectively dangerous.
In a similar way... Saint Louis has a murder rate more than twice that of KCMO. But that doesn't make it "dangerous". It just makes it more dangerous than KCMO. Yet, if I put a red dot there on a map of Missouri and titled it "Most dangerous cities", can I expect you to be convinced that Saint Louis is "dangerous"?
This isn't a valid point. How do you know that the color orange was chosen to "scare" people? It's baseless speculation that has nothing to do with the facts at hand. By this logic, the map that Wikipedia uses to show daily COVID cases is using purple to symbolize that the more COVID cases a country has, the more royal it is, because purple is associated with royalty and I know that that's why they picked the color because purple is royal.
Perception of danger or the way data is shown doesn't make things more or less of a problem. I really do not see how any of the maps I've posted and sources I've used are somehow manipulating things.
The pattern is pretty clear, states with prominent sprawl and car-centric infrastructure usually have issues related to other forms of transportation, in this case, on foot. That is all there is to it. It isn't sensational. It isn't based on whims and feelings. It isn't based on stuff I'm pulling out of my ass. This isn't even a topic that's covered very much by the public at-large compared to other things. (And that is also not an argument against it being an issue or not) I am backing up my claims by far more than what you've claimed I'm using to support them, like "colorful maps". There exists a general consensus in circles that exist within the fields of urban planning, engineering, etc, that these are related to each other. I don't even need to prove this, Google things like "urban planning pedestrian safety" or "pedestrian deaths suburban sprawl" on Google Scholar and you will find a number of research done on this topic.
In fact, there is a pretty pronounced difference between states with low and high numbers for this category. https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesPedestrians.aspx So the whole slight differences in danger thing determining whether something gets colored or not pretty much goes completely out the window. In fact, if we can use that logic mentioned earlier, I can say that this table is trying to minimize the problem because it uses numbers that are small to show the proportion between states.
Rhode Island, a pretty urban state, with a lot of older, pre-World War II development in an area with better alternate transit options than the rest of the country, has proportionally some of the lowest rates in the country. Compare that to the top states. Almost all of them are in the Sun Belt and have the same characteristics to their development. Postwar, suburban, sprawling, and car-centric.
Because the connotation of the color red is obvious. Danger! Bad! OMG!
To me, it actually looked like simply dark/light/none, with the specific color not mattering much.
Quote from: 1 on December 17, 2020, 04:51:07 PM
Scott5114, what is your opinion on this?
I think kphoger meant OK to mean "Okay" and not "Oklahoma" there, but I already wrote a long-ass post on the topic. Hopefully you're still interested :D
Oklahoma is not great at accommodating for pedestrians. Our largest cities have many miles of roads with no sidewalks at all, including at key points where they're safety-critical. Bobby5280 has posted repeatedly about an overpass over I-44 in Lawton that has no sidewalks, leading people to try to cross the interstate on foot at-grade, with predictable results. In Norman, there seems to be no planning/zoning requirement to install sidewalks until a property is developed, meaning that in some neighborhoods sidewalks will start and stop at random every time they encounter a lot line for a vacant property.
More newly developed areas and projects are better about including pedestrian accommodations, but there seems to be no will to go back and upgrade older areas (like the OKC urban core outside of the CBD) to modern standards.
This is not strictly ped-related, but bike infrastructure is close to non-existent here. Norman has installed a few bike lanes on newly reconstructed streets, but these projects are not connected to each other and therefore don't really do anything to provide a meaningful network one could use to actually get anywhere. (For instance, there is a bike lane outside my house, but it only connects to two other streets with bike lanes, none of which continue past the mile-grid roads surrounding my development.) Because of this, your options in most areas are to ride on the sidewalk, which is both illegal and has all the downsides of sidewalks here mentioned above, or riding in the street, which seems like a great idea if what you want most for Christmas is to become flat like a pancake, since I don't trust Oklahoma drivers to know how to properly handle a bike in the street.
That being said, the importance of this is kind of diminished by the fact that you don't really see a whole lot of pedestrians here, even in the densely-developed areas like downtown Norman (the OU campus area is an exception to this, and is well-served by pedestrian accommodations). One could argue that this is because of the bad infrastructure, but I suspect the real reason is the climate–we tend to have cold, windy winters and hot, humid summers, so I'd estimate there's probably about 28 days a year (two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall) where direct contact with the outdoors for an extended period of time is actually comfortable for the lay person. Going outside to do a leisure activity is one thing, but nobody wants to find themselves forced to walk or bike to work on a 40 degree day with a 30 MPH headwind, and if you're going to have a car, you may as well drive it to work every day of the week anyway.
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:32:23 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
map
map
I would be curious to know how much of a factor weather plays in this analysis. The states that are marked as "more dangerous" (or "less safe", depending on which way you look at it) also as a general rule have much more ideal weather year-round and I'd imagine have more pedestrians as a result. All else being equal, more people out on the roads will unfortunately result in more pedestrian accidents.
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 05:22:02 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:32:23 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
map
map
I would be curious to know how much of a factor weather plays in this analysis. The states that are marked as "more dangerous" (or "less safe", depending on which way you look at it) also have much more ideal weather year-round and I'd imagine have more pedestrians as a result.
I think it's building up vs. building out. The southern US (this includes the Southwest, unlike many definitions) has many multilane roads, while dense city centers in the Northeast (plus Chicago) predate the automobile and therefore already had pedestrians in mind when building roads for cars. Portland and Seattle came later, but they made a conscious decision to be bike- and ped-friendly. I can't explain Delaware.
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:18:46 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:32:23 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 03:21:46 PM
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8PeKfOhoiy4/v0/600x-1.png)
Ooh! A color-coded map!
(https://i.imgur.com/RkD3Gll.png)
Almost as if the colors have a clearly implied meaning, associated with the graph, unlike the map you posted to try and take my point down, which lacks any of that. You should really look closer, man.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/01/29/sun-belt-states-top-20-most-dangerous-states-pedestrians-again
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dangerous-by-Design-2019-FINAL.pdf
(https://i.imgur.com/yp3KlTr.png)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 03:36:02 PM
I feel much safer in the streets of my suburb than I did when I lived in Manhattan because the low density means there's hardly on cars on my street.
And cars are safer than planes because I feel safer when I'm driving than I do when I'm flying. Statistics don't matter, it's all about feelings.
Maybe Florida has a lot of a demographic that is especially vulnerable to pedestrian collisions
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 17, 2020, 04:25:44 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:54:04 PM
2. I have convenient public transit near my home. In fact, it's in my driveway. And as the survey predicts, I do use it frequently.
check it out, this dude stole a bus
I didn't steal it, but it's a very small bus that only seats 5 passengers.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 05:37:52 PM
Quote from: index on December 17, 2020, 04:18:46 PM
Quote from: kphoger on December 17, 2020, 03:32:23 PM
Ooh! A color-coded map!
Almost as if the colors have a clearly implied meaning, associated with the graph, unlike the map you posted to try and take my point down, which lacks any of that. You should really look closer, man.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/01/29/sun-belt-states-top-20-most-dangerous-states-pedestrians-again (https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/01/29/sun-belt-states-top-20-most-dangerous-states-pedestrians-again)
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dangerous-by-Design-2019-FINAL.pdf (https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dangerous-by-Design-2019-FINAL.pdf)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 03:36:02 PM
I feel much safer in the streets of my suburb than I did when I lived in Manhattan because the low density means there's hardly on cars on my street.
And cars are safer than planes because I feel safer when I'm driving than I do when I'm flying. Statistics don't matter, it's all about feelings.
Maybe Florida has a lot of a demographic that is especially vulnerable to pedestrian collisions
Almost of the other states with a high elderly population are not on the same list as states with high pedestrian deaths or in the Sun Belt. Correlation does not equal causation.
In fact if you just looked at a list of states by elderly population you would see that states with high pedestrian fatalities and sun belt states are equally distributed throughout. https://www.prb.org/which-us-states-are-the-oldest/ (https://www.prb.org/which-us-states-are-the-oldest/)
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 05:51:41 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 17, 2020, 04:25:44 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:54:04 PM
2. I have convenient public transit near my home. In fact, it's in my driveway. And as the survey predicts, I do use it frequently.
check it out, this dude stole a bus
I didn't steal it, but it's a very small bus that only seats 5 passengers.
So it's not a bus, nor is it public transit. I'm sure it's not publically subsidized nor is it publically supported.
I'm sure you were joking but considering your disdain for transit...
Quote from: seicer on December 17, 2020, 06:19:00 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 05:51:41 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 17, 2020, 04:25:44 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 01:54:04 PM
2. I have convenient public transit near my home. In fact, it's in my driveway. And as the survey predicts, I do use it frequently.
check it out, this dude stole a bus
I didn't steal it, but it's a very small bus that only seats 5 passengers.
So it's not a bus, nor is it public transit. I'm sure it's not publically subsidized nor is it publically supported.
I'm sure you were joking but considering your disdain for transit...
If I wanted to, I could become an uber driver and make it public transportation.
Uber is considered a vehicle for hire, or private/shared transportation, and is not public transportation.
Isn't sad how our lack of investment in payphone infrastructure has left us dependent on cell phones?
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:38:03 PM
Isn't sad how our lack of investment in payphone infrastructure has left us dependent on cell phones?
Come to California then, they maintain pay phones at every Caltrans rest area. There is also still a metric crap ton of call boxes.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 17, 2020, 07:40:52 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:38:03 PM
Isn't sad how our lack of investment in payphone infrastructure has left us dependent on cell phones?
Come to California then, they maintain pay phones at every Caltrans rest area. There is also still a metric crap ton of call boxes.
I was making a joke but yikes.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:47:18 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 17, 2020, 07:40:52 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:38:03 PM
Isn't sad how our lack of investment in payphone infrastructure has left us dependent on cell phones?
Come to California then, they maintain pay phones at every Caltrans rest area. There is also still a metric crap ton of call boxes.
I was making a joke but yikes.
It's honestly hard to tell, especially in this thread.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 07:38:03 PM
Isn't sad how our lack of investment in payphone infrastructure has left us dependent on cell phones?
Around here the payphones were all operated by Southwestern Bell, which became SBC, which became Cingular, which became the modern incarnation of AT&T. Ah, the private sector: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The transit boosters aren't just opposed to our cars. They also are opposed to personal flying vehicles (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2020/05/28/481148/flying-cars-will-undermine-democracy-environment/) and telecommuting (https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20201014-bay-area-letter-mtc-regarding-potential-work-home-mandate). What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:37 PM
What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
[citation needed]
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 11:04:09 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:37 PM
What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
[citation needed]
I just linked to a letter written by several bay area politicians saying that telecommuting would interfere with their efforts to stuff people in 5 story apartments near train stations.
They are wistful for the days when only the rich could have lawns while everyone else lived in Dickensian slums.
OK, let's play to that theory. I'm a road and rail supporter. I heavily support both, though I tend to favour rail over road in some places due to costs.
The concept of rail transit does not control freedoms. Yes, roads are less structured and you can go more places. Rail still gets people to places who don't want to drive. What's a blind person supposed to do? Drive a car into a ditch every 5 feet?
Contrary to your belief, there are people whose freedoms are supported by rail. I didn't get my driver's license till I was 24. I had public transit I was happy to use. I still use lots and lots of trains.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:09:00 PM
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 11:04:09 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:37 PM
What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
[citation needed]
I just linked to a letter written by several bay area politicians saying that telecommuting would interfere with their efforts to stuff people in 5 story apartments near train stations.
They are wistful for the days when only the rich could have lawns while everyone else lived in Dickensian slums.
What are you even on about - that letter says they don't support a Work From Home MANDATE - aren't you in support of people having choices? That letter suggests to me they want to expand options and freedoms that people have, including the freedom to not have to use a car.
Quote from: corco on December 17, 2020, 11:12:06 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:09:00 PM
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 11:04:09 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:37 PM
What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
[citation needed]
I just linked to a letter written by several bay area politicians saying that telecommuting would interfere with their efforts to stuff people in 5 story apartments near train stations.
They are wistful for the days when only the rich could have lawns while everyone else lived in Dickensian slums.
What are you even on about - that letter says they don't support a Work From Home MANDATE - aren't you in support of people having choices? That letter suggests to me they want to expand options and freedoms that people have, including the freedom to not have to use a car.
The Bay Area Council of Governments suggested the mandate in order to reduce congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They were doing their job in trying to improve the quality of life for Bay Area residents. But these politicians clearly think that the people should serve the government, not the other way around.
You couldn't even make it one thread before dipping back into that Bay Area well to draw a point for one of your inane arguments?
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 17, 2020, 11:20:37 PM
You couldn't even make it one thread before dipping back into that Bay Area well to draw a point for one of your inane arguments?
What can I say? The Bay Area is where all bad government policy seems to originate these days.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:18:41 PM
Quote from: corco on December 17, 2020, 11:12:06 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:09:00 PM
Quote from: US 89 on December 17, 2020, 11:04:09 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 10:37:37 PM
What they really resent about the automobile is the freedom of mobility it has provided for the masses, undermining their efforts to control our lives.
[citation needed]
I just linked to a letter written by several bay area politicians saying that telecommuting would interfere with their efforts to stuff people in 5 story apartments near train stations.
They are wistful for the days when only the rich could have lawns while everyone else lived in Dickensian slums.
What are you even on about - that letter says they don't support a Work From Home MANDATE - aren't you in support of people having choices? That letter suggests to me they want to expand options and freedoms that people have, including the freedom to not have to use a car.
The Bay Area Council of Governments suggested the mandate in order to reduce congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They were doing their job in trying to improve the quality of life for Bay Area residents. But these politicians clearly think that the people should serve the government, not the other way around.
A lot of people don't want to be mandated to work from home, just as you don't seem to want to be mandated to live in a tall urban rectangle. The letter calls for housing options for those who want the freedom to not work at home.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:21:40 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 17, 2020, 11:20:37 PM
You couldn't even make it one thread before dipping back into that Bay Area well to draw a point for one of your inane arguments?
What can I say? The Bay Area is where all bad government policy seems to originate these days.
Not that I'm one for defending the San Francisco Bay Area but a lot of your "theories" regarding it are complete garbage. It certainly would mean a lot more if you actually had a real experience with the Bay Area, but you don't. You clearly demonstrated in the Bay Area Tech Industry thread that you really don't know much of anything.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:18:41 PM
The Bay Area Council of Governments suggested the mandate in order to reduce congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They were doing their job in trying to improve the quality of life for Bay Area residents. But these politicians clearly think that the people should serve the government, not the other way around.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:21:40 PM
What can I say? The Bay Area is where all bad government policy seems to originate these days.
This is quite the set of mental gymnastics you are engaging in.
Alright, I know I shouldn't respond for the sake of my sanity, but I can't ignore this any longer. Call me an idiot if you must.
Let's make one thing abundantly clear, and I will repeat this five times.
Roads are not the answer to everything.
Roads are not the answer to everything.
Roads are not the answer to everything.
Roads are not the answer to everything.
Roads are not the answer to everything.
You cannot build a road from point A to point B and call a problem solved. Circumstances exist, such as poverty, that MAKE people unable to use roads. Sometimes, in these circumstances, you have to build things other than roads to get people from point A to point B.
Quote from: kernals12 on December 17, 2020, 11:21:40 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 17, 2020, 11:20:37 PM
You couldn't even make it one thread before dipping back into that Bay Area well to draw a point for one of your inane arguments?
What can I say? The Bay Area is where all bad government policy seems to originate these days.
Oh, cool, that's (finally!) enough to break the politics rule.