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  1. Comment on What are your predictions for 2026? in ~talk

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, personal perspective Tone: dryly humorous, borderline serious/unserious Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: sarcastic I was being facetious. Well, actually it was not...
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    I was being facetious. Well, actually it was not that facetious. 3 acquaintances were killed this year from car crashes, this happens every year. It's people you know, bartenders and community leaders who deserve to live but die anyway because of this city's lame infrastructure. I could be next, it's impossible to predict.

    Other than the willful disregard for human life exhibited by drivers on a daily basis, patronage and bribery in city council, the state government's crusade to destroy our transit system, and the downtrodden homeless opioid addicts lining the streets, there is nothing too objectionable about this place.

    The nice neighborhoods are actually very, very nice. I just don't live in them. The city is perfectly charming to normal people, especially those not involved in politics. It's actually a much better place to live than most American cities. It's affordable and has good amenities. However It's stratified and culturally resigned.

    I am not in a position to move to a different city. Frankly I do not mind the experience of living here so much, I would be nearly as grumpy anywhere else. My grumpiness comes from the intransigence of inexplicably stupid people who are somehow very powerful, the selfishness of privileged residents who sue the city whenever it tries to improve infrastructure and the entitlement of people in vehicles. And that exists everywhere. So whatever.

    If I were to move somewhere else it would be to an uninhabited island (with no cars) where I could watch football with my dog (that i don't have) in peace.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on What are your predictions for 2026? in ~talk

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    Comment box Scope: predictions Tone: dryly humorous Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: present 2026 predictions: ENERGY: (9/10) Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale solar PV will...
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    2026 predictions:

    ENERGY:

    • (9/10) Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale solar PV will globally decrease such that the most expensive PV will still be cheaper than the least expensive coal or gas plant: under ~$50/MWh. Going off public reports and private reports
    • (8/10) Modern geothermal energy increases by 1-5% in market share but continues to make up a small portion of total generation share.
    • (6/10) Chinese carbon emissions peak or decline, or if final data is unavailable, show stronger signs of that.

    TRAIN/TRANSPORT:

    • (9/10) Portal North Bridge first track is operational
    • (8/10) Brightline West construction continues, but delivery is delayed another 6-12 months
    • (8/10) Amtrak breaks Northeast Corridor ridership records again.
    • (7/10) CAHSR loses the court case against the federal government and does not receive the $3 billion grants the admin has rescinded, but appeals the decision.
    • (7/10) National traffic fatalities worsen or stay flat
    • (6/10) Waymo begins proper driverless operations in New York City and at least 1 other midsize or major city

    MISC

    • (6/10) US recession declared in some way
    • (6/10) Substantial white-collar layoffs from AI, especially programming as the AIs get much better
    • (5/10) Seahawks win superbowl
    • (1/25000) Discover alien life

    PERSONAL:

    • (9/10) Pay off credit card debt completely. And (10/10) Have other debt still but get it down
    • (8/10) Retain job through the year
    • (6/10) Remain in this godforsaken city
    • (5/10) Foot injury, eye problems

    Last year, I correctly predicted that I would lose my income/employment, receive a lower back injury, continue to live in this godforsaken city, and still not have a pet. I suspect I was also correct in predicting the decline of the northern rockhopper penguin, but was unable to confirm this scientifically.

    I was incorrect about getting hit by a car. It is unclear whether my predictions about electric vehicles were correct because the federal government stopped tracking EV trends. However, I think I was right.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on The EU Grids Package: A blueprint for Europe’s future energy infrastructure in ~enviro

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information, slight opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: a bit Sarcasm/humor: none In a recent thread about electric vehicles, some users were discussing power transmission...
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    In a recent thread about electric vehicles, some users were discussing power transmission limitations with current infrastructure. I wanted to share this article as its own thread because it's pretty important, and, like much EU legislation, under-discussed.

    Everyone talks about electric vehicles. It feels relevant. But perhaps the biggest and most pointless barrier to the energy transition is a lack of interconnection permits to the grid. Every time a new solar or wind farm is built, it can take years for grid operators to process the application. This is wasteful and is preventing plenty of great projects from coming online for no good reason.

    This month, the EU proposed a legislative package that would introduce a more efficient framework for grid connection permitting. Among other things, it would guarantee a maximum review time limit for applications, so if a bureaucracy stalls for too long, it will be automatically approved. Of course nothing will be connected in a way that is risky for the grid's stability. These improvements should streamline the process substantially and remove a major bottleneck.

    On 10 December 2025, the European Commission published its long-awaited EU Grids Package (COM(2025) 1005) – a comprehensive set of legislative proposals, policy initiatives and strategic priorities aimed at accelerating the expansion and modernisation of Europe’s energy infrastructure. The package addresses electricity grids as well as hydrogen and CO₂ networks and is intended to remove one of the most persistent bottlenecks in the European energy transition: insufficient, fragmented and slow-to-develop network infrastructure.

    According to the Commission, more than 500 GW of wind and solar capacity are currently waiting for grid connection across the EU. At the same time, several Member States remain far from the long-standing 15% interconnection target, limiting cross-border electricity flows and preventing the emergence of a truly integrated Energy Union.

    Parts of the package focus on improving planning:

    At the core of the package lies a proposed revision of the Trans-European Networks for Energy ("TEN‑E") Regulation (Regulation (EU) 347/2013), which governs cross-border energy infrastructure. The Commission’s central concern is that the existing planning framework identifies too many projects that never materialise – while at the same time failing to deliver infrastructure where it is actually needed. For example, ENTSO-E estimates that around half of cross-border electricity needs (41 GW) remain unaddressed by 2030.

    To address this, the Commission proposes a more directive and scenario-driven approach. Every four years, it would develop a central EU-wide energy scenario, based on Member State input, which would serve as the reference point for infrastructure needs assessments by ENTSO‑E (electricity) and ENNOH (hydrogen). This scenario would guide the selection of Projects of Common Interest ("PCIs") and Projects of Mutual Interest ("PMIs"), with the aim of aligning national planning decisions more closely with EU-wide system needs.

    Most notably, the Commission would acquire new "gap‑filling" powers. Where cross-border infrastructure needs are identified but no suitable projects are proposed by transmission system operators ("TSOs") or developers, the Commission could actively intervene – inviting project proposals and, ultimately, launching calls open to any promoter.

    And other parts on permitting:

    Permitting delays remain one of the most severe obstacles to grid deployment. According to the Commission, even projects designated as PCIs frequently take five years or more to secure permits, with renewable projects sometimes taking close to a decade.

    The proposed Permitting Acceleration Directive (COM(2025) 1007) therefore introduces, for the first time, binding EU-level time limits for permitting procedures covering grid infrastructure, renewables, battery storage and EV charging stations. Where authorities fail to decide within the prescribed deadlines, projects may benefit from tacit approval ("positive silence").

    The directive also strengthens the legal status of energy infrastructure by establishing a rebuttable presumption of overriding public interest, allowing key projects to prevail over competing land-use or environmental constraints – while remaining subject to EU environmental law. Further measures include mandatory one-stop-shop permitting portals, simplified procedures for repowering, and explicit facilitation of co-located battery storage.

    In addition to streamlining planning and permitting, additional funding is necessary to make physical upgrades to transmission infrastructure to accommodate more connections.

    I am tagging some users in case you are interested. @KapteinB @dna @pete_the_paper_boat

    3 votes

  5. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral, optimistic Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none The lowest-hanging fruit is probably residential and commercial heat pumps....
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    The lowest-hanging fruit is probably residential and commercial heat pumps. They are cheap, one-time installations and don't move around like cars do. Vehicle electrification is a scientifically and logistically more complex problem that requires more complex engineering to solve. If the same amount of societal effort & attention went into heat pumps for the last 15 years as is going into EVs, we would be in a better position by now.

    But, I always say it's AND, not "'or'". We can do both.

    Improvements to wind efficiency are probably starting to level out a little, but we have every reason to believe solar will continue to dominate. Wind power has been around for millennia. Modern designs can get a little more efficient - maybe 10-15% more through better aerodynamics or maybe some kind of omnidirectional design, but probably not double. The only paradigm shift I foresee is a scalable vertical technology, or some kind of year-round efficiency improvement (rather than just conversion), but I don't follow wind tech close enough to be sure.

    In contrast, the breadth of new solar technologies is so immense that it would be very reasonable to foresee a 90-100% efficiency boost in "typical" solar panels:

    • A typical cell has about 25% efficiency due to the chemistry (various chemical losses). The panel has less efficiency per square foot because bezels between cells take up space that could be used by cells. Cell "encapsulation" (glass and wiring etc) losses lead to like 20-22% typical efficiency for a panel.
    • Various novel designs, like bifacial panels, create opportunities for much higher real-world efficiency in some settings, especially in open areas.
    • We are getting better at reducing losses from coatings/reflections and improving cell density on a given panel.
    • Perovskite/silicon tandem cell efficiency (at scale) is mostly a function of better encapsulation (at scale). However, industry-ready panels are at more like 25-27% efficiency right now. Generously that's a ~35% percent increase. But scalable tandem cells are already at 30-31%, so encapsulation improvements could get us to something like 28-30% panel efficiency at scale; that's a 50% efficiency boost from an engineering problem we are pretty close to solving. This is probably on the order of months away, or a couple years at the most, not 10 years.
    • The theoretical max efficiency of a silicon cell (Shockley–Queisser limit) is about 34%. For a perovskite tandem cell with two junctions - generating electricity from more wavelengths - that's probably 44%. Triple-junction cells could take it even further - there are diminishing returns, but we could get at least 50% cell efficiency. That is beyond anything achieved in a lab, but it's possible. An optical (concentrator) Fresnel lens on top of a multi-junction cell could probably get that to 60% (I think the highest we've gotten in a lab so far is like 48%). Proportionally, the theoretical limits of new chemistries are 47-76% higher than existing ones, so if we extrapolate that to typical silicon panels at scale, we could end up with up to 38% real-world panel efficiency in an industrial environment. That's about a 90% increase from typical silicon panels produced at scale today. Based on perovskite trends and my reading of future additions, I think this is feasible in the next 5 years and likely within the next 10.
    • The most expensive parts of solar panels are silver and other rare metals. Some modern chemistries don't use these. There is a financial incentive to use common materials for solar panel production, which naturally improves the inherent sustainability of the production phase while increasing the number of regions suitable for sourcing the raw materials for the panels. This increases the likelihood of adoption worldwide because it reduces reliance on any particular country's production somewhat, even if China will do it best.
    • The number of solar cell chemistries is vast. There are so many I can't keep track of them. I don't even know what some of these are. But the variety of new approaches means that solar is suddenly a technology that can be applied in more and more situations and in different orientations than we previously realized. So in addition to LCOE being dramatically reduced by chemistry improvements, the baseline suitability of solar is going up, and more places will be able to produce it more easily. This isn't just lab stuff, it's real-world!
    • Because solar panel research is so decentralized, improvements happen constantly. It's not like we're waiting for 50 years for an extremely large breakthrough that's actually useful to the end-goal of generation efficiency (like nuclear fusion). Rather, every month there's a new tweak that reduces cost a bit and accordingly increases adoption. This compounds in a way that is not necessarily linear. There will be a point when, suddenly, very quickly, fossil fuel investment ceases. See here: sharp decline of coal (note: this is primary energy, which is misleading; see electricity generation for the most relevant ratios).
    • All of this will happen regardless of American or EU policy. The financial incentive is extraordinarily high, especially in China, and will not go away. Of course, EU will not get these panels as cheaply as it could if it tariffs imports, but all markets are global in some respects and the cost of generation will continue to go down everywhere.

    This is all to say that the cost-effectiveness of electric vehicles will increase proportionally to the cost-effectiveness of renewable electricity generation. Except for chemical sources of emissions in concrete production (limestone calcination) and some high industrial heat methods, basically all global primary energy use will proportionally follow. Those technical problems are being separately worked on.

    Climate agreements are symbolically important but research does not stop when one country withdraws. If the entire EU withdrew from Paris, that would be a problem for investment. Renewable researchers and manufacturers are just ignoring the USA's policy though. They've already made many of the investments, and they see the writing on the wall. Paris will probably be adopted for the 3rd time in 2029.

    Interestingly the current American administration has been supportive of next-generation geothermal technology, probably because it uses oil & gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques to establish an underground heat loop. Next-gen geothermal can be deployed anywhere. Unlike fracking for methane, geothermal fracking doesn't involve nasty chemicals, and seismic monitoring is a lot better than it was in the 2000s. This has potential to completely replace coal and methane gas as a source of baseload power, complementing nuclear. It's also going to be easier to scale. (When we figure out nuclear fusion in the year 2125, we can switch to that)..

    It's also reassuring to see many state policies functionally keeping the USA in the Paris agreement. California's various mandates are stricter than the federal government's. It's such a big market that corporations making the investments the Paris agreement encourages are still doing so.

    More policy is always good. Every little bit helps. The problem will not solve itself, we do need to keep up the pressure. But the fact that Paris happened in 2015 means so much more than any future agreement. That was what kickstarted many of the research and infrastructure investments that are bearing fruit in 2025. Additional climate agreements and policies will keep us on-track, but so will renewable industrial inertia.

    The biggest barrier to complete electrification is interconnections to the electricity grid. Almost every country in the world is bottlenecked by the grid. Grid operators understandably have to be careful. There are various infrastructure improvements necessary to move forward, but the permitting is mostly a bureaucratic problem. Allocating resources specifically toward methods of improving the rate of interconnection permits is probably the single highest-impact piece of advocacy we could be asking for right now. If EU and other blocs really want to improve EV adoption, then they should consider focusing efforts on relatively cheap and uncontroversial legislation for:

    • Standardizing forms and procedures across countries/regions/states
    • Setting maximum review timelines for interconnection applications (time limit reached = automatic approval)
    • Fast-tracking small-scale/pre-approved designs to avoid unnecessary, repetitive reviews
    • More centralized review systems to reduce administrative overhead

    Luckily, the EU has grid legislation planned for this exact purpose. It's called the EU Grids Package, COM(2025) 1005.

    The proposed Permitting Acceleration Directive (COM(2025) 1007) therefore introduces, for the first time, binding EU-level time limits for permitting procedures covering grid infrastructure, renewables, battery storage and EV charging stations. Where authorities fail to decide within the prescribed deadlines, projects may benefit from tacit approval ("positive silence").

    The directive also strengthens the legal status of energy infrastructure by establishing a rebuttable presumption of overriding public interest, allowing key projects to prevail over competing land-use or environmental constraints – while remaining subject to EU environmental law. Further measures include mandatory one-stop-shop permitting portals, simplified procedures for repowering, and explicit facilitation of co-located battery storage.

    The Commission is committed to immediately fast-tracking the Energy Highways through enhanced political coordination, drawing on the Regional High-Level Groups, mobilising support of European coordinators and working closely with the Energy Union Task Force, extending outreach beyond EU Member States where necessary. Each project will be prioritised at EU level, and the Commission will support Member States in giving them the same priority nationally.

    Additional legislation is necessary to secure funding for physical upgrades to the electricity grid to accompany logistical improvements. I don't think this package provides that funding. Member states likely have to prioritize it themselves. The EU's focus is on "energy highways," which are the highest-priority regions for electricity. It's correct to focus on these areas first, but we also need to upgrade grids everywhere else. Other countries, especially the United States, also have to streamline permitting like the EU.

    Beyond levelized cost of electricity generation, the only real barrier would be storage. Some renewables are intermittent in a way that does not necessarily match demand intermittency patterns. Battery technology, oft-discussed, is not strictly necessary for energy storage. There are many ways to store energy, such as pumped hydro and artificial equivalents (like lifting heavy cubes into a stack). However, the most interesting to me is next-generation geothermal energy. This is why I think it's so important for base load generation.

  6. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Radically, cars would be absent from cities, except for industrial areas. Vehicles can be...
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    Radically, cars would be absent from cities, except for industrial areas. Vehicles can be left in garages at the borders; when in the city, one uses the transport methods of the city (walking, cycling, rolling, transit). Heavy traffic can operate in underground tunnels with periodic aboveground access provided for commercial loading areas. A municipal permit could be obtained to operate a vehicle to move equipment in exceptional circumstances. But aboveground, everyday transportation of food and objects can be achieved through rolling dollies and very light, slow vehicles. We know there is nothing impossible about this. The largest single object any person conceivably has to move is a grand piano or a solid wood bureau; these are moved into buildings using dollies anyway, so there is no reason they cannot be moved on dollies to an appropriate underground access point for heavy transport, if truly necessary. Transportation of groceries and other daily objects is easily achievable with handheld carts, e-bikes and cargo bikes. In functional urban places, especially in Europe, people buy groceries in smaller batches than, say, Americans typically do, which improves profitability for local businesses (rather than corporate mega-marts), reduces food waste, and doesn't take much time. Commercial deliveries already come in modular pallets which are perfectly compatible with being rolled a couple city blocks from an underground access point (without needing so many lanes for cars, sidewalks can become the street). Truly essential aboveground delivery can occur in early morning hours to avoid conflicts with pedestrians, at a substantial fee. At the marginal cost of raising delivery expenditures, we create a city that is so dramatically better to live in than current that all businesses except those dependent on automobiles will thrive on the absurdly high foot traffic on every commercial street (I'm sure car-centric businesses will continue to thrive in better-suited locations). This is possible but obviously fantastical.

    Your 30 km/h proposal is realistic and achievable. Lower speed limits very much improve vehicle efficiency. The environmental impact is substantial. I think that new classes of "city cars" ought to emerge, which are maybe capable of going at highway speeds, but which are designed with local use in mind. As you say, such cars can be much simpler and lighter ---- this also means cheaper and more competitive with ICEs. I'm not sure to what extent overbuilding of internal safety features can be reduced, because other people's cars might still be going absurdly fast even if this one isn't, but probably some. I guess it depends if the goal is to make a car that is allowed to go on the highway or not.

    I don't think we can get vehicle prices below $1k USD. That's the cost of a budget e-bike; any car would be pricier than that. A new golf cart is probably $5k on the low end and more like $10-15k on the high end. But you're right that the end cost would be substantially lower than current. EV batteries are mostly so expensive because they are overbuilt for range; for the city, this is completely unnecessary.

    The cost to municipalities is very low. In general, urban vehicle electrification does not require extensive charging infrastructure, as is popularly believed. Imagining that manufacturing costs continue to fall (almost certain), the overall cost savings of an EV becomes extremely high relative to ICE, and all charging can be done cost-effectively at commercial charging stations. This is not a logistical or cultural problem because ICE cars already require trips to gas stations. Garages can install chargers, and IMO most cars should be stored in garages rather than on-street, but this is not strictly necessary for cost-effective urban vehicle electrification.

    30 km/h (~18 mph) is a fairly safe speed for vehicles to operate at. At higher speeds, pedestrians and other vulnerable road users will die (some drivers too). The existence of a vehicle necessitates the existence of some conflict points. However, those conflict points can become mostly non-fatal if vehicles are exclusively operating at non-lethal speeds.

    A 30 km/h speed limit still results in some pedestrian fatalities, but only for around 10% of direct crashes. This is a great improvement from a 50 km/h (30 mph) speed limit of 40% fatalities, and enormously better than a 65 km/h (40 mph) speed limit, which has an 80% fatality risk for victims.

    Traffic violence is one of the most unnecessary and most ignored causes of death in our society. We know that most crashes occur on arterial or collector roads where cars are often going upwards of 50 km/h, so reducing many of those limits would solve the most egregious examples of traffic violence. This is really a systemic problem and cannot be resolved through driver education or pedestrians waving flags.

    As for implementation, speed limit signs are almost useless. There are two reliable ways to enforce speed limits:

    • Infrastructure: - A road's "design speed" is the speed that it's configured to allow cars to travel at. This is different than the posted speed limit, which is a suggestion that is easy to ignore. Lane reductions, lane narrowing, visual narrowing, speed humps, chicanes, and other traffic calming methods can be used to force drivers to slow down. When done well, they won't even realize; driving slowly will feel 'correct' rather than particularly frustrating. A street with a design speed of 30 km/h probably cannot have more than 1-2 consecutive lane widths; medians can be used to visually reinforce the limit without restricting capacity. However, road diets are still a good idea.
    • Speed cameras: - Speed cameras with associated fines can reduce speeding incidents by 90% or more along corridors where they're added. (Critics say they dislocate traffic to other streets. Okay, add speed cameras there too - problem solved.) They are pretty cheap to implement and it's easy to manage the data. It's much more efficient than manually writing tickets for speeding, which is reactive and necessarily not comprehensive. It's also more equitable. This allows police officers to spend their time doing more useful things, such as playing candy crush, or writing tickets for illegally covered plates - if they focus on enforcing plate compliance, then all other plate-based traffic enforcement becomes more efficient, such as enforcing no stopping/parking in bike and bus lanes. Critics call this "regressive" but are mistaken (or lying); the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society are consistently the victims of traffic violence, so the net result is progressive.

    I'm not sure how it works in Europe, but in the USA, some states forbid local municipalities from setting lower speed limits than the statewide limits - they have to get state approval. So the legislation might have to be done regionally. EU could set a bunch of urban-zone overlays with 30 km/h limits I guess.

    To objections about emergency vehicle access, time losses are negligible because most existing losses occur at intersections that would be clogged up regardless of legal speed limits; gridlock is caused by cars being space-inefficient (in some situations, average speed increases when speed limits decrease because traffic movement becomes more consistent and therefore less subject to sudden braking). The solution to emergency vehicle obstructions is to remove all cars. In some places, this is accomplished with very wide bike lanes with remote-retractable modal filters that typically don't allow cars, but can allow emergency vehicles. It is very easy for a bicycle to move out of the way and very hard for a car.) members of society are consistently the victims of traffic violence, so the net result is quite progressive.

    NIMBYs are often okay with lower speed limits, at least in residential areas, because no one likes having high-speed traffic on their doorstep. So unlike many urbanist initiatives, this has substantial grassroots appeal.

  7. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none That's a good observation. The article says: That's surprisingly high to me. And I agree...
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    That's a good observation. The article says:

    The Commission also outlined plans to boost EV uptake in corporate fleets, which account for about 60% of new car sales in Europe.

    That's surprisingly high to me. And I agree with your suggestion that driverless rideshare fleets will increase this percentage.

    I also broadly agree with your hypothesis, with the caveat that municipal agencies and corporate entities only periodically upgrade their fleets, so they aren't as responsive to market demands. Retail consumers upgrade cars on a whim and often lease short-term. I think most institutional fleets are a long-term investment. However, once they go electric, they don't go back.

    I can't speak for Europe, but in my observations in the USA, municipal fleets are going electric at a slower rate than personal vehicles, but only because the upfront cost of the vehicles is high. In a competitive bidding process, it's hard to justify the extra price of an electric bus if a diesel bus can technically do the same thing. Politicians are great at deferring maintenance until it becomes a disaster - "someone else's problem." There are also some one-time electrification expenses, like electric bus depots. BUT once they do this (and Biden admin was generous with grants), the cost advantage for electric becomes enormous.

    • NYC and San Jose have at least a 25% green (sorta green) fleet as of last May, so maybe that's a little closer to 30% now. This is far beyond the electric market share for private car owners.
    • Dallas has closer to 5%, presumably because state governments were less generous in funding upfront depot costs. But now that they've made these investments, they're not going to stop. Fleets have an incentive to reduce maintenance complexity by reducing discrete types of vehicles. The cost of maintaining two separate classes of maintenance crews for electric vs ICE vehicles is expensive; they'd rather have all-diesel or all-electric, not both. Municipal electrification investments are made on multi-decade planning horizons, so once the ball gets rolling on electricity's more cost-effective model, they will persist.

    As for driverless vehicles, at least for "Waymo's" replacing human Uber drivers, I think they have many of the same incentives as municipal fleets. Waymo has an all-electric fleet because it's cheapest to operate. The company is also not as subject to individual societal whims. 'Waymo' will not feel nostalgic for annoying, dirty combustion engines or culturally obsessed with uselessly oversized pickup trucks. They will buy cars that allow them to operate their service cheaper than the competition. Actually this could have environmentally good feedback the other way: if human drivers want to compete with the inherently lower cost of "Waymo's", they might have to drive smaller and more fuel-efficient cars (and maybe switch to electric anyway).

    I think it is a net positive for humanity to be less possessive of vehicles. The mix-up between personal vehicle and personal identity presents many problems for society and few advantages (such as Fast and Furious franchise). I have seen more driverless 'Way MO' cars in my city and the net effect seems positive to me.

    6 votes

  8. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, opinion Tone: neutral, optimistic Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Gaseous emissions are a pressing issue because they cause continual temperature rise, not...
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    Gaseous emissions are a pressing issue because they cause continual temperature rise, not because emissions themselves exist. Raw net-zero or negative emissions are not necessary to halt temperature rise.

    The goal achievable with realistic medium-term technology is to reduce all emissions in excess of those that can be absorbed by the earth's natural carbon sink. We are trying to stop things from getting enormously worse. Existing climate change from over-carbonated oceans or whatever, while definitely bad for marine life and human life (I am NOT a denier), is objectively not catastrophic to "the planet [humanity]" in the same way as those same effects magnified are, even if it is locally damaging.

    Actually we don't even need to get that far to see improvements: every percentage reduced on that journey lengthens the "catastrophe timeline" people in this thread are feeling mopey about. Urgency admittedly helps the cause in politics, but humanity is interested in solving problems whether or not they are urgent. See: mathematicians and theoretical physicists.

    In my observations, the timeline for catastrophe is outpaced by technological development.

    • The primary energy fallacy fools even very smart people into believing that we have made barely any progress in electrification. We are doing better than these stupid charts imply, and "tipping points" in favor of renewable dominance are already being passed.
    • LCOE for renewables is only going down (solar+wind for demand peaks, modern geothermal and nuclear for 24/7 baseload), so no amount of additional demand from AI is going to increase net emissions from electricity generation. We will have to build more power plants, but that's a localized impact. Market limitations within the industry will stop demand growth before physical production constraints will.
    • Concrete and steel production are steadily electrifying, if slowly. Rosie Barnes discusses this at length. This also goes for other industrial uses of energy.
    • The bulk of transportation emissions in industrialized countries are from light-duty vehicles (American data but generally true for other places too), which have relatively maxed-out patterns (commute distances, which are really functions of time, which people guard jealously; that won't double even if AI growth does). Other categories are meaningful but small; people complain about private jets but they have low emissions in absolute terms, which is what matters when thinking about the natural carbon sink. Anyway while a significant source of emissions, cars are also the subject of extraordinary societal pressure and industrial research, and are seeing accordingly extraordinary results. The equal or larger problem of industrial heat, for example, is ignored by the general population and sees accordingly less dramatic results. Car pollution only seems like the end of the world because Western culture idolizes cars. No one idolizes electric arc furnaces...... you can't put that in your driveway, so no one talks about improvements to that technology.
    • The production of physical things, other than concrete and steel, is a small part of global emissions. You're right that it's non-zero, but it is not a catastrophically large source of emissions. In a car context, lifetime emissions are what matter - and aluminum production pales in comparison to burning oil. The bigger problem is being solved quickly and the smaller problem is being solved too, just more slowly.

    It's obviously better to pump a ton of carbon out of the atmosphere ASAP than to scrape by with the buffer provided by earth's natural carbon sink, or to fail that and just give ourselves 300 years instead of 30 to solve the harder problems. But the natural sink can currently handle something like 30-50% of human emissions. A 50-70% reduction in emissions is an achievable medium-term goal based on realistic predicted advances in technology and relatively modest policies and carbon taxes. EU's goal to reduce road vehicle emissions by 90% rather than 100% in just 9 years is probably within that, even accepting that vehicle electrification is an easier problem to solve than concrete decarbonization.

    At that point the prospect of actual net-zero is going to be more feasible.

    Scientific net-zero or negative emissions are cool but there is not anywhere near the same urgency for it. Don't panic.

    10 votes

  9. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: information, response to article and comment reactions Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none For what it's worth, this is going from requiring fleets of 100% electric...
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    For what it's worth, this is going from requiring fleets of 100% electric vehicles to requiring 90% electric, with the remaining 10% being mostly plug-in hybrids. While a bad decision for the climate, this is far from catastrophic. It's not a "reset". Some European countries have stricter targets, like Norway, which has a zero-emission target by 2025 for personal vehicles and 2030 for heavy trucks.

    I understand the article's note about this hurting investment in green infrastructure, which is probably true. EU has to decide if it cares more about environmental protection (and associated externalities) or one segment of one particular industry.

    The way to circumvent that is technological innovation that reduces the manufacturing cost of EVs beyond current predictions. The solution is not one thing, it's a bunch of different innovations. The reason EU is struggling on the open, voluntary market is because their cars are too expensive relative to value - this is true for almost all consumer products. Production scale is relevant, but so is the fundamental technology.

    • The average EU citizen drives only a few kilometers per day. The highest is Germany, 19 km.
    • The energy efficiency of electric motors in cars is typically around 85-90%. It's possible to increase this kind of motor to at least 97-98% efficiency. Manufacturers can either invest in cheaper techniques to develop efficient engines, or more expensive techniques to develop very efficient engines. Or they could do both. In either case, the net cost to the consumer is theoretically lower (upfront or lifetime).
    • The real energy efficiency from battery to wheel is more like 75-85%. With regenerative braking, that gets up to about 90% in real-world efficiency. The drivetrain is probably at its theoretical limit, but all the other individual losses here are opportunities to improve power efficiency - and these are unique to EVs. We can get a percent or two from better inverters, a few percent from more efficient charging systems (including better fast charging), and several percent from improved thermal management via better heat pumps for the battery and cabin.
    • The biggest efficiency improvements are from more aerodynamic vehicles. Electric vehicles don't require large engines in the front so it's feasible to reduce the drag coefficient considerably by regulating aerodynamic losses. This is important for vehicles that drive at highway speeds, especially trucks. Improvements to grills and spoilers involving active/dynamic behavior can have an effect. And wake control (tapering vehicles) can literally halve drag. Improvements to tire treading (and maybe even roadway surfacing) can also improve efficiency by a couple percent. This can be done for any vehicle, but the limiting factor to EVs is mostly range, and this meaningfully extends range while having less of a relative effect on ICEs, whose losses are dominated by engine inefficiency. It's nothing to an ICE but everything to an EV.
    • EV batteries are not mature at all and have enormous potential to decrease in price for a given energy density, or increase in density at a given price. People talk a lot about solid-state batteries and novel chemistries, as well as lighter and more common materials, which is a valuable opportunity. But even stuff like the architecture of battery packs is surprisingly not-optimized.
    • Solar panels: hear me out. I know this is a meme. But perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells have insane efficiencies, well beyond the Shockley limit (~30%). They're also exceptionally lightweight and cheap. Their main drawback is a somewhat shorter lifespan (maybe 15 years) than traditional cell chemistries (maybe 30 years). Most cars will give out or be replaced before that becomes a serious problem. And that lifespan issue is probably going away. New manufacturing approaches involving graphene (yes I know) offer resilience to perovskites. And new chemistries like kesterites are just barely getting started (I don't know much about these). The light weight and increased durability of cutting-edge perovskites means you can print them onto flexible materials, not just rigid panels. The entire exterior of a vehicle (or wherever it makes scientific sense) could realistically be a solar panel. Mercedes-Benz is even researching solar paint - skeptical about that one, but there is a lot of potential with all of these combined. A particularly good solar chemistry and application could realistically cover 50-100% of daily driving for typical European drivers with the right lifestyle. That means a given car can get away with a slightly physically smaller battery for the same range; since perovskites are so light, that can have appreciable improvements to overall efficiency. It's not a lot and it's not effective in cold, snowy places, but look at the map - it's the warm, sunny places that need the transition the most. Just another example of a small change. Add these all up and you get a lot.

    Call that 5% for the motors, 5-10% for the drive and heat pumps, 10-20% for aerodynamics, 15-25% for the battery, and a nice 1% for solar panels in the near future. Without even changing driving patterns, it's possible for EVs to drop in price enough in the near-ish future to be quite competitive against all ICEs. Even if EU carmakers struggle to compete against other EV companies in China, the baseline is so much better that it doesn't matter from a consumer perspective. When people are making the decision to buy a car, it will become increasingly easy to justify an EV. Markets are "efficient" themselves.

    In contrast, there are few meaningful efficiency gains unique to ICEs on the horizon.

    Policy is great and we need more of it, but climate change policy is actually economic policy pretending to care about non-human life forms. With the exception of wealthy liberal intellectuals, all voting blocs that support climate change mitigation do so because they've been convinced of some kind of negative economic or health externality for themselves. We can also observe the reverse, in which technological (economic) improvements make "official policy" much more tenable. Even in the backwards USA, conservative politicians in windy states support wind energy because of its economic benefits.

    We don't need to get to net-zero before voting blocs, corporate interests, and politicians start perceiving net-zero technology more favorably. We only need to get part of the way there. The last 10% will handle itself on a timeline that is not catastrophic. This applies beyond just electric cars: strictly speaking, if we can reduce carbon emissions in all industries to 90% of 2021 levels in a generation or so, the remainder can be taken care of quite easily by the earth's natural carbon sinks, and the urgency of the problem is severely diminished.

    So again, I support more green policy, like a rapid-implementation carbon tax and anything else it takes to cut emissions faster. BUT, when that inevitably doesn't happen, we are not automatically screwed.

    25 votes

  10. Comment on The science and strategy behind Wyoming’s snow fences in ~enviro

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none A video about Wyoming “snow fences,” which are 50%-permeable wooden fences to break up airborne snow carried...
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    A video about Wyoming “snow fences,” which are 50%-permeable wooden fences to break up airborne snow carried by prevailing winds and “store” the snow as frozen drifts.

    This significantly reduces roadway snow plowing costs, on the order of a $1 investment and $1000 saving (apparently). Reduced plowing reduces municipal vehicle use, which reduces tax burdens for citizens, and saves fuel. Less fuel burned is an environmental and health benefit and also reduces lifetime medical costs.

    This is such a simple process and yet so impactful in an environment like Wyoming, which has large and windy open expanses.

    I think a lot of the same effects can be gained by planting trees where they were cut down for cattle. The video says that they do that where possible, but that’s seemingly harder or more expensive than building fences.

    The fences have gaps in them to allow for wildlife and personnel crossings. Local landowners generally like the fences because the snowdrifts can help cattle fields become more verdant in the springtime.

    I wonder what similar inventions could improve conditions in urban areas.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Four proposals to improve the design of fuel economy standards in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Many states have a weight-based vehicle registration fee for at least some categories of...
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    Many states have a weight-based vehicle registration fee for at least some categories of vehicles, but it does not scale proportionally with the overall damage to infrastructure, environment and society that large vehicles cause.

    Proportionally scaled registration fees would functionally eliminate the sale of large vehicles, as long as the baseline fees were also raised. If not, they would help, but not eliminate the problem.

    For example in PA a 6,000 lb truck has a $111 fee while a 60,000 lb truck has a $1,739.00 fee. The fee increases at a higher rate for even heavier vehicles. This is a very small incentive to own a lighter vehicle, and you occasionally see people trying to register their 7500 lb truck as 6500 lb to save $103. For this to be effective, the state would have to raise the fees on all truck registrations and make the slope of fee increases steeper than it already is. They might need to add additional weight registration fees for smaller vehicles too?

    All of this would be politically unpopular in any municipality where a plurality of people drive light trucks or SUVs. Even with exemptions for commercial uses/people who actually 'need' trucks, it would still be unpopular. It would be more feasible in urban centers, but giving local municipalities the ability to levy their own fees on top of DOT fees would probably require legislation from the state government, which would be a challenge in most states.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on Deinterlining: simpler subway service, fewer delays (New York City) in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none An approachable explanation from the Effective Transit Alliance of the benefits of deinterlining reverse...
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    An approachable explanation from the Effective Transit Alliance of the benefits of deinterlining reverse branches in the New York City subway system. This applies to other train systems too.

    This is one of the most complicated subjects about railroad service, but the article explains it well.

    Definitions:

    • Line: a subway service
    • Trunk: a collection of lines sharing tracks for some distance (imagine: tree trunk)
    • Simple branch (often deinterlined): line(s) splitting off the trunk (imagine: tree branches)
    • Reverse branch (often interlined): when two independent trunks are connected by a shared branch; delays in one cause delays in both

    Why it's important: Delays are inefficient. People intuitively don't like transferring between services because the worst-case scenario of transferring increases the probability of at least 1 train in your commute being delayed. Deinterlining alleviates those worst-case scenarios and makes transfers less cumbersome, while also improving the predictability of service for riders who are not transferring. These psychological improvements increase the attractiveness of subway ridership instead of driving cars. A mode shift to transit is more resource-efficient than driving cars, so deinterlining even has overarching financial and environmental benefits even to people in NYC who don't ride the subway.

    Computer analogy: Deinterlining is like modularizing concurrent code so components are better encapsulated and don't share resources (threads/queues). They still interface, but a slowdown in one module doesn’t cascade through the entire system. (I'm doing my best for you ~comp people)

    The New York City Subway is famously complicated. Many lines are three or four tracks; trains can run local or express; and, crucially, different services often branch and merge with each other. It is this complexity that not only creates the potential for delays, but allows those delays to spread far and wide.

    Most well-designed transit networks use branches to fill a central trunk, if branched at all. For example, the A train has branches running to both Far Rockaway and Lefferts Blvd, which allows higher frequency at busier stations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The same is true of D and N trains, which have separate branches toward Coney Island, but share tracks running express on 4 Av. This type of branching is relatively easy to schedule, as trains can be made to arrive at their merge point at staggered times so that they fit into a neatly spaced pattern in the middle. In this way, trains don't conflict with one another, and they provide more service to denser areas.

    The subway, however, also has many reverse branches, where services that have already branched out from one central trunk line join with a branch of another. A prominent example are the 7 Av (2/3) and Lexington Av (4/5) Expresses: these lines branch in the outer boroughs, but the 2 and 5 trains, which run separately in Manhattan, merge onto the same tracks along White Plains Rd in the Bronx and Nostrand Av in Brooklyn. Reverse branches are incredibly difficult to schedule: ensuring that trains always come to interlockings at different times quickly becomes a very difficult, and often impossible, problem to solve. Perhaps worse, when delays mess up this delicate balance, they can cause cascading delays across lines that would otherwise be unaffected.

    There is one simple solution to this scheduling and delay-inducing headache: eliminating reverse branches through a process called deinterlining. Deinterlining simplifies the subway’s complex and delicate arrangement, creating a more robust, reliable network. This is why, as the broader transit advocacy has noted for years (e.g., Alon Levy, vanshnookenraggen, Uday Schultz, NYTIP, Joint Transit Association, Mystic Transit), deinterlining is a crucial step in enabling better service on the subway.

    The article discusses the "F/M" swap, which is difficult to explain, but in short it reduces delays throughout the entire subway system by switching the tunnels used by these two trains and therefore reducing the number of spatial conflicts with other interlined services.

    The article also discusses Nostrand Junction (Rogers) (2+5 and 3+4 conflicts). As with many train service problems, delays from this junction could be resolved with grade-separating the lines: building physically separate tracks so that trains don't have to worry about colliding. However, that's expensive. A nearly-as-good solution is "strategically adding new switches" to deinterline the services. In other words, they can improve the efficiency of the system without extremely costly infrastructure changes.

    Lastly, the article discusses the DeKalb Interlocking, a notoriously inefficient part of the subway system. The 6th Avenue "Communications-Based Train Control" (CBTC) project will update the physical systems that control train movements on the B/D/N/Q. Assuming MTA can overcome the logistics of implementing CBTC on multiple sets of rolling stock asynchronously, deinterlining this interlocking would result in meaningful improvements to service and a reduction in delays to the system as a whole, with relatively minor side effects.

    Most subway systems are not as complicated as NYC's, so they don't have this problem as much. But for NYC, effective deinterlining could be a huge time savings for the entire system at a fraction of the cost of grade separation.

    7 votes

  15. Comment on Virginia's Long Bridge Project will improve rail capacity around Washington DC in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I agree, a well-functioning regional rail system should have service beyond traditional 9-5...
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    I agree, a well-functioning regional rail system should have service beyond traditional 9-5 commuting hours. It's increasingly common for people to work at different times outside the "standard" workweek. Also, there are many non-work-related reasons to travel.

    DC is fortunate to have a subway system with multiple lines running into Virginia (orange/yellow/blue), but the VRE regional rail goes to population centers much further out. It's important for that line to have more service in order to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled in the area.

    24h subway service is pretty uncommon because it makes farebox recovery harder - there just isn't much demand at 3am. NYC and Chicago are possibly the only cities in the USA that do this at any meaningful scale. However, having relatively late-night (but not 24h) service is still really important for VRE and much more financially feasible. Should be achievable in DC.

    In an ideal world, DC/VA would build an additional radial train line to Arlington along Columbia, possibly to Annandale, and a circumferential line between Alexandria and Annandale (?) up to the Orange Line, and then to Silver Spring or something (similar to the IBX in NYC). This is a fairly densely populated area of the DMV and would benefit from transit availability a lot. The whole region needs a ton of transit-oriented upzoning though.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on California High Speed Rail Authority advances track and systems construction procurement in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: only at the end Sarcasm/humor: none [Archive] California High Speed Rail is a big project that's eventually supposed to connect San...
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    [Archive]

    California High Speed Rail is a big project that's eventually supposed to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles by train, with faster service than current tracks. Construction has been ongoing for a few years in the Central Valley and between San Francisco and San Jose.

    The way construction projects happen is more or less:

    • Institution develops vision plan
    • Plan goes through many tedious, extremely expensive engineering and environmental reviews
    • Alternative [to existing condition] is selected
    • Engineers create more detailed plans
    • Institution issues RFP for contractors to submit bid proposals on, i.e. making them compete to do it cheapest
    • Institution issues RFQ to finalize price (I guess this can happen first sometimes)
    • Contractors build the thing

    Most of those stages take several years each, so we're pretty far along.

    The California High-Speed Rail Authority has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit bids for constructing high-speed rail and track systems next year.

    the $3.5 billion RFP is one of the largest contracts for the country. It includes track, train control, communications, the overhead contact system, and safety certification and testing for service. The contract has nine separate packages with phased Notices to Proceed.

    Once the Track and Systems Contract is awarded, the Authority will begin systems installation along the [119-mile] alignment.

    So far, the CAHSR Authority has mostly been building bridges/alignment structures for the train. This RFP is for the physical tracks and equipment operators need in order to run trains. The procurement of the trainsets will come later.

    The Central Valley segment is mostly funded and the CA state legislature will likely cover any gaps. There is currently no funding to connect San Jose and Merced, or Bakersfield and Los Angeles. However, basically the entire route is environmentally cleared, so if they can get funding for procurement and construction, it's mostly ready to go.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Virginia's Long Bridge Project will improve rail capacity around Washington DC in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral, except a quip at the end Opinion: none really Sarcasm/humor: none archive Work is beginning on the Long Bridge Project between Washington DC...
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    Work is beginning on the Long Bridge Project between Washington DC and Virginia. This is an upgrade to the Amtrak/commuter rail corridor. The new tracks will significantly increase capacity and allow for faster and more frequent train service in the region. This will also improve Amtrak travel times for long-distance routes passing over the bridges.

    The project seeks to add a new two-track passenger rail bridge that traverses the Potomac River. In all, crews will work to add seven new bridges, five of which are for rail. According to VPRA, these bridges will stretch from “south of L’Enfant Plaza across Maine Avenue, the Washington Channel, and I-395 to the Potomac River.”

    From VA Passenger Rail Authority:

    The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority’s Long Bridge Project is a 1.8-mile rail improvement that will relieve one of the biggest rail bottlenecks on the East Coast. The project will improve reliability and expand capacity for both passenger and freight trains traveling between Virginia and Washington, D.C. The project will create a continuous four-track corridor between the Long Bridge Aquatic Center in Arlington and L’Enfant Plaza in D.C. It includes five new rail bridges and two new pedestrian and bicycle bridges. A new two-track rail bridge will be built over the Potomac River next to the existing Long Bridge, along with a new bike and pedestrian bridge connecting Long Bridge Park in Arlington to East and West Potomac Parks in D.C.

    Project Benefits:

    • Increased rail capacity that enables more frequent passenger rail service with better on-time reliability.
    • Improved bicycle and pedestrian connectivity between
    • Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia with a new bicycle-pedestrian bridge that is wider, brighter, and safer than other options.
    • Billions of dollars invested in the regional economy.
    • Infrastructure improvements that increase safety and security along the project corridor

    The total cost is around $2.6 billion. Thanks Joe Biden for the infrastructure funding. (No thanks to the current administration.) Construction is beginning now and will complete around 2030.

    See also: the S-Line Project in North Carolina, which will really make it faster to get to Washington DC on rail from the south.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Living wage calculator in ~finance

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    Comment box Scope: comment, opinion, rant Tone: disgruntled (not at you personally, just society) Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below...
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    I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below adequate the legal minimum wage is. The bar is low and we still fail to reach it. In my city it's still $7.25 because the state prohibits higher local minimum wages. This tool says it should be $23.26 where I live, more than triple the current. I think laying it all out like this is helpful - it's not making the argument that wages shouldn't be even higher, just showing that WOW we are REALLY far behind.

    I agree with you though, the "living wage" here is really just the "scrape by" wage. Which I guess is more or less accurate. But still sad. I'm not sure of a term for a better tier - the "comfort wage" sounds too luxurious.

    I remember when we were talking about the $15 minimum wage, and Congress did nothing to raise it. It seems Sisyphean because of inflation - why can't we at least get legislation to attach the wage to inflation? Then we can talk about raising the baseline.....

    or spending your life hotbunking in a shared room and scrounging for every penny

    This feels like a Western and especially an American problem, or maybe just a problem with liberal interpretations of capitalism. In places with functioning social systems --- I don't mean the government --- family units are expected to care for the elderly, whether that's immediate or extended family, just like how parents are expected to care for children. And for people who have no family, neighbors are expected to help. That's not enforced by the government, it's not a law, it's not a social program - when people live in a real society, they help each other. Intellectuals came up with the term "mutual aid" to describe this, but the idea of social cooperation is not new and is not originally academic.

    Modern society is so individualistic and prideful that people (even those with immense houses) consider it undignified for elderly relatives to live with them. People are socialized to say things like, "Oh, I love my mother, but I could NEVER live with her." Most of the time this means they are mildly annoyed by their mother or reminded of their childhood in mildly annoying ways - so it's not even considered an option, and everyone's poor parents needs to spend a LOT of money living BY THEMSELVES in their own house (expensive/inefficient) or share a room with strangers and scrounge instead of being taken in by relatives. (FYI I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ABUSIVE PARENTS, I KNOW THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO DO THIS FOR EVERYONE) It's just accepted in America that the only people who have households with multiple generations are immigrants and poor people. This is really inefficient. This also means that young parents have to pay thousands of dollars in childcare because they have no elderly relatives nearby to watch the kids while they work!!! Really it doesn't need to be a blood relative, that's just the most automatic arrangement. We could totally live more efficiently as a society if we swallowed our pride a little.

    Obviously it's extra hard and unpleasant and if you're already living in a tiny space, it isn't necessarily appealing to bring in another person into your household. But the reason housing is expensive is because there is way too much demand and not enough supply. People living alone, including old people, severely restricts housing availability. This was made more obvious by the pandemic and because young people in recent years are also increasingly living alone. If the amount of housing doesn't change but everyone wants their own apartment until age 35, then obviously rents are going to get really high. And we have all these artificial requirements in our heads about, well, each person needs their own room, or a certain amount of space, because we spend such an excessive amount of time indoors. So people buy and build bigger houses, which means there is less available space for units per square mile, which further restricts supply. People have good reasons to make their own decisions, but we have to be honest -- our collective decisions are part of what drives up the cost. It's really easy to blame everything on billionaires (and it's not like that's wrong) but if that's all we blame, then we forget we are also partially responsible.

    The biggest absolutely essential expense this website lists is housing. Childcare is second, but that decreases a lot in intergenerational households - partially if elders are working part-time, or potentially to zero. Transportation is directly linked to housing availability (Transit-Oriented Development reduces COL); transport costs are high in places where car ownership is required. This is because everyone paying to operate their own car is space/energy-inefficient and therefore cost-inefficient. If we just built more housing in places near transport, then tons of affordability problems would go away. (And if we accept that we should be less antisocial and return to slightly larger family or social units, we could reduce costs even more.)

    I post on here all the time about NIMBYs keeping local zoning laws restrictive to prevent more housing from being built. I think people intellectually recognize the problem. But the NIMBYism is extremely strong and people don't always stick to their intellectual beliefs when it affects them personally.

    • Nearly everyone with even modest income/wealth (even people who would go on websites like Tildes) says 'oh no we should fix the COL and build more housig!' However, whenever THEIR neighborhood is going to get a new apartment complex, they vote against it because: 'it'll cause traffic' 'parking will be terrible' 'it's too big of a building for this small town' 'it's ugly architecture' 'the construction will be terrible' 'it'll bring the wrong people in' 'just build it somewhere else'. Really??? So plans are canceled, downsized, or moved to areas with no access to transportation/amenities - not because that's a better place, but because there's less resistance. And if the housing DOES get built, people complain in dismissive tones about how much worse XYZ has gotten 'since they put those new condos up'. It genuinely drives me insane.

    • Poorer people are sensitive to the idea of gentrification (understandably -- it's a personal impact). On average they are also less educated, and not reading scientific research papers about economics. But it is true that all housing construction increases supply (by definition), and where supply increases, demand decreases - in a free market that means prices always decrease. It's just that a local housing market is larger than 1 neighborhood, so if ONLY a few neighborhoods are building new housing, hyper-local/block-by-block price changes are always going to be lopsided (even while the average price in the city decreases). So even if the new apartments are branded as 'luxury' and are themselves unaffordable, there is still MORE housing in the local housing market in total, which reduces all prices, because people who would otherwise be competing with you for Class B or C apartments can now rent Class A apartments. This isn't just my opinion, it's backed up by research. Even in the case that a development craze causes people to move into a city they didn't live in previously, that means they are moving AWAY from somewhere else and decreasing demand in that other place. This is why the most effective zoning strategy is to pass statewide upzoning laws, especially transit-oriented development, and prevent local municipalities from downzoning everything to inefficient SFH. Some legislation in California has been successful in this, but it's still tepid.

    NIMBYs in the first category - the ones who pay attention to politics and go to zoning meetings - make all the specious arguments they can to politicians to stop development on conservative grounds. If that doesn't work they make up some BS about negative environmental impacts (which they obviously don't believe). If that doesn't work, they go out of their way to spread narratives about how adding new housing will raise the COL - which, like much misinformation, has a core of accuracy but is mostly wrong and greatly exaggerated. So equity-minded progressives get wrapped up in these anti-development beliefs that do not correspond to economic reality, and so the NIMBY voting bloc dominates elections and becomes socially unacceptable to argue against.

    COL is more complicated than all that but the foundational concept of supply and demand is highly influential.

    Anyway that's all to say that there are solutions to this problem beyond just raising the minimum wage. I'd like that to happen, but for real social change to occur we need to do many things at the same time. So, if you ever find yourself in a local zoning meeting, I recommend you give up on your aesthetic preferences and just agree to build more housing. It's for the greater good.

    10 votes