Hacker News Reader

Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

I'm a car convert, and I'm someone who generally hates driving, and used only public transport for decades. It's just no match. PT is only more effective in theory.

Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country.

I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.

View on HN

> Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change.

Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there.

This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.

> "environment destruction"

Wait wait wait. A single double-tracked rail line that's 50 feet wide carries more passengers an hour than a 10-lane wide highway that's pure asphalt. In what world is the train a greater destruction of our environment?

And in what world is that a greater destroyer of our natural landscapes?

I understand the convenience. I also went from taking public transit exclusively to driving a lot more - and I get the appeal. I also understand the appeal is not scalable, considerably less environmentally friendly, and contributes a ton of carbon output and environment destruction.

We don't need to bend over backwards to pretend that the things that are convenient and enjoyable for us must necessarily be virtuous. We should be fully capable of owning the dissonance that our desires do not necessarily align with public benefit.

Nowhere did I say it's greater, but still significant compared to how higways - which will still exist anyway - are much more useful and have more freedom of access (eg. for freight companies, emergency services). If most of society has this dissonance, maybe it'd be useful to overthink it. There are many ways to make personal travel greener, and that may be the more attainable goal.

> Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change.

As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?

I can't recall a strike ever preventing me from getting to work in my car?

Uh...highways and roads don't build themselves. The planning and costs are huge.

Why do you think that highways, roads, etc. aren't riddled with the same corruption, greater environmental destruction, landscape changes, etc. ?

Admittedly we can build highways quicker, but I wonder why? Certainly it has nothing to do with corrupt state transportation agencies whose jobs depend on big highway construction jobs, auto lobbies, or highway and road construction companies that rely on big government contracts for their livelihoods... right?

> maybe we should just spread out our living area more

If we have any hopes of restricting climate change, reducing CO2 emissions, preventing mass extinction via habitat loss, we can't be doing this and going down this path.

It would only make any sense to create new green field cities if they were compact walkable cities built on a foundation of frequent and high speed rail access. Everything else is a regression of massive amounts of highway construction, habitat loss, CO2 emissions and strangulation by increased capture by the requirements of structurally inefficient automobile oriented infrastructure.

> But maybe we should just spread out our living area more

Only if you pay up for that. Suburban areas are notoriously underfunding themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com