Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "City Beautiful"
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@CityBeautiful Often, when you get a comment like this, it's because part of the/a border is disputed, and you used a map that either predates the dispute, or that shows it as if it had been resolved one way or the other. When that is the case, the complaint is, pretty much without fail, from someone living in the country on the side of the dispute the map does not favour.
Not helped by google maps delivering each side of the dispute a map which corresponds to what their government says the map Should be, and everyone else a map either indicating that the area is disputed, a border based on something like the current points at which border guards will stop you when you try to cross, the pre-dispute border, or something else entirely (and being unreliable about which they use).
Given that this individual didn't say what was wrong with the map, and the phrasing, I'd assume the above to be the case, then ignore it and move on, as swapping the map (or anything of that nature) will just get the same complaint from the other side.
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For reference, the London underground railways weren't yet 'the tube system' at the time, as they didn't yet include any of the deep level tubes from which they got that name, which were added later (after tunnel boring was a thing. All the earlier 'sub surface lines' were built using cut-and-cover: Dig a whole to where you want the bottom of your tunnel, then build a roof over it and cover it back up).
Properly speaking only the actual deep level tube lines are 'the tube', at least in theory... but in practice no one actually cares about that distinction outside of contexts like this (where it's an anachronism issue), trivia quizzes and the like, and the occasional pedantic twit, so the entire tunnel system gets called 'the tube' anyway.
Cut and cover construction also meant that the London underground (though not the later deep level tube lines) mostly had to conform to the streets, because diverging from the streets involved demolishing the buildings the line would pass under. Which usually wasn't exactly practical.
(edit: Ahh, you mentioned some of this later).
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@FCVP71 actual court ruling in at least one state, and I forget which one it was but the case was interesting as they ended up digging up pre revolution British law as precident: unlawful arrest is functionally kidnapping and you are not only legally within your rights to resist, but aren't liable for injury or property damage caused in the doing unless said damage or injury was intentional, excessive, and obviously unnecessary. And maybe not even then, given that precident on the matter in question in that case was that no punishment at all was levied unless deaths occurred, and even then the crime was manslaughter, never murder.
The details of what was or wasn't permitted outside of property damage weren't part of the particular case, so other rulings about injury and such might apply, but Very Specifically, if wrongfully arrested there was no point prior to you being released where you were not fully within your rights to take any and every not otherwise forbidden action to escape. Further, not having actually been Arrested (because that requires that the action of arresting you be in compliance with the law), you can't legitimately be charged with (and certainly can't be found guilty of) Resisting arrest.
Consult your own state's law and an actual lawyer before acting on that though, a lot of states absolutely have passed laws to the contrary (despite questionable compliance with state and/or federal constitutions in some instances and the blatantly unjust curtailment of liberty that results).
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Question though: what's the difference between a gas station with a pub, and a pub with chargers for customer use in the parking lot?
I mean, you've got a point, obviously, but with the change in infrastructure, the difference becomes a bit arbratrary.
Also, how is one defining a Pub? Because in some times and places it's meant a full inn, or small hotel, that is licensed to sell alcohol. And/or a restaurant (which, depending on the neighborhood and thus clientele, it's perfectly reasonable to take your kids to, at least once they're old enough that one can reasonabley expect them to behave well enough not to bother the other patrons). Not necessarily something you want at a highway rest stop (unless it has much stricter licensing terms regarding who gets served how much under what circumstances, at least), but other wise quite reasonable.
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And, of course, the trains feed customers into those shopping centres, without which said shopping centres wouldn't generate anywhere near as much money (similar to how actually profitiable-by-ticket-sales rail lines only manage that due to all the "unprofitable" transit (rail and other) lines feeding into them). And, of course, rail systems subsidised, or straight up paid for, by taxes do actually turn a profit (if they're actually built and run half way well), just not in ticket sales. A well built and well run transportation network (rail included) generates substantial additional economic activity, and thus increased Tax Take. Generally well beyond what it costs the taxpayer to build and run the thing. The issue, of course, is that fairs high enough to make the trains profitable Directly are also generally high enough to discourage ridership and thus negatively impact the increased economic activity, and thus taxes.
Of course, if the government can convince a private entity to pay the costs of the railway instead, the government Still gets that extra tax income... bad if the private entity is trying to be profitable on ticket sales alone (because, again, questionably even Possible), but if the company in question has Also figured out that the profit isn't in the tickets, but in the resulting Commerce, and can make their money that way, well, that works out Really Nicely for the government.
On the other hand, selling off a perfectly functional government owned transportation network to private interests who think they're going to make money On The Tickets is a great way to cease having a functional transportation network. Freight tends to last longer than passengers, and particularly harsh company/service specific infrastrucutre regulations can slow the rot somewhat, but there are always perverse incentives to do things that make the network worse (Asset stripping once they realise there's no profit in tickets... or even as the plan from day one, being one of the big risks. Self sabotage to get out of legislated minimum levels of service is another one).
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New Zealand has a similar law: if you're within 20 (I think it is) metres of an intersection (regardless of how the intersection is controlled) or a marked pedestrian crossing, you are supposed to go the extra 20m and cross there. Also, you are supposed to cross at right angles to the road, not at a diagonal or in some weird arc or whatever.
So far as I'm aware though, the only Enforcement of this law (I base this in part on how the kids at my highschool crossed rush hour traffic right outside a police station pretty much every morning without even a friendly reminder that it wasn't the best idea for my whole time there and years before and after) is that in the event of an accident, if the pedestrian is breaking said law (or is it just a regulation?) the driver of the vehicle (and their insurance company) is only guilty of/liable for, at most, failure to avoid an accident, and usually not even that (assuming they don't just drive off rather than stopping to resolve things, which is its own crime). If the pedestrian was following the law correctly, the driver (and their insurance company) is looking at much bigger problems.
Mind you, it's supposed to be the pedestrian's responcability to not step out in front of cars when there isn't a big enough gap in the traffic to start with, but humans (on foot or in vehicles) do many dumb things on a regular basis.
The reason for that rule, at intersections is that if the pedestrian is closer to, but not at, the intersection, they often can't see a car coming from the side roads, and the driver can't see the pedestrian until after they've turned, at which point there's generally not time for them to notice, then react, and then for the car to actually Stop before the pedestrian's already been hit.
It got extended to pedestrian crossings probably mostly to keep the rules consistent combined with encouraging one not being a inconsiderate arse. (Cars already have to stop for pedestrians that are on the crossing (though pedestrians aren't supposed to start crossing unless there is either a gap like usual or the cars are already stopped for a preceding pedestrian. Of course, these days the crossings frequently have traffic lights like the intersections rather than just road markings and warning signs.)
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@angelsy1975 the 'evil bad king' wasn't even all that evil and bad... just sufficiently incompetent that the democratically (for the day) elected parliament mostly bypassed him and did stuff without his input. The colonsists actually revolted against taxation in general (no, not lack of representation, that was propaganda that came later). Twice, actually. First was a one off levy to cover the portion of the cost of a war incured by the troops stationed to defend the colonies it was being levied against (note: they were only being charged a fraction of the amount it cost to maintain those troops, and only for the time the war was actually happening). ... it is worth noting that that war, despite being global in scale between the British and French empires... started over the very american colonists who were revolting over this tax raiding their french neighbours for their own enrichment. (ok, probably not the exact same individuals, but certainly people in their social circles).
Organized refusal to pay tax is a revolt, but that tax was only instituted because the British govenrment was kinda broke due to the war. So when the First revolt happend, they didn't do the usual (expensive) thing of sending troops to round the revolters and execute/buy off the leaderships and otherwise break the revolt... they cancled the levy that was being protested against... and instead implemented the stamp tax. Which was a tax on imports and exports, collected at the ports, that they could actually enforce. It was high enough to be punative, too... which STILL left the colonists paying the lowest taxes of basically anyone worth the effort of taxing in the British Empire of the day (and, for that matter, most other European Empires as well.)
That was what the revolutionary war was fought over. (and, in fact, that was what a whole lot of arson, murder, and general terrorism was commited over, resulting in most of the surviving loyalists (loyalists being about a third of the population) fleeing to what became Canada.
The idea of represenation came up later when someone realised that parliament was never going to agree to 'no taxes, ever, under any circumstances' without actual MPs in parliament making deals on the colonists' behalf to get that. (in reality it Still wouldn't have worked, becuase it was Idiotic), and the first time it was written down was AFTER the fighting had already started, and only entered the public eye as recruitment propaganda for the rebels.
The king's only contribution to the whole mess was a letter that basicaly amounted to 'revolts and not paying taxes are bad. Don't do that.' He otherwise trusted his advisors (members of parliament) when they said they had things handled.
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if by 'very often' you mean 'very rarely' except when corruption and incompetence screw up the implementation, sure.
Well, no, let me correct that, you do need to be a bit careful about the specifics with high density. Medium density, however, is another matter, being the default state for cities for pretty much as long as they've existed (and for centuries the problems with it were mostly down to just not building sewers, and went away when that was fixed) as low density, exclusively single family home, suburban sprawl has been proven, over and over and over, to be an utterly terrible idea that needs to go die in a fire.
Sure, it has known and predictable issues that need to be taken into account... but they have known and entirely viable solutions, too.
Like, yeah, you've got to take the psychological factors into account and be sure to include sufficient green space and recreational areas and so on. Failure to do so will cause problems. But again, known problems with known solutions.
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@michaelmichael2382 this is true, though grass (at least as used in most lawns) should be a much lower priority than it is.
Also, When you water it is super important. Late evening is best. (No risk of the droplets causing lensing effects that damage the plants, And far less water is lost to evaporation.)
Also, most other countries have less lawns than the USA, at least in areas that don't get enough rain to support the grass naturally. More proper farmland or high density housing, less suburban sprawl dumping huge amounts of water into unproductive uses like keeping the lawn green in the hottest part of the year (grass can, generally, survive the dry and heat of summer (in climates where summer is fairly dry), its leaves just go brown and dead in the meantime. But that doesn't look nice, so for maintaining lawns enough extra water is expended to simulate spring and autumn rains. Which is very wasteful.)
Watering the plants that will actually die otherwise is perfectly reasonable (well, unless you've chosen Particularly unsuitable plants), likewise for food crops. Lawns, though, are mostly pure vanity, and in climates that don't naturally support them, utterly wasteful.
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@TheAmericanCatholic pretty sure no one has a problem with waste Heat that is incidentally from a nuclear plant. The 'anti nuclear crowd', that part with any actual influence anyway, is generally rather more concerned with the downsides of putting a nuclear plant anywhere near a population centre in the first place.
And the ones making actually sensible arguments are fully aware that a properly functioning and maintained nuclear plant is actually Less dangerous, radiation wise, than a coal plant in the same condition (they don't want Those anywhere near population centres Either), the concern is that if a Coal plant fails... you get a steam explosion and a fire. Bad, but design can render the explosion sufficiently non dangerous to the surrounding area, and a fire is a fire, cities have to deal with those anyway, and have been forever. You take what measures you can to prevent it then send in the firefighters to deal with anything that overcomes it.
A nuclear plant failing is rather more catastrophic.
Yes, yes, make all the arguments you like about modern nuclear plants not failing ... they always end in 'so long as the people in charge (and certain key workers) aren't the sort of idiots who disable important safety features or refuse to pay for necessary upgrades or maintenance' which basically invalidates the entire argument because it doesn't matter if it's a corporation or a government entity, that absolutely WILL happen eventually. Too many perverse inscentives encouraging it. And that's before acounting for potential sabotage.
At this point, if you found a practical way to stick a nuclear plant on essentially a raft sufficiently far out to sea (and somewhere suitable wind wise) while still getting the power back for use (and built it with all appropriate safety measures etc.), very few people would actually have a problem with it (well, in and of itself. Political propaganda is always a thing one needs to account for). And a few countries have enough empty space and suitable geography (without endangered species that people care about living there) that would be equally suitable.
But no one half way aware of how humans work wants one anywhere near where they live, work, etc., and it's not just NIMBYism or ignorant fear of nuclear power in general. It's more similar to how people often don't want to live down stream of hydroelectric plants (well, maybe WAY down stream).
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Even taking transmission loss into account, you're still making gains on miles-to-polution-generated by switching to electric, even using Coal plants, which are pretty awful, due to scaling factors in the generation process. Heck, if I understand correctly, just dumping the fuel that would have gone into car engines into a properly designed power plant instead of an individual engine per vehicle would make a huge difference. (Bad as it is, it's better than coal!)
Microgeneration actually loses some of those benefits again. Photovoltaic cells have the same disposal issue as batteries (well, different chemicals, same problem though). Wind is not particularly reliable in most places. Nuclear has a Lot of issues surrounding the existence of nuclear weapons to deal with (both the desire for the military to have materials for nuclear weapons, and the desire to then Not let anyone Else have said materials, for obvious reasons), and has the issue that, if an accident Does occur, about the only thing worse, depending how you measure it, is being directly down stream from a hydro electric dam that has just suffered a catastrophic failure. Now, obviously, this is vanishingly unlikely with a properly designed, built, maintained, and protected power plant... But really, the USA can't even maintain its highways, bridges, and storm drains reliably. It's far from unheard of to be able to get into the secure parts of nuclear missile silos by pretending to be a pizza delivery guy.
For most people, that sort of thing seems like a bad gamble the odds of failure are low, but not zero, and the consequences extreme. Mind you, if anyone ever cracks a practical Fusion generator (rather than fission), it's my understanding that most of the catastrophic failure states become much less... Catastrophic... For the surrounding... Er... Everything. (On an interesting side note, on a day to day basis, Coal plants irradiate their surroundings more than nuclear plants do, as they have little or nothing in the way of measures to actually prevent this.)
Improvements are, obviously, always desirable, of course.
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Depends on who's in charge of it and how competent they are... Private companies provided a subsidy and insufficient regulation are strongly incentivized to keep the service quality as shit as possible while still justifying ever increasing fares and subsidies. On the other hand, without the subsidies most infrastructure simply isn't profitable. Government run infrastructure doesn't have that particular set of problems, though it does have its own (being jerked around by politicians looking to score points rather than provide effective service, poorly thought out budget reallocations, or having people put in charge who are don't know what they're doing (even more so than people in private business who will generally at least know how to run a business in general, if not that particular service... ) The thing about key infrastructure, is that it's not really possible to just Not Use It, so you can't 'vote with your wallet' if the service is bad enough. You Can vote with your ballot if the government controls it though. ... Of course, this assumes your Government's actually any good, unlike the US's utterly impractical federal government (Chief problem isn't that it's oversized, it's that the entity it's trying to RUN is too big for the way it's trying to do it) and/or often hopelessly corrupt state governments...
So, yeah, state vs private is mostly a matter of 'how well can you trust your government to properly regulate a private entity?' vs 'how well can you trust your government to actually run the thing competently itself?' when it comes to public infrastructure such as mass transit... also power, water, telecommunications, the postal service, etc.
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Of you can do what is done where I live (not the usa) and a number of other places:
Zoning is baseline. What is written in the zoning isn't the be all and end all of what can be done with the land, but rather lists only what you can do without consulting anyone else (and maybe a few things which are absolutely forbidden), everything else you have to go through the local government, who will look at what you're trying to do, where you're trying to do it, and what the neighbours have to say about it. Depending on what you're trying to do, they might just say no, but most of the time they'll present you with a list of requirements and restrictions. If you can find a way to do what you're trying to do within those requirements and restrictions, then you can do it, otherwise you can't. The neighbours don't usually get to just straight up veto things, so NIMBYs aren't as powerful as they might be, but if enough of them have enough significant, legitimate issues, it can still prevent a given plan from being carried out. (also, much as I say 'the neighbours', it's actually more like 'those in the surrounding area that the local government thinks will actually be affected, with how that is determined varying a bit based on the type of thing you're trying to do, among other things).
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when you start taking into account all relevant factors... Well, your entire premise regarding transit is mislead. Busses are actively the Worst form of public transit (edit: ok, this discounts taxis as public transit, and 'worst' isn't Quite the right word). Better than nothing, entirely suited for situations where density is too low to support anything better and 'last mile' transit from stations where density isn't high enough to justify tram stops within a 10 minute walk of basically everywhere.
The simple fact is, cost to benefit (both direct and knock-on, because when the transit is run by the relevant government entities, a surprisingly large number of 'unprofitable' services actually improve economic conditions such that they boost the tax take by more than they cost to run, even if it's impossible for them to turn a profit in terms of ticket sales), If you have enough riders to support them (and yes, density is a significant contributing factor), trams and full railways are absolutely better.
Now, here's the thing about subways: They are the single most expensive form of transit there is to build. Not necessarily to Operate (which is a very important thing to keep in mind and a significant part of what lets buses down). Frankly, you shouldn't be building them at all except in the dense urban core where surface lines are non-viable. Elevated rail lines come with most of the benefits at substantially less cost. ... provided you're willing to give the NIMBYs the boot to the head they deserve rather than caving to them (because, seriously, somehow city and state government can just ignore legitimate concerns at will for projects that offer little or no actual benefit and have glaring flaws willy nilly, but highly beneficial projects with little or no Legitimate reason not to proceed implode or have their costs absolutely baloon if a NIMBY so much as breaths on them, it's absurd...). Surface rail is even better still, when the current state of things allows it.
Also, BRT: Kind of a scam.
Like, not really, but kind of.
Basically, every feature of a BRT will improve a regular bus service if applied as appropriate... but if you build a whole new BRT from scratch... you basically just spent 80+% of the cost of building a proper tram system, on a system that has significantly higher operating costs, produces more pollution, gives a less comfortable ride, and has lower capacity... With the added bonus that, if you've built it anywhere the expense was actually justified by the ridership... you're going to have to replace it with a tram system in short order Anyway, because it's rapidly going to suffer from it's own success and need a capacity boost that can't be attained otherwise. ... And if you built it to the requirements of the buses, rather than the inevitable trams (and of course you did, let's not kid ourselves here) the resulting Tram service is going to be terrible to.
Which is to say, most bus services could be improved by adding BRT elements where suitable, but if you're considering Building a dedicated BRT system from scratch as your public transit solution... Just save everyone a tonne of time, money, effort, and service disruption and just build a tram in the first place.
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