Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
view the rest of the comments
Eh, the thing is a large majority of their limes are unprofitable for being largely underused
Why did the Chinese take incredible amount of debt on to fund these lines that do not connect major population centers? Prob for that chart
This chart is a good example of what happens when transport infrastructure is judged through a purely economic lens versus what happens when affordable travel is seen as a necessary feature of a civilised society. (Not to mention the jobs created and the carbon saved.)
Yup, the Chinese first built a metro line and then let the area develop, and even Europe is now doing the same (Letňany and Západní brána in the two biggest Czech cities). It avoids demolitions since there is still clear space for cut-and-cover tunnel construction.
If you think about it that's how people have founded new towns for most of history. They didn't go somewhere for a "job" or "vacation." It was simply because getting there wasn't that hard. See every town on a river, in a valley, or near the ocean
I would disagree, while I do not believe that public transportation needs to be self-sustaining at all; they should be built/deployed at a capacity as its needed in order of minimizing waste
If a train line is not profitable, its not used
How do you feel about rural roads? Should we not build them unless we can make them profitable?
Unironically what a bunch of red states have been doing, while blaming rural decline on large liberal municipalities.
Highly-used roads are even less profitable since they need expensive repairs much more often.
To your point, though, the idea that every service has to make a profit is most of what's wrong with me modern society.
The very approach to calculating "profit" is backwards.
We're not measuring the economic value ad of the lane of transit. We're measuring the margin between cost of the lane and the immediate rent produced.
Concepts like "hours lost in transit" or "physical harm from accidents" goes entirely out the window. Negative externalities are never measured by capitalist economics.
Not sure that's the same. Dumping a bunch of gravel is far cheaper and less wasteful than a rail line.
Edit: I will add that I don't agree that profitability should be the foremost consideration when it comes to building public infrastructure.
If rural roads were a high cost investment meant to transport very large crowds and very large amounts of cargo to a place lacking such needs? And if we had a much cheaper alternative capable of running vehicles meant of transporting smaller crowds and small amounts of cargo? Then yea, we should not build those rural roads
Peak car/capitalist brain. You gonna hold roads to the same standard?
1 Yes, I would hold high roads as they are comperatively a more expensive investment meant for a larger volume of transportation.
2 China is state capitalist, but for its dictatorial nature there is no accountability so there is no after effect of such a colossal fuckup
Any investment or possible "profit" is lost as soon as a road needs repairs. And high-use roads need repairs waaaaay more often and are a lot more expensive than maintaining a rail system.
Will not repeat myself, please read the comment you commented under
I think you have that backward, even accepting the idea that profitability is an important metric. If a rail line is not used it is not profitable.
Which part of the
is misunderstandable? I used profitibility as a metric of usage as trains, especially high speed ones meant to transport a fuck ton of people; which I also wrote down
Building at capacity might not be the most efficient solution. First, towns grow. Second, China keeps costs down by standardisation (the Chinese HSR system has, if I remember correctly, 3 models of trains and two standards of track). And third, China is vulnerable to earthquakes and floods. So having alternative routes is useful.
The issue specifically is that there is no population centres in which these unprofitable lines run through
And no, government don’t and should burn thousands billions; and hundreds of millions in upkeep every year because what if maybe urbanization stops and people for whatever reason move back to the countryside
Perhaps you could enlighten us with a map of profitable highways?
By your own outline a high speed rail is not the right fit, the already existing rail lines/ long term busses already met the needs of the areas! As for your second question countries limited resources, china could have spent all that money that it is currently burning maintaining the lines at a loss + astronomical amounts it burned to construct the lines to say transition to renewables
Cannot imagine where you live, but thats not true in Hungary, and I very much so doubt it as its not true for the 2 examples I looked up (germany and england)! Its so not true in fact as the treasury of hungary treats as income (usable for any and all purposes)
If facts are not on our side lets make them up
How is this relevant? Sure the states that are oil producing collect taxes from oil producers. It’s a huge benefit especially to Alaska since they can support a soverigb wealth fund but others as well.
However that is not relevant to whether highways are directly profitable
Note that many US trains are diesel, so if you think oil production is a big enough benefit to the economy, it’s also thanks to rail
How is you and 48 other people asking whether high ways are profitable relevant? I said I used profitibility as a metric of its usage as trains meant to transport an absolute fuck ton of people
And why do you only have an issue with the topic you started when it turns out that you lied?
And you don’t see the hypocrisy of using profitability as a metric for trains yet claiming profitability of highways as irrelevant? This inconsistency is exactly my point.
And no
No, the two are not comperative! Roads are not necessarily high ways; comparatively expensive (tho not nearly as so) and meant to conduct large traffic! Though I am sure you could make a comperative example if you even pretended to be good faith! Though fucking again, if a high way was constructed into the fucking nowhere, running through nowhere I would be angry for wasting so much money… Which, fucking again, is my problem
Thats not a yes or no question! Once again, why do you suddenly have an issue with a topic YOU started once it turned out that your assumption, for which you again LIED, was proven to be false?
Exactly. And as we all know, population stays the same over time. So it's truly a waste.
Rural area are dying out everywhere as jobs are in cities
Government meet needs not create them and that really should not change
If your government isn't planning decades into the future, it can't meet any needs at all. It takes that long to build things to address large issues. There's a lead time. If you don't start planning and building well before there is a need, you'll always be late and will be seen as useless.
I guess that does explain the American government actually.
I am happy it doesn’t burn thousands of billions; and hundreds of millions every tear in upkeep so that maybe urbanization stops and people move back to the countryside
Waiting to hear this about the NYC MTA once Mamdani zeros out fares.
Most of the lines are used fairly well. Overall ridership of the network was 3.2billion trips last year. It is still growing.
As for the economics, it is infrastructure, which is going to last for a century or more. It obviously requires upgrades, but having a fast reliable, green form of transport between a countries large cities has a lot of advantages. Not the least are indirect economic advantages. Like for example making business trips easier, but also tourism. That is why Japan, South Korea and Western European countries built hsr as well.
That also means taking on debt is somewhat sensible, as long as economic growth from the better connections is bigger then the cost of the debt. That is honestly just running the country like a business.
Building a fast rail for tourism is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard; you actually have to produce something worthwhile for ec growth
Where did you shit that number? The whole system, and we are only talking about the underused lines, “only” transport 500k ppl a day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China)
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railway_High-speed#Ridership
I wonder why your source doesn’t state the amount of people moved, I sure love dictatorships!