It’s too bad there isn’t some technology that would allow people to work from home, or at least dispersed locations, using electronically transmitted text and video. Like some sort of information highway thingy that could replace physical highways.
It’s already happening…. Call centers have been pushing people home for years. Retail is slowly dying, people don’t want to go out into the world when they can either stay at home or be with friends and get their basics done.
I’m just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and realize that fiber to the home/curb is going to massively improve homeowner value overall….
Bart was being sarcastic.
Personally I hope we don’t all end up living our entire lives at home and traveling only via VR.
Moi? Well, pardon me for living under a rock for the past three decades. How was I to know?
I think that was in the Star Trek pilot episode wasn’t it?
Asimov’s “Caves of Steel.”
The problem with working at home (besides increased productivity that nobody notices) is office politicking backstabbers are free to destroy ya.
Nice try Ken, but Solaria was in “The Naked Sun”
Retail isn’t just dying, it’s plunging off a cliff. But not, I think, from people staying at home. They still go to the stores to look at stuff. Then, they go home and order it cheaper off the web.
I have been especially alarmed this past year watching several venerable stalwarts closing their doors. It’s been like attending the funerals of old friends.
I don’t see any solution, unless all the stores essentially become like Sam’s Club or Costco. Come and look all you like, but you have to pay up front to get in.
Once everyone works in their underwear, one pair of slacks each will be enough.
Well if put “tunnels” under the ocean surface- say around 50 meters, then earthquakes would be less of problem. And “digging” is less of problem.
Or I suppose you could float the tube in tunnels underground with water.
So one could have say,1000 ft segments which each are controlled independently in terms of their neutral buoyancy and location relative to each other. Or basically have a line of submarines which are connected and they have vacuum rather 1 atm of internal pressure.
Also they could designed to have a slight curve [in terms of the group of seqments rather one seqment], and become straighter or more curved if total distance is shorter or lengthened. Though that option wouldn’t work well with underground rather than using ocean real estate.
After posting, I goggled “effect of earthquake when in submarines”.
An interesting link was: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?37521-Three-submarines-damaged-by-earthquake
And the various replies in comment section.
My impression is one could engineer it to solve any potential problems due to earthquakes, but obviously one would need to do engineering tests, regarding it.
If the single party state Democrats can raise the taxes high enough, 80 percent of the population would move out and the freeways would once again be clear sailing.
I doubt Earthquakes would be a major problem, but crossing active fault lines could be a challenge.
So what’s wrong with light rail. You know, like LA used to have before it was congested. Even that would be cheaper than all the tunnels.
Rail goes from where you don’t want to be to where you don’t want to go, at a time when you don’t want to travel.
But, as mentioned above, this stuff is never going to happen because VR will soon make travel obsolete.
LA has light rail (again). A lot of it’s not very fast, because it’s basically a streetcar.
Well yeah that’s true. Which is why you are supposed to have a mixed transit system where you can switch from rail, to the subway, to the street car accordingly. I won’t say its a replacement to a car on all occasions, but at least it doesn’t take up as much space. Be it roadways or parking space. Plus it is usually a stable enough platform you can read while traveling.
I do think to a large degree the traffic problem could be mitigated with autonomous cars and car pooling without major infrastructure costs though.
Light rail systems are very expensive to build for a host of reasons, one of the biggest being securing the right of way to build the tracks and related facilities. From what I’ve read, no light rail system built in the US for a very long time has been able to be financially self-supporting. They not only cost a fortune to build, they require subsidies forever to remain in operation. Musk’s hyperloop approach sidesteps the issue of obtaining the right of way at the expense of high tunneling costs.
Is there any large transit system which doesn’t require subsidies though? I mean roads require subsidies. People really neglect the costs involved in maintaining a highway. It can make even high speed rail seem cheap. As for right of way you can always pack a lot more people together in a mass transit system than having everyone bring their family car to the city to drive a single person there. The issue with cars is not just the right of way, it’s the parking space as well. Outside a city this is not an issue and the convenience of a car clearly outweighs other considerations particularly taking into account there isn’t enough people movement intensity to make a mass transit system viable. But on a city?
Private toll roads don’t require subsidies, and quite a few have appeared in southern California over the past couple decades.
In the US, roads and maintenance are supported by gas taxes. You could call that a subsidy, but it is of a different kind. It is not hidden, because drivers pay it every time they go to the pump. And, it is not open ended, because people can voluntarily pare down the miles driven in response to price signals.
Subsidies for mass transit do not have such immediate, stabilizing mechanisms, and can and often do sink into the boondoggle morass.
“Gas taxes and other fees paid by drivers now cover less than half of road construction and maintenance costs nationally – down from more than 70 percent in the 1960s – with the balance coming chiefly from income, sales and property taxes and other levies on general taxpayers.
General taxpayers at all levels of government now subsidize highway construction and maintenance to the tune of $69 billion per year – an amount exceeding the expenditure of general tax funds to support transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail combined.”
I do not know how accurate this is but I’ve heard similar comments elsewhere.
Hmm… OK, well, interesting to read. Which is to say, maybe. You never really know for sure how a single given source is massaging the data to get an outcome that in some way may be favorable to them. But, I will be more cautious in making the claim henceforward.
Roads are, or are supposed to be, paid for by fuel taxes. That isn’t a subsidy. Unfortunately, a lot of the fuel tax money is being diverted to other things like bike paths.
We are approaching a time when cities need to be designed from the ground up with a limited population. First find an isolated area near a major highway. Build multilevel parking lots off the freeway with 2 slots for every resident. A high speed subway moves people between transit hubs within the city. Slow speed people movers (like they had at Disneyland 50 years ago) take passengers and cargo to and from the hubs. Each city block is a single building. The bottom floors of each building are commercial space with residential space above. Roof tops are for swimming pools and parks. The airport is round (of course!) with a hub at it’s center. Skyways connect the rooftop parks.
I used to live on the 17th floor of an 18 floor building in Starrett city when the Concorde flew overhead into JFK twice a day. It was great. The planes were no bother at all.
It’s too bad there isn’t some technology that would allow people to work from home, or at least dispersed locations, using electronically transmitted text and video. Like some sort of information highway thingy that could replace physical highways.
It’s already happening…. Call centers have been pushing people home for years. Retail is slowly dying, people don’t want to go out into the world when they can either stay at home or be with friends and get their basics done.
I’m just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and realize that fiber to the home/curb is going to massively improve homeowner value overall….
Bart was being sarcastic.
Personally I hope we don’t all end up living our entire lives at home and traveling only via VR.
Moi? Well, pardon me for living under a rock for the past three decades. How was I to know?
I think that was in the Star Trek pilot episode wasn’t it?
Asimov’s “Caves of Steel.”
The problem with working at home (besides increased productivity that nobody notices) is office politicking backstabbers are free to destroy ya.
Nice try Ken, but Solaria was in “The Naked Sun”
Retail isn’t just dying, it’s plunging off a cliff. But not, I think, from people staying at home. They still go to the stores to look at stuff. Then, they go home and order it cheaper off the web.
I have been especially alarmed this past year watching several venerable stalwarts closing their doors. It’s been like attending the funerals of old friends.
I don’t see any solution, unless all the stores essentially become like Sam’s Club or Costco. Come and look all you like, but you have to pay up front to get in.
Once everyone works in their underwear, one pair of slacks each will be enough.
Well if put “tunnels” under the ocean surface- say around 50 meters, then earthquakes would be less of problem. And “digging” is less of problem.
Or I suppose you could float the tube in tunnels underground with water.
So one could have say,1000 ft segments which each are controlled independently in terms of their neutral buoyancy and location relative to each other. Or basically have a line of submarines which are connected and they have vacuum rather 1 atm of internal pressure.
Also they could designed to have a slight curve [in terms of the group of seqments rather one seqment], and become straighter or more curved if total distance is shorter or lengthened. Though that option wouldn’t work well with underground rather than using ocean real estate.
After posting, I goggled “effect of earthquake when in submarines”.
An interesting link was:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?37521-Three-submarines-damaged-by-earthquake
And the various replies in comment section.
My impression is one could engineer it to solve any potential problems due to earthquakes, but obviously one would need to do engineering tests, regarding it.
If the single party state Democrats can raise the taxes high enough, 80 percent of the population would move out and the freeways would once again be clear sailing.
I doubt Earthquakes would be a major problem, but crossing active fault lines could be a challenge.
So what’s wrong with light rail. You know, like LA used to have before it was congested. Even that would be cheaper than all the tunnels.
Rail goes from where you don’t want to be to where you don’t want to go, at a time when you don’t want to travel.
But, as mentioned above, this stuff is never going to happen because VR will soon make travel obsolete.
LA has light rail (again). A lot of it’s not very fast, because it’s basically a streetcar.
Well yeah that’s true. Which is why you are supposed to have a mixed transit system where you can switch from rail, to the subway, to the street car accordingly. I won’t say its a replacement to a car on all occasions, but at least it doesn’t take up as much space. Be it roadways or parking space. Plus it is usually a stable enough platform you can read while traveling.
I do think to a large degree the traffic problem could be mitigated with autonomous cars and car pooling without major infrastructure costs though.
Light rail systems are very expensive to build for a host of reasons, one of the biggest being securing the right of way to build the tracks and related facilities. From what I’ve read, no light rail system built in the US for a very long time has been able to be financially self-supporting. They not only cost a fortune to build, they require subsidies forever to remain in operation. Musk’s hyperloop approach sidesteps the issue of obtaining the right of way at the expense of high tunneling costs.
Is there any large transit system which doesn’t require subsidies though? I mean roads require subsidies. People really neglect the costs involved in maintaining a highway. It can make even high speed rail seem cheap. As for right of way you can always pack a lot more people together in a mass transit system than having everyone bring their family car to the city to drive a single person there. The issue with cars is not just the right of way, it’s the parking space as well. Outside a city this is not an issue and the convenience of a car clearly outweighs other considerations particularly taking into account there isn’t enough people movement intensity to make a mass transit system viable. But on a city?
Private toll roads don’t require subsidies, and quite a few have appeared in southern California over the past couple decades.
In the US, roads and maintenance are supported by gas taxes. You could call that a subsidy, but it is of a different kind. It is not hidden, because drivers pay it every time they go to the pump. And, it is not open ended, because people can voluntarily pare down the miles driven in response to price signals.
Subsidies for mass transit do not have such immediate, stabilizing mechanisms, and can and often do sink into the boondoggle morass.
http://uspirg.org/reports/usp/who-pays-roads
“Gas taxes and other fees paid by drivers now cover less than half of road construction and maintenance costs nationally – down from more than 70 percent in the 1960s – with the balance coming chiefly from income, sales and property taxes and other levies on general taxpayers.
General taxpayers at all levels of government now subsidize highway construction and maintenance to the tune of $69 billion per year – an amount exceeding the expenditure of general tax funds to support transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail combined.”
I do not know how accurate this is but I’ve heard similar comments elsewhere.
Hmm… OK, well, interesting to read. Which is to say, maybe. You never really know for sure how a single given source is massaging the data to get an outcome that in some way may be favorable to them. But, I will be more cautious in making the claim henceforward.
Roads are, or are supposed to be, paid for by fuel taxes. That isn’t a subsidy. Unfortunately, a lot of the fuel tax money is being diverted to other things like bike paths.
We are approaching a time when cities need to be designed from the ground up with a limited population. First find an isolated area near a major highway. Build multilevel parking lots off the freeway with 2 slots for every resident. A high speed subway moves people between transit hubs within the city. Slow speed people movers (like they had at Disneyland 50 years ago) take passengers and cargo to and from the hubs. Each city block is a single building. The bottom floors of each building are commercial space with residential space above. Roof tops are for swimming pools and parks. The airport is round (of course!) with a hub at it’s center. Skyways connect the rooftop parks.
I used to live on the 17th floor of an 18 floor building in Starrett city when the Concorde flew overhead into JFK twice a day. It was great. The planes were no bother at all.