Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "The Simple Genius of the Interstate Highway System" video.

Would we also be using exactly one lane of a three-lane freeway? 😂
11
Solution: Turn inner city freeways into rights of way for metro lines and wide pedestrian/bike paths. Build mixed-use lots and local-only roads on whatever's left.
7
@knoahbody69 Freight makes money, that's why cargo airliners are likewise profitable compared to their cabin crew counterparts. Passengers and mail only pay so much compared to dumb pallets of bulk goods.
5
@samd3497 Proper forest management isn't that expensive, and ironically involves burning more just in an intentional and controlled way which reduces overall fuel. It's a relatively recent concept to ask our local Indian tribes how they used to do deliberate burns in their former homelands (often done to promote the growth of certain plants).
5
I think China would have had a similar explosion of durable commerce had it not half-arsed the HSR lines; passengers and mail only pay so much, cargo is far more profitable. Imagine if those all those viaducts were beefy quad tracks carrying bidirectional freight while G trains blow past them 🚄🚂
4
I metricated myself back in high school, learning meters right as I began driving; It helps that playing football I can easily visualize what 100m looks like (about the distance from goal line to opposite goal post). Describing things in kg, L, and °C also became intuitive, since they were originally based on the properties of pure water. Really the only thing I'm working on is pressure, since measuring in psi is relatively consistent whereas metric seems to be divided into kPa, bar, and mmHg.
3
For full autobahn speeds we're best if we also had Germany level driver training: a day of first aid, a week or two at school, written and practical tests that last an hour each, and a probation period with a 0.00 BAC limit. Just like how states couldn't be trusted with the standards of a national road network, raised driver education policies would have to be federally mandated and enforced too.
2
They've been tweaked over time to accommodate metrication, but it's true so many post-war standards from bullet sizes to shipping containers to IP packets originated as American inventions.
2
That basically involved higher taxes and common goals, unlike what selfish libertarian social conservatives advocate for nowadays as they oppose similar national projects and pitch that individuals are always more wise than entire institutions.
2
I believe American commerce can boom again if we commit to a national project making publicly-owned fiber optic connections nearly as ubiquitous as paved roads. South Korea basically did this and they enjoy the fastest internet in the world for hardly any money out of pocket, and the UK has great success in renting throughput to ISPs instead of letting them own the lines (i.e. access) too like Comcast/Cox/AT&T does here. It wouldn't be nearly as disruptive as building freeways either. You can fit a lot of fiber in a 1" pipe, and switching stations wouldn't be bigger than a garage (HVAC and backup generator included).
1
No but plenty of U.S. roads are still winding paths with at grade crossings. That's exactly what the Interstate network sought to supplant.
1
Also fun fact: The Interstate number origin is intentionally opposite that of the US Highway System -- US-1 is on the East Coast going to US-101 on the West, while I-5 is on the West and I-99 is on the East; also applies to the even numbers going up/down the country.
1
That also means a greater harmonization of economic wants, since most drivers were only stopping by out of necessity and not desire. If anything the freeways simply facilitated more collection of people into the big cities, which has been the trend for all of human civilization.
1
The Interstates were built more comprehensively earlier. If anything it proved the benefits of spending so much on a nationwide high speed road network, and those who followed benefitted from falling costs of constructing the required tunnels and viaducts.
1
California's HSR would have made way more sense if it just used the basically empty median on I-5 with a separate bus/rental car connection to the destination cities (much like newer airports today) while waiting for the communities to grow towards the station. But no, some idiot politicians decided to hamfist a more expensive route.
1
Back then, it'd be over $500b in today's dollars -- and that's with the discount of cheaper land, labor, and litigations of the past.
1
The highways were designed for transportation flexibility, and built before we realized we were overcapacity on Earth's ability to recycle our waste. But arguably because the rights of way are already there, we could convert the median and maybe a lane in each direction to accommodate a more energy efficient rail network to all the places the people and goods were going anyway.
1
@artilleryisbetter No but still rising home prices means CA isn't have trouble finding people willing to pay its taxes.
1
There's also the rail companies, who were infamously not saints themselves. The regulations that limited their competitiveness as car and plane travel rose were instituted decades before for a reason.
1