Hacker News Reader

Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

Or rebuilding America's crippled mass transit infrastructure. Billions are going in subsidies to self-driving tech. We could at least get the largest cities back into mass transit, train, express bus form with late night operations. You allow the blue collar worker to get home safely after drinking for a minimal amount of money and you'll see an improvement in road safety as well as economic growth.

View on HN

I am very much with you on this but I was saddened to read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub... - it describes active attempts to throttle adoption of mass transit.

I don't get it - that's so short sighted. It really saddens me. Especially in cities like Nashville, who are not very large or dense, but have the opportunity to grow by a lot in the coming decades. At least having an approved and implemented project in plans would be immensely beneficial to that community.

Disclaimer, I have never been to Nashville, but I've heard about it from people who have been there and did a bit of reading 5 minutes ago.

It would take far more than billions to expand mass transit meaningfully. Billions would get you maybe one new subway line in one city.

You'd get more than you think. Seattle's $58 billion ST3 project gets a train from Seattle to Redmond, Edmonds, a west loop and a street car expansion:

http://soundtransit3.org/calculator

It's a sizable chunk of transit. It's all about the priorities of a city.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com