Racing Turtles

[人間じゃないから大丈夫]

Not so friendly reminder that musk specifically came up with, and pushed, for hyperloop knowing that it would never be made, as an effort to stop the development of highspeed rail in America and shift all political discussions of it because "something better is around the corner":

source: new york times

Also: 2024 update, the total length of China's high-speed rail tracks has now reached well over 45,000 km, or 28,000 miles, by the end of 2023.

They are additionally five years ahead of schedule and expect to double the total number within ten years. And, before someone inevitably complains about "how expensive it is", they are turning over a net-profit of over $600M USD a year.

@amtrak-official

Yeah, trains are pretty much the most efficient transit system known to man and it is maddening that we chose other methods at any chance

it was racism!! it was good ole american racism!!! this cannot be forgotten. any discussion abt this topic without racism front and center as the PRIMARY REASON for this change is toothless and impotent.

the auto companies created the term "jaywalking" to demonize walking on streets, associated it with stupidity and "undesirable people", and offered automobile ownership as the solution. they convinced the white upper and middle classes that public transit was a waste of money and did they really want to sit next to Those People on a trip to the park? and CONVENIENTLY built highways through communities of color and immigrant communities, neatly displacing them and gentrifying the surrounding areas in one fell swoop. it was because of RACISM and CLASSISM. the auto companies weaponized racism and classism to sell privileged white people on a stupid technology that actively harms everyone on the planet themselves included.

electric trains are an efficient technology that does a lot of good for communities and is extremely necessary in the coming years of climate catastrophe but we canNOT discuss this with discussing class and race and protecting people affected by pro-public-transit policies while implementing them. we MUST protect vulnerable communities liable to get ousted by luxury apartments built next to the new metro station. rent controlled apartments and redesigned zoning laws are a MUST.

For reference on the history of jaywalking

@amtrak-official

Also like, transit doesn't need to make a profit, it creates money by allowing people to move easier. We dump hundreds of billions into the interstates and they have never made a singe cent of money back for us because we know the money created by allowing for the movement of individuals outways the money spent

Comic by Andy Singer

does new york have the only non-shitty subway system in america because its the only real city in america or is it the only real city in america because it has the only non-shitty subway system

#i think america here might actually apply to the whole of the americas#certainly no city in uscanmexico has non shitty subway

i like the buenos aires subway but idk what your standards are. not like i've used any other subway system to compare

BART is a non-shitty subway system.

there are 50 bart stations, there are 472 nyc subway stations. it is simply no contest. esp considering they service similar-sized populations (~8 million)

BART is good because I can take my mother to the MOMA on a weekend whim, but if I lived in New York and had that subway I could actually, you know. Use it use it.

What’s funny about this is that NYC’s subways, while well-planned and built, are abominably maintained and so, by global standards, kind of garbage, but they end up being “the best in the Americas” simply because they don’t really have much competition to speak of, and what competition they once had was all torn up or filled in to drive car purchases.

INSP this. ENFP that. Enough about the MBTI personality test. It’s pseudoscientific garbage. I’m only interested in the MBTA personality test.

Why? I’m from Australia so I don’t know anything about this stuff

Because there should be public transit and trains. It is a ridiculously short flight that is just polluting the world unnecessarily but a lot of people don’t have a better option. There’s so many major cities in that small area that they should have train lines between them all

okay so like, I live in Baltimore. Boston is 8 hours by car away. But! There’s a direct train that goes there so I should take it and-

the train is 8 hours. Okay no big deal at least I’m not driving I can relax and-

the train ticket will run me one way between 100-300 dollars depending on when I buy it from Amtrak.

However, I can get an 80 dollar plane ticket one way on southwest, so I do that instead.

anyway it is beyond frustrating to be in the most used part of the amtrak system and still have train tickets be so goddamn cost prohibitive. 

thats not a policy failure, its seven policy failures duct taped together

Look at what I saw on Twitter!!!

Khajiit has fares if you have coin

(via)

So, once again, ‘Musk Personally Being A Fucking Dipshit and Investing In Fantasy Tech’ was a marketing cover for much more sinister, down-to-earth economic maneuvering:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/elon-musk-climate-apocalypse-tesla-spacex

Keep reading

How public transportation can reduce congestion

i really wanted to write something eloquent here but i’ll settle for “fuck cars”

#also if all those people are in one vehicle they won’t crash into each other