Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "Undecided with Matt Ferrell" channel.

@matthewbergeron3641 "A line makes transportation significantly better, both for transportibng people, but also materials and energy." Quite the opposite. A line maximizes the average distance between two points. It's the worst possible layout for transportation.
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@amerlad Grids are good. The problem with American cities is car dependency, not grid layout.
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@CSpottsGaming How much is that a help in practice? A train has to make frequent stops all along the way so that every part of the city is reachable. The average speeds are probably not that high and the stops mean that hopping from one vehicle to another doesn't add that much additional time.
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"Making cities long and skinny kind of makes sense in a way?" I don't think it does. It maximizes distances within the city. It's the worst possible layout. There's a reason why existing towns and cities aren't long and skinny except when e.g. restricted to a narrow valley.
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USA does still build ambitious projects. There's e.g. the high-speed rail under construction in California. You might point to it as a failure but even it is a resounding success compared to this monstrosity if the Saudis really go for it (which I doubt).
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@George Mann "Think of it as a sequence of small towns with a central transportation & utility core." If you want to develop a bunch of small towns it would more sense to arrange them in a 2D grid rather than a 1D line. With 2D grid the average distances between those towns are greatly reduced.
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@George Mann "although there is an optimal balance" I'm pretty sure 170 km line is not that.
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The salt comes from the ocean to begin with so it doesn't raise the average salinity. However, it can raise the salinity in the immediate vicinity by a lot which can be damaging for the local ecosystem.
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That makes no sense. You should give up if you realize your idea doesn't work.
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How would that work?
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@nathanchildress5596 "SF, LA, NY, London, Paris, or any other huge city is already an abysmal failure" How are they failures? People are clearly willing to pay a lot to live in those places.
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Line seems like the worst possible layout. It maximizes distances within the city.
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@tehice23 I would think that even with future technology it wouldn't make sense to make it so long and thin. Wouldn't it be better to e.g. have two lines next to each other. Then they could be half the length (for a given city size) which would cut down travel times by a lot.
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@tehice23 I don't think the price of the "spine" changes things. If it costs X amount of dollars (or rather riyals) per km then there shouldn't be much difference between one long spine or two shorter ones. To be honest, I don't think even the half-length double-wide city would be that good either. It would still be long which increases distances. It was more just to argue that moving away from the long and thin layout would be improvement. I think the best layout would rather be just a square or a circle or something like that. You could have a grid of such "spines" in both directions and they wouldn't have to be super fast because distances are minimized for a given city size. I don't think the idea of using high-speed rail or maglev would save the idea of a linear city. The train would need to make frequent stops to ensure all sections of the city are reachable but that would inevitably bring the average speeds down. A linear town could work if it's not too large but for a large city a linear layout seems to be the worst possible one because it maximizes distances.
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I have a better idea. They could put 2 lines of half the length side by side. Commute lengths would almost be halved on average. It could be improver further by putting 3 or more lines side by side with connections between the lines, not just along them. The optimum layout would be reached where the whole thing would be as wide as it is long. The average distances are minimized and even much slower transport is just as viable without any longer commute times. Transport could be done by regular trams and buses and some metro lines. These could use already existing technology so they could be much cheaper.
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7:25 What's the point of extracting water from the air if you're already going to have a desalination plant?
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The model that's most fair (and giving the best incentives) is such that there's a fixed subscription fee that covers the capital and maintenance cost of the electric grid and then the electricity price should be the market spot price plus a small comission (and for any electricity from solar panels that's fed into the grid the consumer should be paid the spot price minus a small commission).
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@Br3ttM There's no requirement to think about them, your bill just might be a bit higher as a result.
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Not to mention that a linear layout would maximize average distances within the city.
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Why didn't you address the proposed layout of the city? A long thin line seems like the worst possible layout. The average distance between 2 random points in the city is maximized.
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"But because aluminium is so light weight, that equivalent weight battery would be GIGANTIC in the space it takes up." That logic does not hold. Aluminiun is about 5 times denser than lithium. By this logic it would be the lithium-ion batteries that would be gigantic, not aluminium-air batteries. "The more realistic scenario would be a car with an aluminium battery of the same energy capacity as lith-ion, and probably taking up the same sized space [...] but simply lighter weight." No, aluminium carries a lot of energy so for a given amount of capacity it would be both smaller and lighter than a lithium-ion battery.
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@MrBasteDoNotWaste "It makes it easier to adopt public transport because commutes are one dimensional instead of two dimensional" I don't see how it makes public transport easier. You can easily do public transport in a two-dimensional city. Many cities around the world do it. A linear layout maximizes average distances within the city so it seems like the worst possible layout. Everyone's commute will be as long as it can be (whether it's by car or public transport).
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@MrBasteDoNotWaste "If the city is barely large enough to support one long metro line across the city, it does make a difference." I don't think this argument holds water. A linear city might only need one line but for a given size for the city that line needs to be much longer so it's not clear to me that it's any cheaper than multiple shorter lines. Also, in a linear city travel times would be longer due to longer distances.
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@MrBasteDoNotWaste "Ultimately what matters is how many people live within, say, 10 minutes within a station" You can do that without making the city linear. Just build stations densely enough. "If a person can get from any place one city of the city to any place at other side of the city in 35 minutes using public transit, I consider that a success" For a 170 km line that would mean average speed in excess of 290 km/h. For going from one end to the other without any stops along the way this would be possible with high speed trains (Shinkansen and TGV use speeds of 320 km/h). However, not making any stops along the way is not realistic because it's not only the people at the ends that would need to travel. With stops such average speed is not realistic. With circle or square shaped city of the same size that time can be achieved with much cheaper systems. No high speed rail required.
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@MrBasteDoNotWaste "A line can be a series of round towns connected by a train." If one wants to develop a bunch of towns they can also be arranged in a 2D grid instead of a 1D line. That way the distances between the towns would be greatly reduced.
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@MrBasteDoNotWaste That could potentially be a lot more difficult than just choosing a different layout for a city or a cluster of towns. If they Saudis were planning some kind of arcology, I might be more optimistic about how much it's going to make economics sense, but that would depend a lot on the details.
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How would the spent batteries be recycled?
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