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Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit.

To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen.

Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

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> To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen.

Yep.[1]

The governor is _trying_ to build comprehensive transit in Colorado[2], but between an incompetent transportation district and the difficulties of building public transit infrastructure to serve our metastatic urban sprawl makes public transit difficult to fund over cars.[3]

Our state metro areas just refuse to accept that if they want growth they'll need density. They'd rather pave their farms because they value the taxes they get from McMansions more than actual food.

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/17/rtd-leadership-elections-cont...

[2] https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/12/jared-polis-2024-state-of-the...

[3] https://pressbooks.uwf.edu/envrioscience/chapter/14-3-the-im...

The tax haul from a house is almost certainly higher than food grown on a semi-arid steppe like Colorado

Totally, which is why Colorado is producing less and less food. I mean towns sprouted up where people settled and people settled to grow food, so this has been happening in Colorado since farming began here. As a result the land left for farming is getting worse and worse. The good spots have all been paved.

But say we have to keep that, my next question is, what's the tax haul for a house compared to an apartment complex? Cities out here will choose the former as much as they can, increasing sprawl, because "quality of life."

Tax haul for 10 houses are better than a 10 unit complex. The people also want houses opposed to apartments (hence the higher price).

This seems to be an ideological conflict where some people are trying to force everyone else into options they dont want- why?

The solution seems simple. relax zoning where it exists and let people who want to live in tiny urban apartments do so, and let people who want to live in suburban houses do so too.

Careful how you swing that axe of relaxed zoning. Got me nearly kicked off my local town council. "Why can't that town two towns over build more apartments for our day laborers?" they all ask in unison.

I dont understand what you are implying. Are you saying that NIMBYs will come after you?

It seems weird but you have to look at the market effects evangelist perspective to understand their position. A person believing in these forces might say that by having a large day laboring population and not building housing for them, there is now strong incentive for other areas to approve new housing and take advantage of guaranteed demand. And then they might go on to cite a location like (EDIT: not daly city but there is a bay area city that recently approved a ton of apartments whose name escapes me) that has taken this approach and really changed their municipal budget for the better as a result.

However, the market evangelists don’t understand that just because there is a business case to do something, doesn’t mean anything should happen either. People and therefore their markets don’t operate on entropy alone. There is a lot of irrationality that is hard to quantify.

And the problem is, zoning is almost never the answer to healthy growth. Is it useful for segregation? Yes. Is it useful for temporarily sustaining property value. Yes.

I know there are some counter examples, but I always think about the beautifully organic growth from some of America's greatest cities in the early 20th century. And how that growth would be categorically impossible today because everyone's afraid someone's gonna build a lard rendering plant next to a single-family house. Or that poor people will move in across the street. Goddamn I'm sick of selfish assholes.

That's a weird way to put that. Tax haul for 10 houses is definitely higher than the tax haul for a 10 unit complex, but how many 10 unit complexes can you fit in the space you need for 10 houses? The complex has a much better tax haul per square foot.

You are assuming infrastructure costs would be the same for a 10x denser population. I’ve read articles where even on a per capita basis just about everything is more costly in dense cities, from sewers to schools. It would take some careful scrutiny to identify what is actually optimal, and I expect that to depend heavily on the local economy. For example maybe the fact that the lima peru skyline looks like lima peru and the san jose usa skyline looks like san jose usa is as simple as being due to the cost of labor and materials and what best pencils out. Of course we won’t know the answer to that experiment without removing zoning limits on density and seeing how the market responds over decades.

> I’ve read articles where even on a per capita basis just about everything is more costly in dense cities, from sewers to schools.

Link? This NotJustBikes video suggests it is the other way around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

Here is one. Njb is another one of these strong towns esque orgs that parrots the usual points to people who get their text based content through a talking head speaking it to them.

https://arpitrage.substack.com/p/contra-strong-towns

> Tax haul for 10 houses are better than a 10 unit complex.

I thought is is pretty well established that in US cities, poorer and denser neighborhoods are subsidizing the richer suburbs, tax-wise.

Because 10 houses need 10 of everything, paid for by taxes: street pavement, sewer, water, electricity, internet, etc. A 10 unit complex needs only one. It all needs maintenance too, starting some 25 years after being built. Most US suburbs can't pay for their own maintenance from taxes.

Sewer, water, and electricity hookups are cheap to maintain and are on the burden of the home owner to repair. The initial hookups and construction are absolutely not covered by taxes (this is one of the significant costs you will find out when you build on a plot).

Street pavement is the only thing you mentioned that does cost the tax base, but how much the poor dense area subsidizes the suburbs is completely dependent on the split of funds. In many of the suburban sprawl regions of the western US, the dense urban city (e.g. San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, LA) has a small jurisdiction and the suburbs are in completely different legal cities with their own road budgets.

>cities, poorer and denser neighborhoods are subsidizing the richer suburbs, tax-wise.

Definitely not well established. What you might be thinking of is poor dense neighborhoods subsidizing rural areas that depend heavily on federal or state grants for pretty much all of their infrastructure.

What are you talking about? King Soopers has plenty of food

Colorado producing less food is probably from market conditions and not urbanism. Like just consider the land area here. Sure denver is sprawly suburbia but what percent is that really of the massive swath of farmland that is all of colorado east of the front range? Its got to be in the single percent range just eyeballing it on google maps. And farm yields have absolutely soared over the last 100 years so fewer farms are needed to produce the same food.

All they have to do is restart the old passenger rail system they had in the 40s. It connected the entire front range with salt lake and all the major cities in utah including park city, went down to santa fe in the south, and hit just about all the towns and ski resorts that were around at the time. Even the ones that are a little more annoying to get to today like aspen or telluride.

What is even more tempting is that all this infrastructure and right of ways are still there. A lot of these towns have the old station land empty still, some have the old station preserved even. A lot of the rail grades are either sustained by freight rail or have been railbanked as trails. Its practically turn key as the hard part of gathering all this land was done over a century ago.

Too bad rail ambition is so paltry in comparison today.

Can you lead me to some background on this? I'd love to look at some of the routes and law behind it.

It was called the denver and rio grande railroad

That system was slow and doesn’t solve the same problems. It’s competing with long range travel and all of those track routes were far slower than just driving.

The problems that Colorado faces are transportation within urban areas. Driving to salt lake and ski resorts isn’t an issue.

All those routes could be made faster and it also had routes running down the front range too. Either way traffic on 70 into summit county is stupid and this is the salve. Already exists. Already graded. Already set up to serve vail and many other destinations that people rent a car from DEN to reach today.

There’s another huge way to put a dent it and let people live where they want: work from home works. The pandemic proved it. It’s not a 100% solution but there is seldom a 100% solution that doesn’t involve totalitarian government since not everyone wants to live in the city in concrete towers.

That’s a decision of employers, not policy makers

Until they decide to make it their decision and do something like tax companies per onsite worker and/or increased property taxes for office space that could have been better used. Lots of options.

Cities also have their own perverse incentives to maintaining the 9-5 downtown status quo. A whole host of businesses depend on these workers and they are involved in the chamber of commerce and various other orgs city leaders listen to when making decisions.

So you drive the office workers out of the city and then what do you do with the other commercial business? They still commute or you raise taxes enough for the city center to die out and hope for suburbanization?

You tear down those old, unsafe office buildings (we have lots of them in our city) and put up modern mixed use buildings. More people == more workers == more customers == more businesses. Add in some cultural features and you have a vibrant downtown that doesn't rely on commuters and doesn't become a ghost-town after 5:00.

Or even better, spread out work for those who can't work from home.

I live in a small country, where a lot of jobs are in the capital, A LOT of people drive to the capital daily (20, 30, 50, even 100km one way), and complain about it... and complain how everything is there, complain about centralization, etc...

..and then also complain when a company in their smaller city wants to expand or when someone wants to build something new there. Also complain against the current companies that exist there.... even though their house was built due to closeseness to that factory in the first place (like whole neighhbourhoods that were built by workers in that company nearby, and now, 30, 40 years later, their kids want the company to close, due to a lot of random reasons).

for americans: not all tech has to be in california, other states exist too

A lot of american metros are polycentric with their job markets already. That was one of the sells of suburbia: spread out and therefore lower the congestion that was bogging down urban areas at the time. There was a time when it was predicted manhattan would flood with manure in the future should horse traffic increase how it had been. Then of course the car came but still, these were concerns even back then. Someplaces instituted height limits to attempt to spread congestion too, especially done in europe where many cities today have denser urban sprawl but its pretty clearly capped at a height limit which forces it out.

Here's a nice study: https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/

They say 10% of traffic being replaced by motorcycles reduces congestion by 40%. California has pretty good weather so it's probably feasible to commute by motorbike almost every day.

That is not a solution to not having public transit.

I would rather not die.

You are more likely to die from lung cancer, than from a motorcycle accident, statistically. You are also wasting a lot of your life sitting in traffic. The cost of ownership is much higher, so you could say you’re wasting more hours at work to pay for the large vehicle. I’d say it breakeven at best.

Colorado with 300 sunny days a year is a great place for motorcycles. Most of the year it's warm enough too with somewhat decent clothing and a pair of balls. I'll take the bike any day the road is dry and temps are double digit. But if you really want to increase throughput [FWIW, I don't care that much], just enforce driving on the right lanes when not passing. Then anyone who feels they need to go 15 over the limit can safely do that while at the same time funding the police that the metro is trying so hard to defund. Everyone wins. Bam.

It is not. At most you get 8 months of the year. The rest even if the weather is sunny you are looking at strong wind or unpredictable storms that pop up. We just had golf ball sized hail at the end of may.

Motorcycles are substantially more dangerous than cars. We can’t even convince people to buy European style compact cars instead of large trucks and SUVs

I'm risking enough of my life around the common man in a car - no shot I'm taking the chance in a motorcycle long-term.

Motorbikes as a solution to congestion is a post-autonomous driving game.

Try a motorcycle! The laws for lane splitting are the best in the country. You could probably fit 6 motorcycles in the space of one car.

Motorcyles have a roughly 30 times higher fatality rate per mile driven compared to cars

And are also not great for air pollution - they burn less gas per mile, but the engines are very dirty.

But they reduce congestion, which equals less total time on the road. Everyone gets better MPGs if there is less stop and go traffic.

Imagine stop and go traffic for a minute. Now imagine it with all those cars replaced by ninjas and dirtbikes and harleys. You can’t even hold a conversation when one of these things goes by. Imagine that being everything that goes by.

Well, you can't really commute on a Ninja or a Hayabusa. Dirtbike will get old fast too.

Maxi/midi scooters like Yamaha Majesty / X-MAX are the commuting vehicle of choice.

This is america though. Rather than a sensible commuting vehicle, the best selling vehicle is the f150. There is a subset of truck owners that will put a nut sack on the hitch and blow a cloud of black diesel exhaust at a car like a prius at a light.

Pollution caused by congestion and manufacturing cars kills everyone. By riding a bike people can put their money where their mouth is regarding views on climate change; you're making a statement that says "I'm putting the environment ahead of my personal safety". Also, if you convert enough people, motorcycle riding becomes safer for everyone. Getting bumped by another 150lb Vespa isn't as nasty as getting hit by a "green" 6000lb tesla truck.

I would rather be safe than bear a cross for the environment

I’m glad we live in a democracy where telling people to endanger themselves for the environment is a nonstarter

Motorcycles are dangerous because of the speed honestly. Especially a lot of these bikes people buy that are just way too much power for anyone to be reasonable with. Like why do you need to strap yourself to a rocket that can go to 60 in less than 2 seconds? I’m sorry you aren’t even strapped in you are holding on for dear life. Theres no where you can do that and claim to be safe and responsible short of being a trained rider on a track.

If 0-60MPH is 2 seconds, then that's an average acceleration of 1.37G over those 2 seconds.

This sounds like something that is very thrilling, enticing, and "Nope!" all at the same time.

Agree, a motorcycle is a complete nonstarter for this reason. It’s just not responsible for anyone with a family.

Would you say the same thing for bicycles, in places without dedicated bicycle lanes?

I’m an avid cyclist who’s been in a few crashes. I will absolutely not bike commute in dangerous parts of the city. So yes, I’d say the same.

you aren't really answering the question.

Yes, absolutely

E-bikes are massively safer because they move slower. Yes you can still be run over by some chud truck but motorbikes are dangerous on their own.

Yes, I would say that biking with a child in certain parts of the US is incredibly irresponsible and neglectful

I would not because you don’t go 60mph with a leather jacket for protection on a bike, you go about a quarter that if you are really pushing between lights.

And honestly as a biker taking the entire lane is so much safer than some bike lanes even. Sure people honk but they arent psychotic they will pass you by merging the lane. If you ride on the shoulder they try and squeeze by and thats where there are issues. You are also more visible to turning traffic from other directions when you take the lane.

I know a large number of people who commute by bike in Melbourne. Every single last one of them has at some point been hit by a car or has suffered serious injuries trying to avoid being hit by a car. Many of them have had this happen multiple times, and these are all cases where they have dedicated bike lanes — they weren't riding with general traffic, which is of course far more dangerous.

Absolutely, but that’s not a problem intrinsic to bicycles like it is to motorcycles, so I don’t think this comparison is meaningful.

I suspect driving a motorbike in sub 40mph areas in London and other major cities is actually safer than pedal cycling.

You’re subject to fewer overtakes and have much better protective equipment if anything bad does happen.

However I’ve not been able to find any data or studies inspecting this directly. There’s some urban data but I think that can include certain motorways and high speed roads.

That sounds about right. Rode a motorcycle in SF traffic for years. About twice a day people would do something that could have killed me. Changing lanes without looking, blowing a stop sign, just generally not paying attention. I had a woman pull up while I was waiting to pull out of a gas station. She somehow thought that I should back up, up hill and let her in. I don’t think she realized that motorcycles don’t have reverse. She got super mad and her boyfriend wanted to fight me. He stormed over with chest puffed. People are dangerously stupid and clueless. About half way over he noticed the armored knuckles on my gloves and realized it probably wouldn’t go well for him.

It is super dangerous. I couldn’t stop though because my commute was 4x as long in a car and 6x-8x as long on public transportation.

This thread is full of people happy that people are wasting so much time in traffic because it will force them to change their desires

Motorcycles are not safe, and certainly not safer than cars. However, you can reduce the extreme fatality rate significantly if you cut out drunk riding and even more so if you have more than six months of experience and wear all the gear all the time. It’s a risky activity that attracts people that don’t make smart decisions. When I got my license, the five others in my class all owned a motorcycle and rode them for a year without a license or training.

It’s a weird activity that’s simultaneously very unsafe due to car drivers but also due to the average rider themselves.

I think that’s limited to the US. In Thailand, kids ride motorcycles from a very young age, and don’t exhibit the crazy driving on that they do here. I think if more families drove motorcycles, it would no longer be considered cool or extreme, and that behavior would disappear. It reminds me of the high drinking age situation in the United States. When people here start drinking, they end up in emergency room, which is not the case in Europe, where they have a much lower drinking age.

Traffic fatalities in Thailand are the highest in SE Asia and 73% of them are on motorcycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

This is not necessarily from extreme behavior, most Thai are on relatively slow scooters.

The average age of first drink in the us is like 16 years old. The law doesn’t stop anyone from drinking it just serves to ruin peoples lives with a criminal record for behavior a huge percent of people engage with.

Even better if you only worry about CO2. /s

How much of these fatalities involve some daredevils?

I became a motorbike in my late 30's and I see I am not taking risks like a lot of riders around me. I am taking ample distance between me and cars, act as if I was invisible and other users would do the most insane thing possible at all times and don't swerve around vehicles. I am even slower descending a mountain pass on my motorbike than I am riding my road bicycle.

I know from my experience driving cars at the same age that it would have been totally stupid to let 20y old me ride a motorbike.

OTOH motorbiking would be much safer with less cars on the road.

I’ve seen way too many clips of bikers to no fault getting wrecked that its just not for me. At least with a human powered bike you have the physics of only going about 15 miles an hour on your side and aren’t going to turn into a crayon.

Indeed, and you're also not going to travel on a high speed, congested road. For one thing, there's usually no point.

Well from these clips, the road doesn’t have to be congested for things to go sideways before reaction time kicks in. And even from my own experiences, I once hit a big board with my car on the freeway. Didn’t see it until there it was. Four flats and a bit of a scare vs the end of my life probably right then if I were on a bike in all likelihood.

I'm a daily bike commuter, though I also own a car.

I certainly can't rule out freak accidents. However, I think that both speed and situational awareness make a difference on a bike. I tend to notice things that come into my field of vision, with plenty of time to react. In fact, I probably steer clear of things like debris and potholes on virtually every ride.

The reason why I mention congestion is threefold. First, getting hit by a car is by far the predominant hazard. I consider avoiding cars to be the #1 safety measure for cycling. If you take away that factor, then I doubt that cycling is more dangerous than driving. Second, beyond a certain level of congestion, drivers are not fully in control of their cars, but are controlled by the pace of traffic. Third, dodging traffic is the primary distraction that would make a cyclist fail to notice something like debris on the road.

I'm lucky to live in a town that has a network of bike paths, bike lanes in the more dense areas, and ample routes along sleepy residential streets. I encounter very few cars, and don't have to mix it up with heavy car traffic. Granted, living in a mid-sized town doesn't solve the car problem for humanity.

Edit: Re-reading our posts, I realized that I should clarify. "Bike" is a pedal bike in my case.

Yeah I was referring to motorcycles. I think bike danger is overstated honestly. Most speeds you go you end up with scrapes and bruises laying the bike over. Sure there are freak accidents where you land wrong on your neck, but that could happen in your kitchen or shower or going down the stairs as well.

You have probably hit that big board because you are driving an extension of your living room and are thus totally incentivised by dangers and not following legal and recommended security distance between you and the vehicle in front of you.

Also dangers are easier to avoid on a bike provided you are going at reasonnable speed because your own vehicle is smaller. The biggest danger is target fixation but that is something riders need to train against.

Obviously training both of riders and drivers vary a lot between countries and that is where lie most of the problem as well as considering that driving/riding is a right and not a privilege accorded to people serious enough to operate vehicles safely. I find it completely insane that some countries like the USA allows kids to drive with barely any training. IMHO before 24-25 year old, there are very few adults that are mature enough to drive safely. I also fThat is probably ind insane that a country allow people to buy, rent and drive a vehicle after more than 2 DUI convictions. That should lead to a lifetime ban.

You can’t imagine that someone driving safely wouldn’t hit a board? On a highway you are rarely afforded the luxury of having a full stopping distance anyway. I think the book says for every 10mph you go you should factor in 10 seconds. So 60mph would be a 6 second stopping distance, so I would need to see a car pass something and count to six before I pass that. If I had that sort of spacing on my commute, people would immediately merge into it. Thats just the reality. Then I am left with what three seconds to recognize a board emerging from the rear tires in front of me and somehow also check to see if its clear and also merge out of the way of this board. Its just not happening you are hitting the board almost as soon as you recognize its there.

Indeed, I speculated that this is what happened based on your comment. It's also what I mean when I say that drivers are not fully in control of their cars in congested traffic, and why a cyclist would avoid those situations -- to avoid being that board.

So what's the problem? Solves the problem, right? (Yes, I drive motorcycles)

As a passenger in a car, watching motorcyclists zip down at high speed on the lane markers between cars in dense, stop-and-go traffic was incredibly unnerving. I can't see how that's safe.

Everyone sitting in line day in day out, breathing each other's fumes is not healthy either: https://dceg.cancer.gov/news-events/news/2023/ultrafine-poll... The motorcycles also aren't contributing to traffic congestion. The auto industry wants to sell big cars with high profit margins, they don't care about your lung cancer when you're 60 years old.

It’s not, because they aren’t following the law.

If you follow the lane splitting laws as written, it is actually pretty safe.

Thats what they say but at the same time seems like there is really hardly any room at all oftentimes. I don’t know how these guys have the nerve with the big chopper handlebars sometimes. Seems like they are like an inch from either car on some of these splits and all it would take is a driver to wiggle the wheel a little and they are launched over the handlebars. Doesn’t seem like anyone looks back for bikes coming up.

you don't have to zip down at high speed on the lane markers when you ride a motorcycle.

It is like the stupid people who say all cyclist burn the lights. They are just so jealous they only see the one that do and completely ignore those that stop at the lights.

Nope and this does nothing to the problem of not having public transit.

Where should I put my toddler?

Depends where you live. In Colorado there’s no minimum age to be a motorcycle passenger. In California, the minimum age is eight, So you would need to find some alternate transportation.

The question you are replying to was rhetorical

The #1 killer of people I know up to this point in my life is motorcycle accidents. I would never ride one and would do all I can to prevent my kids from doing so.

> Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life

How did you quantify this? Or this a purely anecdotal observation?

Not the OP but air quality monitors that measure particulates at different sizes? It's a pretty standard way of measuring air quality.

There's a map of official California monitors: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/applications/air-monitoring-sites-int...

Yes, I'm aware of how one would do it, I am questioning whether that was actually done in this case or not. Further, I would question, what other places outside of your commute have you measured air pollution?

They offered it as a data point. I think it's fine form to question it.

The EPA Air Quality Index isn't everything, but it is a standard value displayed in a phone weather app. I'll notice in times and places when I suspect its bad. If you live outside a city in place without forest fires or other environmental issues you might not notice its there. Some people with respiratory issues monitor this stuff constantly.

IIRC, pollution from the tail pipe of a car falls off as a cubic function as you get further away from it. Similar for other sources of pollution. Pollution is very akin to smoke, hard to predict, and very localized. It can depend on wind, terrain, can get caught in places, underneath temperature inversions, etc.. All that said, the pollution you experience on a sidewalk next to a road, would be significantly higher than at the weather app meter station.

Determining pollution exposure can be done anecdotally. I've done a number of long distance bike trips, the few times where I was next to a highway for upwards of 8 hours - having a nose bleed by the end of that is pretty common for me. In that vein, recognizing air pollution effects is not necessarily that difficult. Symptoms include: sore throat, headache, burning eyes, etc.. The other side, people do get used to low level irritants, and yeah - you don't really notice its there until you go somewhere else and realize "the air smells different."

Since its my experience its anecdotal. That said higher particulate from diesel engines its pretty common when not at highway speeds. Combine significant traffic with highways/interestates close to buildings and residential areas, its a bit nasty. Sure rush hour in Saigon is without a doubt worse but the bay area is pretty bad on a localized level. Keep in mind I am saying localized, just the immediate areas around these high traffic areas. I can recount a number of buildings I have been in where you would get significant soot buildup on a weekly basis.

CA is fairly unique in this respect in that there are major road ways with residential close by.

>> you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen

You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy.

The US is not a democracy. Not even at the state level. For many aspects and holons it is a representative republic.

The U.S. is a democracy, albeit a deficient one rather than a working one [1]. At least is the least deficient one amongst those.

[1] https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking

No, that would be Uruguay.

And for context, the ranking says USA is the 36th most democratic country, which is pretty darn low if you ask me.

Darn; overlooked that one hiding in the middle of all these Working Democracies.

apparently by 2023 it got upgraded to working:

https://www.democracymatrix.com/online-analysis/matrix#/char...

after further looking it turns out that it was also categorized as working before 2020 and after 2020. the difference being 0.01 points. in 2020 it took a dive in rules settlement and implementation for which there is an obvious culprit: covid.

https://www.democracymatrix.com/online-analysis/country#/Uni...

Describing the US as a democracy is totally normal among actual experts in the study of governments (political scientists).

[citation requested]

I've seen representative democracy, and representative republic, but rarely purely one or the other.

Sounds like terminology slip, then. People use the term democracy to describe the US, often in contrast to authoritarian dictatorships; but that is more of a crude definition, a colloquialism rather than an accurate description of US governance.

> You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy.

Infrastructure should not be subject to peoples' opinions. Like utilities and defense, infrastructure is crucial for security and commerce. People simply don't know better.

Totally agree on this one. I am a free market proponent but when it comes to infrastructure projects, often its hard for even the free market to get it right and its often better for a central plan to work off of (roads, electrical transmission lines, etc)

Mine is we need to stop pandering to weirdos when it comes to public infrastructure projects. There is a political process for approving them. And we shouldn't let weirdos get endless do overs in the courts when they lose.

Remember in the movie Don't Look Up they democratically decided that the Comet is not real, and everything will be fine.

but there is a solution to this problem: education.

and i don't mean propaganda, but teaching people not to be selfish, to care for others and consider others needs, to contribute to the betterment of society. to have compassion, remove prejudice, etc.

if these values were taught in schools, then the next generation would make better choices and they would know better and vote for better infrastructure.

It's hard to educate the next generation when everyone of all ages is exposed to relentless propaganda (also known as marketing, in all forms including the fully legalized corruption of US politics) at the same time.

Oil and car companies' futures depend on continued public support for free parking, more lanes and housing far away from destinations. It's in their interest to manipulate people into opinions that are beneficial to their bottom line, and they will continue to do so.

That will never happen. Thats the kind of utopian dream that will not happen regardless of level of education.

It is crazy to honestly believe that those living in car dependent areas lack empathy. I'm sorry as someone who loves transit and will wax poetic on my lovely light rail, I am not okay with literally dehumanizing people I disagree with and saying they lack the ability to feel compassion.

Come on.. you're better than that. Compassion, empathy, etc are found almost anywhere.

Do people need to be shown it could work? Yes. They don't need to thought of as deficient people.

i am sorry, but from personal experience, inside a car as a passenger and outside as a pedestrian or cyclist, many drivers believe they own the road. that's not dehumanizing them. that's reality.

The vision for what society should be is absolutely not consistent across political and religious spectrums.

People vote completely the opposite on things like nuclear energy, wind energy, defense spending, etc all while thinking they are bettering society.

Getting everyone consistent on those requires full on propaganda and forced “re-education” whenever people critically examine things.

no, it requires even more critical examination. people need to learn more about the issues involved, and try to understand the needs and fears of others, and to work out a solution that everybody can live with.

a consistent vision is that everyone has a right to live their live according to their own ideas, as long as that doesn't affect others. but this vision requires an understanding that we all are contributing with good intentions.

it is the good intentions that we need to instill in everyone.

What you’re describing absolutely does not exist if you have any of the current religions.

Look at the abortion debate. One side is about the rights of the woman and the other side is about the rights of the fetus. When people see the fetus as a baby, it suddenly becomes murder. There isn’t much nuance there for a compromise.

What you’re describing absolutely does not exist if you have any of the current religions.

what are current religions for you? i do not want to promote a particular religion on this site, but there are options out there that you may not yet have considered.

i also believe that while peoples behavior reflects their religion, the religions do not control or limit anyones ability to examine things critically. if you are in a religious community that does that, i'd urge you to get out as soon as possible.

Look at the abortion debate

that kind of feels like moving the goalpost. just because there is one topic where a compromise is difficult, if not impossible, doesn't mean the whole idea of finding a solution that works for everyone is not possible.

i am not american, so i am observing the debate as it happens there only from the sidelines. one of the primary criticisms i see against the anti abortion crowd is that they don't consider helping parents with resources they need to raise the baby. where i come from this is mostly a solved problem, because parents, including single mothers, receive plenty of support to raise children.

but more importantly i have a problem with the major religions being obsessed with punishing people for breaking god's laws. as humans we need to concern ourselves with those crimes that actually cause problems in our society, and leave the punishment of breaking god's laws to god.

the compromise is to recognize the needs of the mother as well as that of the unborn child.

>as humans we need to concern ourselves with those crimes that actually cause problems in our society, and leave the punishment of breaking god's laws to god.

Religious leaders mostly disagree with you, and in religious societies, their beliefs are reflected in public policy.

well that is something we need to fix then, isn't it?

for starters, better education will also affect future religious leaders and make them better leaders. but the religions themselves also need critical examination. examples for a better model for religions exist. we need to look at them and adopt some of their ideas.

this discussion shows how the process works. we identify a problem, look for potential solutions, and in the process we find other problems that get in the way, so we work on those problems, until we find issues we can actually fix. and once fixed earlier found issues can be fixed as well, and so on. every step along the way we are making the world a little bit better than before.

Sorry, no. What you write makes absolutely no sense to a religious person. A religion (any religion) is, by definition, correct, and doesn't have any problems. It's not a thing based on any kind of rational thought, but rather pure fantastical belief. You can't "fix" that, when its believers don't think there's anything to fix.

Of course, you're looking at this as an outsider who doesn't believe the religion, so you don't see it this way, and you have entirely different goals in mind. You're probably thinking about people living together in a pluralistic world or something like that, but that's not a concern to a True Believer in a religion, where anyone who disagrees with the religion either needs to stay out of the way or be killed if necessary.

so the spanish inquisition, or the burning of witches, and whatever else atrocious people did in the name of religion was ok, and reformation was unnecessary? have you not noticed how christianity has changed over time? same for other religions too. is everything religious leaders and people do in the name of religion today backed by their holy scripture? i think not. and until it is, there is room for improvement.

i am a religious person, btw. and i absolutely believe that religion needs to change and advance just like everything else on this planet. the purpose of religion is to address the problems a society faces in its time. as our society advances, so must religion, to be ready to address the problems of a modern changing society. if it can't do that it needs to be replaced by another. this is exactly what jesus did, and the reason why he came to earth. and it is the reason why he promised to return. it is the purpose of all of god's messengers to advance and reform our religious beliefs.

>so the spanish inquisition, or the burning of witches, and whatever else atrocious people did in the name of religion was ok

Absolutely, yes, if you ask the religious people who did those things. Of course, non-religious people (or people of a different religion) disagree, but that's simply a difference of opinion.

>have you not noticed how christianity has changed over time?

It's changed in many ways, and depends on which group of Christians you're looking at. Are you looking at the Mormons, the "supply side Christians" that are popular in American mega-churches, the rather liberal Presbyterians, or what?

>is everything religious leaders and people do in the name of religion today backed by their holy scripture?

I'm pretty sure it is. You can interpret that scripture an infinite number of ways, so they always seem to find some way of supporting their claims.

>there is room for improvement.

"improvement" is your opinion only. For them, your idea of "needed changes" are anathema.

>this is exactly what jesus did,

Jesus specifically said (if you believe the quotes in the bible are true) that he did NOT come to replace anything. Of course, the teachings attributed to him are quite different from the religion he claimed not to be replacing. And of course, there's no real evidence to support any of this, either his existence, the words claimed to have been said by him, the previous religion the people in that region followed, etc.

It's changed in many ways, and depends on which group of Christians you're looking at well, i am primarily looking at the catholic church itself, and protestants that came out of it. both changed a lot over the centuries.

Jesus specifically said that he did NOT come to replace anything

but he did come to reform. with the sword.

there's no real evidence to [...] his existence

historians beg to differ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

and as for the words, well, the bible is authentically almost 2000 years old. so someone must have said the words that the people in the bible report. of course, given how the bible was written it is hard to find real evidence for that. so i am not faulting you for not believing it to be real.

to me that doesn't really matter. whether religions are of divine origin or a fantasy, they clearly have a strong influence on the world, and therefore we must subject them to criticism and to reform if they want to keep their relevance in the world.

alternatively, it's time to look for their replacement. it is possible that jesus already came back and the majority of the world missed it.

>to me that doesn't really matter. whether religions are of divine origin or a fantasy, they clearly have a strong influence on the world, and therefore we must subject them to criticism and to reform if they want to keep their relevance in the world.

Why do they need to stay relevant? If you're willing to accept they're fantasy, then it'd be better for everyone to read Lord of the Rings instead. At least it actually promotes wholesome values and thinking, unlike the Bible which promotes rape, slavery, and genocide. The god of LotR is consistent, whereas the god of the Bible seems to be narcissistic, sociopathic, and worse, schizophrenic (somehow going from directing his followers to commit genocide, to later reproducing somehow and then promoting peace and tolerace, but only sometimes).

And at least with fantasy epics, everyone knows they're not real, so no one is setting up theocracies based on their interpretations of them and committing atrocities to support these.

Why do they need to stay relevant

they don't need to stay relevant. reform is what they need to do if they want to stay relevant. otherwise they will soon stop being relevant. however as long as they continue to have a strong influence, we need to keep an eye on them and look for their replacement

It sounds like all you need is some education. From first principals you should immediately discard a book filled with nonsense to a modern day society, especially when the veracity of the authors can’t be verified.

If that sounds ridiculous to you, it’s not. It’s what all of the other religions that don’t stem from Christianity think of it.

This is why “education” will not fix any of this. There are very fundamental rifts in what the truth even is.

again, you can't simply reject a book that has dominated europe for two millenia. whether it is nonsense or not. if it was pure nonsense then it would never had a chance at dominating our culture for that long.

the legitimacy of the bible or of christianity has also been confirmed in the koran as one of the religions of the book.

i agree with you that this book and others are not suitable for our modern day society. hence the need for reform or replacement.

but the interesting part is that the replacement has been announced in the bible itself. in it jesus states that he will return.

and in the past 200 years some people have made the claim to be the return of jesus. it is now up to us to investigate these claims and find out which of these, if any, is genuine.

the primary goal of education here is that everyone needs to learn and understand that they need to critically investigate and search for the truth. all of us. and that search is not done as long as there are conflicting ideas of what the truth is. so we need to keep searching.

You completely lost the thread. My reply is that your notion of “education will make everyone agree on things” is childish and completely ridiculous in light of even basic religious and political debates. Very smart people on both sides are definitely empathetic yet want to vote to stop the other side.

It’s not shifting any goalposts at all. All it takes is one example to show how the idea fails and that’s what I provided.

well, one of the goals of education needs to be to show that there is no other side. we are all humans, in one global society, and thus we should all be on the same side. there should be no opposition. we need to be open to everyone. and the only thing we should not tolerate is intolerance itself.

education means teaching people that it is desirable and beneficial to cooperate, and that it is necessary to put aside our differences in order to achieve that.

you assume that current religious doctrines trump any hope of achieving that. but i beg to differ. every religion in its core is based on love, and therefore any form rejection of non-believers is already a failure of the core beliefs of every religion.

and for every claim that their rejection or hatred is backed by their holy scripture, we can find another member of that same religion who disagrees. i have been participating in interreligious dialogue and i know that peaceful coexistence and cooperation among religions is possible.

The divine teachings are intended to create a bond of unity in the human world and establish the foundations of love and fellowship among mankind. Divine religion is not a cause for discord and disagreement. If religion becomes the source of antagonism and strife, the absence of religion is to be preferred

The establishing of the divine religions is for peace, not for war and the shedding of blood. Inasmuch as all are founded upon one reality which is love and unity, the wars and dissensions which have characterized the history of religion have been due to imitations and superstitions which arise afterward. Religion is reality and reality is one. The fundamentals of the religion of God are therefore one in reality. There is neither difference nor change in the fundamentals. Variance is caused by blind imitations, prejudices and adherence to forms which appear later, and inasmuch as these differ, discord and strife result. If the religions of the world would forsake these causes of difficulty and seek the fundamentals, all would agree, and strife and dissension would pass away

Disagree. I could have done a better job describing it though. In the current paradigm, the N houses/people negatively impacted by a given transit project will be given the same weighting as the N*Y people positively impacted by the project. You cannot have progressive transit projects that work when you allow those N individuals to stop the project. Nothing to do with democracy, different states and local governments handle it differently.

No, democracy says 51% of people can enforce their will on 49% of people.

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