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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

I am the opposite of you. I live in NYC and my parents in Boston, and I take the train all the time.

Flying is very unpleasant, as you still have to deal with getting in and out of airports, the whole stay in the TSA line, remove your shoes and belt thing. You are completely omitting the security crap you have to deal with air travel. Meanwhile the train trip starts and ends in downtown. (I live in manhattan and can just walk to the train station).

Also, just the taxi fare from JFK to Manhattan is about 70+ tips. Sure, you can take the subway ($8), but that will add another 1hr to your trip.

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People from the 1950's would be shocked at today's infrastructure progress in the US. "What!?? You guys are still traveling at the same or worse speeds 70 years later!? What happened?"

Also, it took 2x the cost and 8 years to build an access bridge to Golden Gate bridge than it did to build the bridge itself (3.5 years in 1930s) accounting for inflation.

Our government is so dysfunctional, it is hard to imagine where my taxes are going. I live in Bay Area - No solution to homelessness here, pot holes everywhere, trash on highways that sometimes make me wonder if I am in a developing nation, new construction is a forgotten concept, complete gridlock in the CA gov for issuing permits of any high rises or building new subway systems, security and crime through the roof, etc.

I am extremely against everything about CA government. It is rotten to the deepest core. Anything it does bites dust. The entrepreneur spirit and its natural beauty is what's keeping it relevant. There is no point in voting any of these people out, because the replacement is exactly the same kind of people. Besides the tech industry, people here have no optimism, they're more pro China than pro US, mostly busy destroying this great state.

> There is no point in voting any of these people out, because the replacement is exactly the same kind of people

So why don't you stand?

> So why don't you stand?

I am not an american, so I wonder whether it's realistic? I imagine the US as a 2 party system, so if you're unsatisfied with the performance with one party and unable to vote for the other because of their actual political stance...what are you're left with? In germany we have a spectrum of pasties and therefore i have second choice, a choice to build up pressure against the party I am unsatisfied with even if I feel like I belong to this party. What do you do? Vote for independents? Do they even stand a chance?

> In germany we have a spectrum of pasties and therefore i have second choice

That’s obviously a typo but, in this context, it’s hilarious.

With a two party system you join one of them and you stand for election to be that candidate.

I'm no expert on San Francisco politics, but looking at this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_spe...

suggests the mayor is elected

1) From non partisan choices (Although as it's SF I suspect most will have Democrat leanings)

2) Using an instant runnoff / ranked choice or similar situation

The recent election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_San_Francisco_mayoral_ele...

Shows that people seem happy with the current mayor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_San_Francisco_Board_of_Su...

Shows that the "board of supervisors" is an instant runoff too, OK not brilliant, but far better than FPTP. People don't even bother running in many situations -- district 9 for example. 16,000 votes would have won that election.

Now OK if you aren't eligible to stand for election that can be a problem, but surely you find people with similar views than you and build a campaign (if you can't find them, then your complaints really are fringe).

Complaining about politicians all being the same is easy. Doing something about it isn't terribly hard though - not at a local level, if there's really a problem. Personal 100,000 SF residents to vote for you and you're in as mayor. Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member. Of course once you have pwoer you then need to fix the problems, and that's often far harder than posting a rant online.

The election that you picked lacked any credible candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's death.

In the previous election, she controversially was given the role of acting mayor and held it through the election, giving her a huge boost of energy from people who were willing to just let her stay since she was already there.

> Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member.

Well, it's slightly trickier than that. Supervisor elections are district-based, so you need to capture a specific subset of San Francisco's voters. (And we call them Supervisors rather than council members as they serve as both city and county representatives for the combined city/county structure of San Francisco.)

Sure, the point is that if you aren't standing and your view isn't represented closely enough, you can't really complain there's no choice. I'm sure there are plenty of YIMBY software engineers who could find someone charismatic enough to get into local politics and push for those policies - certainly in the UK it's not exactly hard or expensive to run for local council, print some flyers, run some facbook ads, etc.

But it's easier to just say "they're all useless", or maybe there just isn't an appetite for change

Again, you're really undercutting yourself by trying to make San Francisco your example. The average Supervisor campaign spend is in the high five digits, and in some races over $100,000. The races are contentious, because SF Supervisor is often a stepping stone to a larger state office.

But San Francisco is a very unique system, so if you live literally anywhere else the barrier to credibly run is much lower.

To be fair, 11 people died in the construction of the Golden Gate bridge, and many bridges of the era fell down due to insufficient safety standards. It's not like there are no benefits to the extra time of modern construction

This is the exact defeatism that I am refering to. We had 90 years to invent safe and fast measures to build infrastructure. We have failed and its not because it is technically infeasable.

Out of safe, fast, cheap you can only choose two.

That’s basically saying we made zero progress at all in nearly a century, we just have different values.

This is incomprehensible. Building bridges should be 100x as safe, cost 1/10th, and be done in 1/2 the time, by now.

> Building bridges should be 100x as safe, cost 1/10th, and be done in 1/2 the time, by now.

This seems like the sort of thing that only a software engineer would say. So please, tell me that's not your job.

Mate, can we start by honestly and openly criticizing the current situation? If we're not even able to criticize it, reform feels like a distant fantasy. 90 years a very long time. We invented transistors to deep learning. Computer-tech has seen tremendous innovation. Physical world is completely in a death grip of regulations. I am actually fine with regulations where they make sense.

But, it all starts by not throwing rocks at each other and name calling. It starts with deep introspection of our policies. Try asking your fellow neighbor if they can criticize their own party - you'll be met with blank stares and profound confusion.

Why would bridges EVER be 100x safer? Twice as safe would be a huge transformation for any mechanical engineering project. 100x is the sort of process that happens over centuries, and is probably asymptotic (there's a limit to how safe any physical object in the world can ever be).

Cost 1/10th? Why? The materials haven't become massively more available (or changed significantly). The technology and therefore the labor involved in building large scale civil infrastructure hasn't changed much in at least a century, which you seem to view with alarm rather than the idea that maybe we're pretty good at it. Costs due to regulations represent the growing importance of values other than "get it done as cheaply and quickly as possible".

Take 1/2 the time? Why? The physical world isn't amenable to the same sort of reconceptualization that symbolic computation allows. Although the numbers and materials have changed over time (e.g. the arrival of the iron bridge, or suspension systems), the changes generally involve trading off mass (e.g. compared to stone bridges) versus complexity and precision. Why would anyone expect this to reduce construction time by 50%?

And yes, software has seen incredible strides forward. At the same time, sending someone a file is still an enormous challenge for most computer users, most software has failed to incorporate at least 50% of what we've learned about UX over the last 40 years, and most of it is still riddled with bugs that are not that hard to find. So we have to be a little careful throwing stones at those who build material objects.

Going back to gp's question, though...

Can you openly and honestly criticize the current situation?

Not defend, not provide explanations for, but openly address and describe problems that exist?

I think there's huge room for criticism. But my starting point would not "it should be 100x safer, 1/10th the price, 1/2 the time".

There have been some excellent links here on HN over the last year or two (at least) about difficulties in the USA in particular with civil engineering projects. I would defer to their much-more informed authors (and the often great comment threads here) regarding these matters. Clearly, things are "not right" with the time and cost of those projects in the USA relative to elsewhere in the world.

If we were discussing "world best" rather than US-specific, then I'm not so sure if there's the same need for criticism.

If you see the multiple orders of magnitude reduction in cost to launch satellites we've seen recently, as a result of reusing landable rocket stages, how can you been so bearish on physical engineering improvements?

Even computing advancements are technically a physical engineering triumph, taking the form of increased precision in chip creation.

we haven't been putting things in space for very long.

we've been building bridges, roads, buildings and more for thousands of years. from time to time, there will be "breakthrough" developments that transform the processes involved in these activities, but at this point they will be rare, certainly compared to novel human activity like near-atomic circuit fabrication.

To clarify I meant 100x as safe for the workers.

Doesn't really strike me as the opposite. If the GP post is talking about being on time for specific meetings and you are talking about visiting family, you're optimizing for different objectives.

Personally, I use the train vs fly to NY from BOS depending on my objective.

I remember one time, before Uber existed, I was flying to LAX from SFO.

The cab from my apartment on Upper Market, in SF to SFO was $65 before 'tip'. 13 miles.

The FLIGHT from SFO to LAX was $99. https://i.imgur.com/uXCj3MR.png

After this, I had several Black Cars that I made contacts with the drivers - and would call them for rides to SFO (I flew out every sunday morning at 7am - and it was a nightmare getting cabs (I was banned by several taxi companies in SF because I would call three diff taxi services and 2 out of 3 would never show up... but apparently they shared dispatching info because the dispatchers knew that my number was calling multiple taxis... and the guy told me "your banned for calling multiple cabs!" to which I replied "because you never show up and I need to get to the airport (said in a George Costanza voice))

Then Uber was born...

I paid $65.28 (before tip) for a Lyft from downtown to SFO last night (14.27 miles), for a $120 flight to DEN.

I'd like to think that Uber/Lyft changed the industry for the better (and in many ways they did: app is easier, upfront pricing, easier/safer payment, more accountability through location tracking and ratings), but I don't think that the underlying economics have changed all that much (other than the period of time where Sand Hill Road was footing half the bill).

why not take bart, especially anywhere near market? it's roughly $10 to either sfo or oak and pretty reliable.

in LA, the flyaway is affordable and relatively reliable too, if your destination is near downtown, or on the red or orange lines.

my flights were early on sunday mornings.... bart is not an option at my timings.

> $70 plus tips

LIRR into Penn. $16 air train + peak direction ticket (you can buy the latter on your phone) and much faster (20 minutes after you catch it at Jamaica). Less annoying going into Penn than going out, at least.

your air travel could be significantly optimized with TSA Precheck ($20year) and Clear ($120/year) to effectively eliminate security headaches

And into what little database are my deets being entered for eternity by using either of these options, and to whom does the visibility to this data go?

Presumably the same database your details go in anyway, just with less security theatre.

Yeah, we can’t make it look like we’re relaxing security, but if we charge you an application, sit on it, and make felons lives worse, that’s cool.

Looking over the felonies for which TSA PreCheck is unavailable, it doesn’t appear to a thoughtlessly compiled make-felons-suffer list: https://www.tsa.gov/disqualifying-offenses-factors

I can see it for Part C, but why A and B? If someone's been charged and done whatever was required to be free enough that they can fly, then that should be the end of it. Especially things on that list. If treason isn't enough for the government to execute them or lock them up and throw away the key, then it shouldn't matter to the TSA.

If you can’t see how felony conviction for having illegal explosives might reasonably preclude you from reduced security screening, I’m not sure anything I can say will convince you.

If you can't see how the government continuing to treat someone like a criminal after they've paid their debt to society is wrong, I'm not sure anything I can say will convince you.

Are they being treated like a criminal in this case? Or are they merely being treated as requiring standard (not reduced) security screening?

I’m far more concerned where felons are denied the right to vote or to bear arms than I am with them having to stand in the same security line as most people.

I'm against the TSA and its security theater on principle. Any gradient to the offense of its existence just adds insult to injury.

So you should have a situation where someone who hasn't been caught with illegal explosives can pay some money and take those explosives on a plane?

That sounds sensible.

Your deets are going in a little database every time you buy a train ticket.

Can you not buy anonymous tickets, for example at a counter in the station or from a machine?

There are still enough machines that take cash that this is a practical option in most of Europe. Buying a ticket in advance works, but requires a trip to the station.

Getting to/from the airport is the much larger headache than security in a lot of places, especially in NYC. Even if you're willing to pay $50-$100 each way for a car, it's not always easy to get a car and it's a long drive. It takes almost no time for Manhattanites to get to a train and costs virtually nothing.

Why would you pay extra and deal with the additional headache of being screened/having to enter your private data if you could just take the more convenient and largely anonymous train for under a $100? A train where you are not squeezed into the seat like a sardine?

I am personally also really uncomfortable with the notion that you have to pay an additional convenience fee just to have a mildly more pleasant travel experience. Coach class should not mean that you are cattle.

People in coach can still use PreCheck. Work only pays for economy tickets, so I can tell you PreCheck still works fine.

Also, FYI there are two price levels for TSA screening. One is the TSA PreCheck, the other is the 9/11 security fee everyone has to pay. A universal PreCheck would probably mean increasing the security fee.

Clear is one step too far to paying for freedom. Global entry money at least goes to one gang I already pay protection money to, the government. Clear is a non government gang that somehow got the ability to get paid in exchange for giving people more freedom.

That's how America has always worked, though: freedom is an asset you buy with money. They're just saying the quiet part out loud now.

When you buy it from the government, at least there is a veneer of it having come from democratically elected leaders and going back to a pot of resources that are democratically spent.

As in there was zero reason for the government to give Clear a cut of the money, other than outright corruption. They already have the department of homeland security.

I usually took LIRR from JFK when I visited NYC, which is faster and more comfortable than the subway and often faster than Uber/taxi. Penn Station is convenient for most of Manhattan, and Atlantic Terminal is good enough for the parts of Brooklyn I typically stayed at.

A bit more expensive than the subway, especially during peak hours, but worth it IMO.

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