scroll_lock's recent activity
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Comment on New California law overrules local zoning to boost housing in ~society
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Comment on New California law overrules local zoning to boost housing in ~society
scroll_lock (edited )Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral, mildly ticked off (at the state of the world, not any of you) Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none SB 79 allows developers to...Comment box
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SB 79 allows developers to build more dense or multifamily housing near transit lines. This can include owner-occupied condo units. Physically, there is no inherent difference between the footprint of a condo building and a renter apartment building. This legislation authorizes more of each.
The ratio of new condos to new rental buildings depends on market conditions and local regulations. Bafflingly, local municipalities may have more complex building requirements for condos than rental buildings. Maybe there are higher minimum parking requirements (almost always unscientific), maybe there are higher floor space requirements in anticipation of larger families, or maybe there's an onerous aesthetic review process for condos specifically.
These might ostensibly be to "protect" condo buyers from some perceived issue with typical modern construction or to establish some sort of higher minimum property value. This is because people buying condos are less economically sophisticated than institutional landlords. Local government may care more about condo buyers from a development that turns out to have a flaw (real or perceived) than institutional landlords (who likely aren't residents). They want to protect their voters. Okay, makes sense.
In extreme cases, this kind of regulation can disincentivize developers from building condos, and instead predispose them to rental buildings. Minimum parking requirements are probably the worst example of this. It is sometimes the case that a local government sets a higher MPR for a condo than a rental building because they expect or want "real [long-term] residents" to own cars, and renters (usually younger) not to. This can be well-intentioned or a way to discriminate against certain kinds of people who want to buy homes, such as poorer people who coincidentally don't own cars. In a multifamily building, a MPR requires either:
- An underground garage (extremely expensive to build, and/or takes space away from other amenities like gyms or individual storage units for residents)
- Allocating ground-level space to a parking garage (makes multi-use impossible, which can hurt neighborhood attractiveness and therefore reduce expected selling values)
- Allocating above-ground space to a parking garage (reduces sellable housing units). Remember that these buildings have height limits (again due to local preferences); developers can't just build higher to recoup the cost.
So, as usual, the excessive regulatory codification of the storage of private vehicles and the interests of entrenched local landowners discourage the building of the kind of housing people actually want. (The solution is to NOT REQUIRE PARKING for the majority of new construction and just let the market rate decide how much parking to build.)
Also, condo associations in the USA are extremely litigious. If you're a developer, there's a good chance you'll get sued by the condo HOA for the building you constructed! The statute of limitations is like a decade. You have to hope that the profit of building a condo exceeds the cost of litigation from picky people who live there. (Their litigation might be frivolous; it is still expensive and annoying to deal with.) Institutional developers can certainly also sue, but the kinds of things that condo owners sue over are likely to be much more minor. Renters don't care so much about minor defects because they don't plan to live there permanently, and only a few complaints get filtered through to the institutional owners anyway.
The other issue can just be a perceived market demand, which is mostly cultural. If developers culturally believe that people who want to buy property mostly want to do so in single-family homes in the suburbs, that's where they'll build housing. They can also come to this conclusion using statistical evidence, even if it's wrong or incomplete. If you look at the number of new residents in urban, suburban, and rural areas in the USA, suburban usually wins out. But that's not necessarily because all of those people actually want to live there, it just means that's where they can afford a house. And that's influenced by... government regulation restricting the construction of housing in more heavily urbanized areas. It's cheaper and always legal for developers to build SFHs in some exurb off the highway, so that's what they do, so that's what people can afford to buy, so that's how they structure their lifestyle, so that's what developers see demand for, so that's what they build more of... etc.
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Comment on LA Metro's K Line extension to Torrance in ~transport
scroll_lock LinkComment box Scope: information, summary Tone: neutral Opinion: I guess so Sarcasm/humor: none Nandert's (Nick Andert) analysis of the new Los Angeles Metro K extension. The line will eventually...Comment box
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Nandert's (Nick Andert) analysis of the new Los Angeles Metro K extension. The line will eventually run from Hollywood to the South Bay. He is a very knowledgeable transportation advocate.
If you live in LA, I encourage you to show up at Metro HQ on October 23 to support the project. Details in the video.
Local activism for environmentally friendly and economically beneficial transportation projects is always necessary to defeat uninformed NIMBY concerns.
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LA Metro's K Line extension to Torrance
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Comment on Donald Trump administration issues stop-work order for US offshore wind project in ~enviro
scroll_lock LinkComment box Scope: comment response, opinion Tone: snide Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Culture war grandstanding. TACO. The federal admin will back down just like they did in New York, lie or...Comment box
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Culture war grandstanding. TACO. The federal admin will back down just like they did in New York, lie or exaggerate about having won a negotiation, the base will cheer (or, more likely, not notice), and the media will move on.
This wind farm is a great project that I have been following since construction began. The worst-case scenario is that the company cannot connect the project to the grid until 2029. Unfortunate, but whatever. The rest of the world is still electrifying. US electricity bills will just be higher than they need to be.
Here's how you know this manufactured opposition won't last:
The administration’s subsequent consideration of rules to further restrict access to tax credits for wind and solar projects alarmed even some Republicans, prompting Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Utah Sen. John Curtis to place holds on Treasury nominees as they awaited the department’s formal guidance.
Clean energy is an economic benefit. Despite the pressure of the culture war, GOP politicians know that it benefits their constituents and are already having doubts about this maniacal fossil fuel obsession. The moment the media consensus declares the next American recession, you can be sure that they will be building wind and solar farms at a pace never before seen, because they'll ease up and let developers build anything: the most cost-effective energy system will be green.
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Comment on How “grid-forming inverters” are paving the way for 100% renewable energy in ~enviro
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Yes, they will. Corporations respond to profit incentives based on previous experience or speculation....Comment box
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Yes, they will. Corporations respond to profit incentives based on previous experience or speculation. Public companies have a statutory obligation to provide shareholder value. If it becomes more profitable to adopt clean energy technology, that's what they'll do. Almost all large energy companies are public.
Private corporations can be more capricious, but they are still for-profit.
Now, politicians are different. Politicians who hate clean energy for culture war reasons may legislatively enact financial incentives (tax breaks, etc) to keep it more profitable to burn fossil fuels than use solar panels. Then the corporations have no reason to switch to clean energy. But note that the politicians who benefit most from solar panels are actually in red states that otherwise have this whole culture wars animosity toward clean energy. Indiana etc have so much wind that the politicians there are less inclined to protect the fossil fuel industry if it'll hurt wind.
The biggest political opposition will be from entrenched petrostates whose economies and government both rely on oil for authority.
The bet I'd make is that clean energy technology can be made so much more efficient to deploy, scale, and maintain than fossil fuels that politicians and corporations (even in petrostates) have no recourse but to accept it. The extremely low upfront cost of solar makes it very attractive over large energy plants. Developments in modern geothermal tech are very similar to oil drilling and fracking with less risk for the corporation (not handling explosive chemicals anymore).
The biggest barrier in the US is probably local NIMBY opposition. State-level politicians will eventually all support clean energy development because it boosts economic growth. Local politicians, like private corporations, can get away with being capricious because they only answer to local stakeholders. They will try not to issue permits to clean energy projects. Mostly, this is an anti-development thing, not specifically anti-clean energy. But if clean energy is the cheapest kind of energy project (which is already almost always true), then making it easier to build all projects results in 90%+ clean energy projects. NEPA and other environmental laws are often weaponized by NIMBYs for ostensibly ecological reasons, but really they are just opposing all development, regardless of its overarching environmental benefits.
This is why solar is exciting to me personally, because it's so modular. It's easier to convince skeptical NIMBYs to let you add solar panels on your house than to add a field of them nearby. And once they see a few solar panels, suddenly they stop being this horrible evil thing, and they stop opposing larger developments quite as much.
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Comment on How “grid-forming inverters” are paving the way for 100% renewable energy in ~enviro
scroll_lock LinkComment box Scope: summary, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Accessible coverage of a technical solution to the electric grid stability problem of the transition...Comment box
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Accessible coverage of a technical solution to the electric grid stability problem of the transition to renewable energy.
Grid operators currently receive some slack from power plants that spin turbines—including the dirtiest fossil fuels. The turbines have inertia that ensures grid frequency is stable. Wind and solar energy don’t really have this feature, and an unstable frequency can crash the grid.
As with all things in the energy transition, very smart people are working on engineering solutions to this problem. Just Have a Think talks about how “grid-forming inverters” (as opposed to grid-following inverters) are being used successfully and at scale to maintain grid frequency stability with a highly renewable power mix.
Every day, more of our electricity is generated through clean sources. Solar (in particular) and wind are winning economically. Increasingly, the “silver linings” of fossil fuel power are shown to be unnecessary from a technical perspective.
Technology like this puts us on a great track for 100% renewable electricity generation.
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How “grid-forming inverters” are paving the way for 100% renewable energy
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Comment on Aerophobia is having a moment in ~health.mental
scroll_lock (edited )LinkComment box Scope: information, opinion Tone: wry at first, neutral mostly, later kind of pondering Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: there is 1 joke here I normally care about Facts and Logic, but if...Comment box
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I normally care about Facts and Logic, but if irrational aerophobia convinces people to fly less and take trains more, that has substantial environmental benefits. As vehicle electrification grows, even a mode shift to cars is an unequivocal enviro improvement. The number of lives saved due to fewer CO2 emissions due to this “irrational” decision is consequential. (Directly from asthma and other respiratory conditions and indirectly from the numerous forms of climate change happening.)
The net social mental health benefit to avoiding premature deaths is high!
The counterargument is that a mode shift to cars results in more traffic fatalities (~1.2m baseline global). This is true, but still outweighed by avoided climate deaths from not emitting so much CO2 (~8m baseline global), plus incalculable indirect deaths. (Any mode shift would be a fraction of each, but a roughly proportional one.)
I guess the response to this depends on how narrowly or broadly you think about mental health. Even if aerophobia is silly, and even if it’s indicative of a larger pattern of people being unable to reconcile numbers with emotions, in this case it happens to be something of a benefit. Personally, I won’t fight it.
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Comment on Today is Overshoot Day in ~enviro
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none That’s a reasonable concern. Keep in mind that climate scientists make predictions using...Comment box
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That’s a reasonable concern. Keep in mind that climate scientists make predictions using models based on past data. The overshoot chart seems to track largely with population growth and industrialization/QOL changes. That won’t necessarily continue.
Some animals, like coyotes, have the ability to change litter sizes according to their environmental conditions or stress. I don’t think humans have this ability biologically, but we emulate it economically.
Birth rates have dropped in industrialized countries for many reasons, but I think the biggest is that there’s less structural economic incentive to have children. It’s not like they’re going to help out on the family farm anymore; while children bring much emotional joy they are almost exclusively a financial expense and not an asset. Even later in life, parents are increasingly expected to manage their own retirements and live alone rather than being taken care of by children in a multigenerational household. Even one child is expensive and having several is a particular strain. Households can acquire even more capital if women work rather than taking care of children. It’s more efficient to spend capital on gaining more capital, rather than spending it on a child/labor. People still have children, but in industrialized places it is basically for fun/emotional fulfillment or by accident. And evidently it seems like having 1–2 children can provide most or all of those benefits without costing toooo much.
Inevitably this will result in population decline and therefore substantially less stress on earth’s resources. It is already happening locally in some countries and scientists seem to think that this will happen globally by around 2050–2080. The world will continue to industrialize and human labor will probably become less relevant in the economy as automation spreads and capital further establishes itself as the mechanism for financial prosperity, and tax policies are probably not going to be able to reverse it.
Environmentally, I think this means that we avoid some of the dreaded “tipping points.” No comment on how this affects culture.
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Comment on Today is Overshoot Day in ~enviro
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none While humans have been burning coal for a long time, the global population was low enough...Comment box
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While humans have been burning coal for a long time, the global population was low enough and resource use in general was low enough for most of that duration that the aggregate “overshoot” could have been negligible.
The population in 1970 was about 3.7 billion compared to over 8 billion today. In the 1970s far less of the world was industrialized than present, and even in industrialized places, absolute and per capita energy use was substantially lower.
Environmental destruction at that time was still occurring, and has occurred for most of human history, but the scale of our society and resource consumption now is on a different level!
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Comment on Steel reinvented: inside the world’s first plant to burn no fossil fuels [tour] in ~enviro
scroll_lock LinkComment box Scope: summary, information, opinion Tone: neutral at the beginning, optimistic throughout, a bit wry at the end Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: last paragraph is supposed to be a little...Comment box
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Rosie Barnes is an engineer in the renewable sector. "Engineering with Rosie" is her professional channel discussing clean energy technology.
One of the more difficult sectors to decarbonize is INDUSTRIAL HEAT, which is 18% of global emissions. the production of steel in heavy industry in particular is a big part of this. Steel is essential to our lives, including most machines and almost all structures (rebar in concrete). Modern steel-making is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, especially old blast furnaces. Electric arc furnaces can sustain high temperatures with much lower emissions, but the end-stages of steel production usually require burning something dirty and stinky and fossilized.
Barnes takes us through a steel facility by Ovako in Sweden which does away with the grime and manages to use basically completely renewable energy to produce steel. The key is using electric arc furnaces for the first stages of steel production and then hydrogen-powered reheating furnaces for rolling. Burning hydrogen produces only water and heat as waste. (They can also use liquid propane, or any combination of both, but the hydrogen isn't just a gimmick.) Hydrogen can be produced using fully renewable electricity.
Its a good thing to see this built and being used in practice. It demonstrates that full decarbonization is technically possible AND commercially viable.
Every day I wake up and someone has made it their life's mission to despair in a new way about the inevitable failure of renewable energy to defeat fossil fuels.....no thanks. Boring and primitive. As you people know, I am pretty confident that the energy [generation] transition is happening and will continue to happen, and also that electric vehicles will dominate within a decade or so. I am preparing to add industrial heat (at least for steel) to my Arsenal of Optimism, assuming I see this tech proliferate further among early adopters, which seems reasonable.
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Steel reinvented: inside the world’s first plant to burn no fossil fuels [tour]
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Comment on China's tech giant claims 1,800-mile range for new solid-state EV battery in ~transport
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation, inquiry Tone: neutral, explorative, curious Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none That’s a good comment. I wonder how monopolistic the gas...Comment box
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That’s a good comment. I wonder how monopolistic the gas station industry is? I mean, off the top of my head, I can think of about dozen gas brands on interstate highways… though I am not sure if they’re all independent.
At least where I live, there’s a reasonable amount of price variation station-to-station (not sure how they’re capable of that considering they’re all buying oil from the same global market, I think?)
In theory the federal government has the ability to break up monopolies. I am not sure if there is a special characteristic of EV charging that makes it resistant to that, or more resistant than gas.
I guess one could make the argument that electric charging is necessarily less monopolistic than gas fueling because electric power generation is much more decentralized than the oil industry, which seems to be a few giant political price-fixing blocs. (Whereas one can generate electricity in 5+ cost-competitive methods.) It’s not clear to me exactly how much that structural efficiency affects end-user costs.
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Comment on Why America built a forest from Canada to Texas in ~enviro
scroll_lock (edited )LinkComment box Scope: summary, information, takeaway Tone: neutral Opinion: final paragraph only Sarcasm/humor: none A video describing the New Deal project to create a protective “wall” of tree...Comment box
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A video describing the New Deal project to create a protective “wall” of tree shelterbelts for Dust Bowl farms in the 1930s and ‘40s. The benefits were great: increasing agricultural yields, reducing unhealthy and dangerous dust storms, and promoting ecological diversity.
This stuff needs oversight though. Without a bureaucracy to maintain healthy forests, private individuals rarely have the wherewithal to upkeep anything beyond the bare minimum (their crops themselves).
We’ve had nasty droughts since then, but the federal government agencies responsible for land management have done a relatively good job encouraging a minimum level of tree and shrub planting in conjunction with crops. As a result, the dust storms from the Depression haven’t been quite as much of an issue.
We should be striving to replicate these successes with additional sustainable agricultural practices to properly integrate humanity into the earth’s ecosystems, not stomp on them.
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Why America built a forest from Canada to Texas
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Comment on China's tech giant claims 1,800-mile range for new solid-state EV battery in ~transport
scroll_lock (edited )Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation Tone: neutral, explorative Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none If gas station density currently meets market demand, EV charging definitely...Comment box
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If gas station density currently meets market demand, EV charging definitely can. They serve the same overall market need (public vehicle fueling). With DC fast charging of only a few minutes, EV charging stations have a similar spatial requirement to gas stations.
You’re right that there’s a political element here too. My assumption is that there will be a certain point where constituents economically benefit enough from EVs specifically, as opposed to ICEs, that that problem handles itself. (This is a separate economic question from car-free/car-lite paradigms because adopting an EV is way easier than getting rid of a car altogether.)
Most development limitations in the US are the direct result of local permitting restrictions. In housing, we’re already seeing states take control of regional zoning (California etc) to increase market responsiveness to demand. EV charging land use is just a lagging version of that, because transportation is usually the 2nd or 3rd cost behind housing in most household budgets.
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Comment on China's tech giant claims 1,800-mile range for new solid-state EV battery in ~transport
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation Tone: neutral, explorative Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: dryly, a bit My suggestion is that the EV charging market is resilient enough to...Comment box
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My suggestion is that the EV charging market is resilient enough to manage itself. Whether it’s a flat cap or a market-based cap, it’s still an explicit auto subsidy vs. other energy uses. We would be better off with additional negative incentives for gas stations and gas-powered vehicle use.
To be honest I’m not sure that’s strictly necessary either, though it would speed things up a lot—I’m usually on the other side of the tech futurism bandwagon, arguing for policies and incentives, but the engineering simplicity of EVs and, as we see, rapidly increasing energy density per area and weight just leave ICEs in the dust.
Personally I am less interested in working on problems that already have the inertial weight of physics, industry, and technical media behind them, which EVs essentially do. It’s not literally solved yet, but it’s a ball rolling down a hill. The writing is on the wall, internationally; China’s industrial direction is electric and we’re going to be living in that world sooner than we think. In contrast, de-carifying our built environment is not even close to a solved problem in the United States and for the most part doesn’t benefit from those inertial forces as easily. Our policy efforts have to be designed accordingly.
With exceptions for edge cases, I don’t like legally mandating EV infrastructure as an incremental step toward car-free/car-lite cities because once a municipality makes that investment, it’s going to be unpopular to remove it. Just see how hard it currently is to remove free on-street parking even in highly transit-accessible neighborhoods. Once people feel entitled to a particular lifestyle amenity, they’re going to fight bitterly to retain it—even logically understanding the tragedy of the commons and recognizing the environmental and financial peril it puts our society in.
Mandating specific charging infrastructure by ZIP is a variation of zoning-based minimum parking requirements, which are generally antithetical to successful human civilization (see Shoup/Parking Reform Network). I see why they’re appealing, but American local governments are broadly structurally incapable of managing land use in a way that isn’t waaay ecologically destructive. It basically creates a new paradigm where charging (parking) is doubly enforced rather than one where it can be whittled away through better urban planning.
We can do this car incentive stuff now for EVs, but we have to undo it all in 10 years anyway. The activist organizing effort necessary for that is higher than getting it right the first time.
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Comment on China's tech giant claims 1,800-mile range for new solid-state EV battery in ~transport
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation Tone: neutral, explorative Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none The price should be market rate. Capping the price of charging-specific...Comment box
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The price should be market rate. Capping the price of charging-specific electricity is a car subsidy that incentivizes wasteful long-distance driving over other uses of electricity.
While EV adoption could slightly accelerate with such subsidies in the next 5–10 years, it will happen by itself. The technology is leaping forward at such astonishing rates that ICEs simply will not be economically viable within a decade. All consumers respond to pricing. (The American market’s obsession with oversized luxury vehicles will fade once the economic reality of the new world order sets in.)
Once a subsidy as broad as that goes in, assuming uptake is large, it’s probably never going away -too much political support from drivers. Because what politician will voluntarily raise the cost of [gas|electricity]? They’d have to be sneaky about it. Good luck.
Charging stations can presently raise prices because there is a relatively low supply of them on certain routes. But if you look at the Alternative Fuels Data Center datasets on charging trends, the number of public L2/DC charging ports is increasing by 5–8% every quarter. That’s stock market-level growth… but 3–4x as fast. When there is truly enough supply, prices will go own. If they don’t, tough—that means we’re already at equilibrium. Long-distance driving is more resource-intensive than short-distance and should be priced accordingly; the real cost per mile including externalities is definitely more than linear.
The end goal is ecological sustainability, and that’s only possible if people aren’t driving cars everywhere. They have their place, but it should really be a niche method of transport.
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Comment on Trains.FYI is a real-time map of passenger trains in North America in ~transport
scroll_lock Link ParentComment box Scope: comment response, opinion Tone: relatively neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none FWIW this map omits several datasets. It focuses on mainline/long-ish distance trains, mostly...Comment box
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FWIW this map omits several datasets. It focuses on mainline/long-ish distance trains, mostly Amtrak and suburban commuter trains, omitting many of the heavily utilized metro systems in the USA. (I think it’s missing some suburban systems too.)
For example, the NYC MTA is completely untracked, even though it’s the biggest and most active subway on the continent. NY/NJ PATH missing too. Most Philly SEPTA trains are untracked, heavy rail metros, light rail trollies, and the high-speed line, and also NJ PATCO. Los Angeles suburban Metrolink is tracked, but not the rather extensive subway. etc
There are lots of empty swaths of land with no trains on this map, but there are also zero people in much of that land area. By not tracking local trains (where people live), the situation seems worse than it really is. Trains don’t need to cover every inch of the continent.
But to your point, the US and Canada have absolutely dropped the ball on what is the most energy-efficient, space-efficient, and with modern technology time-efficient form of transportation for large numbers of people. In addition to mainstream obliviousness to transportation science (and subsequent reluctance to fund it), the Anglosphere and especially the USA are uniquely terrible at building transit. It’s not just political will, it’s also hardened professional incompetence, project bloat, and myopic national exceptionalism. Alon Levy’s Pedestrian Observations blog describes many of the reasons why in more depth and with more authority.
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I'm supportive of tenant rights...I know people who are very involved with organizing that. I don't fault condo owners for suing. Just observing that their ability to organize is still a deterrent for builders.
Organized labor in civil construction in general consistently has the same problem: unionized workers demand high wages, so the capital cost of constructing public works in union cities is extremely high. It's great for the workers, it just makes it difficult to build anything quickly because projects have high costs. I support the labor movement, but when people complain about why we don't have high-speed rail or whatever, that's a contributing factor. (Definitely not the most egregious... see analysis from Alon Levy)
Sound Transmission Class requirements in the USA are 50+, so that level of sound bleed shouldn't happen. For new construction, that building sounds shoddily constructed. Unfortunately, yes, many builders either hire incompetent laborers or scam their clients. Maybe construction wouldn't have cut so many corners if the developer hired union labor instead... but that's more expensive. :p
(I am empathetic toward your mom. I once lived in a unit with a window that couldn't shut, so the heat did not stay in, and exterior noise was constant. It was not pleasant and took years for the landlord to fix.)
Construction negligence has a similar SOL for rental properties as condos. In some jurisdictions it's longer.
The issue is more that renters don't care or don't realize that they can sue their landlords. Landlords themselves don't know or don't care about construction issues.
Pretty much all jurisdictions have minimum habitability requirements. Sometimes the tenant doesn't have to sue the landlord, they can just report it to the city and following claim approval (sometimes) they're allowed to withhold rent until the landlord fixes the issue.
This is what construction inspections are for. There are supposed to be inspections at every step. Your city's housing authority has an office of building inspectors who are supposed to evaluate foundational and framing work for alignment, among other things (like STC). There should be separate inspections for plumbing, electricity, HVAC, fire, etc.
If your city (or county) isn't doing this, or is doing a bad job, there are lots of reasons. The solutions are not easy. An underfunded housing authority is caused by municipal overspending and under-taxation, which is common. Many cities have too many unproductive roads to profitably maintain, and are reluctant to tax their residents more than the bare minimum. (Educated liberals always support higher taxes until they are being taxed more highly; then it is an injustice.) Of course some cities have such low property values that the tax base can barely sustain operations to begin with.
Or your building inspectors could suck at their jobs.
Taxes are very difficult and the intricacies of tax policy are outside my wheelhouse. Academics who study urbanism lately tend to favor something called the Land Value Tax (LVT), a part of Georgism economic philosophy, which is supposed to solve some of the issues with existing tax systems. I think that is federally considered unconstitutional, but states can levy it. Pennsylvania has done this in a few cities, but like most housing policies it needs to be statewide to be particularly effective. Most places also tax improvements (not just land value), which discourages building, unless the improvement tax rate is lower than the LVT, which I think works.