[HN Gopher] Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate i...
___________________________________________________________________
Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia
since last night
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 161 points
Date : 2022-01-04 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lite.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lite.cnn.com)
| dugmartin wrote:
| Sounds like a mini version of Route 128 outside Boston after the
| "Blizzard of 1978". I wasn't there (I was experiencing the same
| blizzard in northern Illinois at the time) but the over 3,000
| vehicles had to be rescued.
|
| Lots of good pics here:
| https://www.boston.com/news/history/2018/01/29/photos-blizza...
| thraveboy wrote:
| Boring for Hacker News.. when Hacker News top stories are the
| same as Google News, it lessens the impact. (I know it's an
| algorithm)
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Update: Tim Kaine is apparently still out there after 27 hrs?
|
| https://twitter.com/timkaine/status/1478462778834833408?s=20
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I was northbound yesterday and it was insane. Cars backed up 59
| miles or more.
| [deleted]
| mhandley wrote:
| Back in 2004 a friend and I were driving from Seoul (Korea) to
| Daejeon when a huge snowstorm blew in. We were on a 56 mile
| stretch of expressway through the mountains with no exits when
| the traffic ground to a halt. After a couple of hours it was
| clear from the radio that the road would be struck for a long
| time (the jam was reported to be 50 miles long), so we walked a
| couple of miles back to a service station we'd passed and queued
| in a huge queue to buy some snacks. What was interesting was that
| everyone was very polite, and although there was a sense that
| maybe things could descend into anarchy with little provocation,
| no-one was buying more than they immediately needed and there was
| no arguing. If this had been Europe or the US, I suspect it would
| have been very different.
|
| We walked back to the car and waited, turning the engine on for 5
| minutes every half hour to warm up. Fortunately we had warm
| clothes with us. What was most frustrating was that the road was
| clear of traffic and not too much snow in the other direction,
| but was blocked many miles further ahead. The radio kept saying
| they were air-dropping water and food, but we never saw any.
| Eventually a bunch of people just in front of us formed a plan
| and shuffled a few cars back and forward to make some space. Then
| they built a ramp out of snow up and over the crash barrier. A
| bunch of SUVs escaped that way. We debated whether it would be
| possible for us to get over in a normal car - we didn't think so.
| Eventually a few more SUVs got over, and there was just enough
| space for us to get a short run up. The car grounded in the
| middle, but we carried on over and down the other side. We
| checked under the car, and were surprised to see we hadn't done
| any damage. We drove the couple of miles back the service
| station, filled up and returned to Seoul after an 18 hour drive
| to nowhere.
|
| We heard later that it took two days to free everyone, and that
| 10,000 cars had been stuck. We were very glad we hadn't waited.
| Since then I've always carried some spare warm clothing and never
| let the fuel run low when the weather looks doubtful.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Truly a nightmare situation.
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017
| Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country
| together, but there are no alternative roads to take if this one
| road closes.
|
| Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or
| otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here.
|
| I've been told that Virginia once had plans to build additional
| highways / alternative roads in cases of these emergencies, where
| the main road gets closed off for some reason. To do this,
| Virginia was planning to sell some coast-space to oil rigs and
| fund the new infrastructure.
|
| Alas: the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 killed that funding
| plan, and with it, the plans for new highways.
|
| -----------
|
| Instead, the state of Virginia focused on building additional
| lanes to the already existing highways. Which... doesn't help in
| these times of emergency, and still doesn't help in terms of day-
| to-day traffic either (most day-to-day traffic is bottlenecked at
| the offramps, where highways turn into traffic-light controlled,
| slower local roads).
|
| You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly
| scale day-to-day traffic. And you also need "backup highways" to
| handle emergency situations, such as a jack-knifed semi-truck
| blocking all lanes due to some snow-accident.
| azylman wrote:
| No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one
| thing:
|
| > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to
| truly scale day-to-day traffic
|
| Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day
| traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You
| really need large-scale investments in public transportation
| for this.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| "People drive more instead of giving up and staying home" is
| latent demand being met. "People drive more because building
| the highways made everything farther apart" is induced demand
| being created.
| njarboe wrote:
| Most people prefer individual transport systems for many good
| reasons. "Induced demand" is just more people using new roads
| because they get to do what they need/want to do. If we build
| enough roads (maybe using tunnels underground, a la The
| Boring Company) for everyone to go where they want, when they
| want, with up to 40 tons of cargo with them, there won't be
| any traffic congestion. This happened when the interstates
| were first built in the US and we could have that again if we
| decided to build thousands of miles of new tunnels. That
| would be a true national infrastructure project that would
| make everyone's lives much better. Sitting in traffic is a
| scourge on humanity. These tunnels could also have buses and
| groups of buses (trains?) in them for people who would rather
| travel with strangers, following a schedule set by someone
| else, and not carrying many objects with them. Could
| constructing this system also be called large-scale
| investment in public transportation then we could get
| everyone on board? Win-win solutions in society are still
| possible I hope.
| bluGill wrote:
| individual transport vs shared is a matter of compromise.
| Human drivers only go fast (when there is no congestion the
| autobahn with no speed limit doesn't in practice move any
| faster than US freeways for the majority of users of each).
| Trains today have the ability to go faster than human
| drivers. Trains carry far more people than cars. Thus
| replacing most trips with train trips would be faster and
| cheaper for most people.
|
| Note that I said most trips there. If you don't have a
| system useful enough that most people use it most of the
| time then people still need cars to get around and that
| changes the calculation. it can be very hard to get there.
| adventured wrote:
| > never a solution, due to induced demand
|
| That's false. The mistake universally made by people
| repeating that claim is a failure to account for the fact
| that vehicles and population are finite. In the US there
| isn't much population growth, except for in a select few
| urban areas. It's baffling that it gets repeated so often as
| though it's always true, when it's not. You can swamp the
| amount of induced demand with additional roads, it all
| depends on the number of vehicles you're dealing with. Which
| is to say, it depends on context and it's incorrect to
| suggest matter-of-fact that induced demand defeats additional
| roads.
|
| You'd need to run a study on the traffic potential and local
| + regional population growth to know one way or another what
| additional roads might do as it pertains to inducing demand
| over time and whether you can overcome the expected increased
| demand. The demand doesn't just keep rising forever as you
| build more roads.
| wyager wrote:
| There is no economical way for public transportation to cover
| the kind of transit patterns serviced by highways. If I had
| to take buses from Bozeman, MT to Boise, ID, any plausible
| bus network would take 5x as long to get me from A to B.
|
| Making everyone ride busses and bicycles in a country with
| the geography of America is a fantasy, even if you buy the
| premise that this is otherwise desirable.
|
| I don't even buy the premise, because things that are
| valuable to me include:
|
| 1. Expediency
|
| 2. Comfort
|
| 3. Not being subject to timetables decided by other people
|
| 4. Not having to deal with homeless or crazy people while
| transiting
|
| 5. Sanitation. Public transit and pandemic mitigation
| measures are mutually incompatible
|
| While driving, I only have to deal with one network topology
| (the road system) instead of two (the bus network on top of
| the road network), leading to vastly shorter travel times in
| practice. My vehicles are customized to my comfort. I don't
| have to get permission or wait on someone else to use them. I
| don't have to share them with anyone. I can keep them as
| clean as I please.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day
| traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand
|
| This continues to be wrong every time someone brings it up.
|
| If you have insufficient road capacity, you have congestion,
| and congestion suppresses demand. If you increase capacity,
| some of the congestion goes away, and then some of the demand
| comes back.
|
| What this looks like is that you currently have enough cars
| to require three lanes but have two lanes, so you build a
| third lane. The reduction in congestion causes you to have
| enough cars to require four lanes, leading to the fool's
| conclusion that adding enough lanes is _impossible_. But that
| 's not it. It's that you needed four from the beginning to
| handle the amount of traffic that occurs there in the absence
| of congestion, but you only had three, or two.
|
| Sometimes building a four (or five or six) lane highway isn't
| the best solution. Sometimes it's better to build more
| housing near the jobs so people have shorter commutes, or
| build mass transit etc.
|
| Sometimes you just need a wider road. Pretending that's
| _never_ the case is preposterous. If that was true then why
| do we keep multi-lane highways open instead of closing all
| but one of the lanes? Wouldn 't that improve traffic, under
| this theory?
| azylman wrote:
| > Sometimes you just need a wider road. Pretending that's
| never the case is preposterous. If that was true then why
| do we keep multi-lane highways open instead of closing all
| but one of the lanes? Wouldn't that improve traffic, under
| this theory?
|
| You're setting up this strawman where the argument is
| "improve roads" vs. "do nothing". That's obviously not the
| case. The argument is "improve roads" vs. "improve public
| transit". Demonstrably, improving roads is worse than
| improving public transit. You refer to this as a "fool's
| conclusion" yet this has been a well-known fact in the
| field for almost a century. The wikipedia article I linked
| has some good information on this if you'd like to learn
| more.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Your setting up this strawman where the argument is
| "improve roads" vs. "do nothing".
|
| Your claim is this:
|
| > Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-
| day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand
|
| That claim is false and is not a straw man because you
| actually claim it.
|
| Improving mass transit might work as an alternate
| solution, sometimes, in specific contexts.
|
| That doesn't prove that adding more lanes wouldn't _also_
| work, and it 's also not universally true.
|
| A large fraction of the traffic on I-95 is trucks. How
| many semi truck drivers and their loads can you fit on a
| public bus?
|
| Many highways are congested at a specific choke point.
| You could make a completely free thousand mile an hour
| bullet train to transport people from one side of the
| choke point to the other and solve nothing because people
| would get to the other side without a car and be unable
| to get the last ten miles to their destination. But once
| you get past the choke point, the traffic diverges in
| every direction and there is no longer enough density to
| justify a mass transit route.
|
| Sometimes you just need a wider road.
| azylman wrote:
| Maybe try quoting the entirety of what I said?
|
| > Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-
| day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1].
| You really need large-scale investments in public
| transportation for this.
|
| Clearly "improve roads" vs. "improve public transit"...
|
| > How many semi truck drivers and their loads can you fit
| on a public bus?
|
| You're again arguing against something no one ever said.
| No one suggested that we should just remove all semi-
| trucks and replace them with buses. Again, we're
| discussing where to allocate incremental improvements to
| existing systems. No one is suggesting doing nothing or,
| worse, shutting down existing systems.
|
| Using your specific example of semi-trucks, moving more
| traffic (such as daily commute) to rail lines or buses
| can actually help semi-trucks as well, by freeing up road
| capacity for things that actually need it. And
| additionally, freight trains already make up a fairly
| large percentage of our freight network (~30%) so rail is
| actually a great alternative to semi-trucks in many
| cases.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Clearly "improve roads" vs. "improve public transit"...
|
| You: Cars are never a solution because they can't go
| faster than 15 MPH. You really need horses for this.
|
| Me: Cars can go faster than 15 MPH in many cases. Horses
| can't be used to transport industrial boilers and such.
|
| You: Clearly you missed the part about the horses.
|
| > No one suggested that we should just remove all semi-
| trucks and replace them with buses.
|
| You have a two lane road that needs to be a four lane
| road to handle the amount of traffic it would have
| without congestion.
|
| If more than half of the traffic that would occur without
| congestion is trucks, you physically cannot relieve the
| congestion with mass transit, because relieving the
| congestion would require removing more than 100% of the
| non-truck traffic.
|
| > Moving more traffic to rail lines or buses can actually
| help semi-trucks as well, by freeing up road capacity for
| things that actually need it.
|
| This the other stupidity with induced demand. It's not
| induced, it's suppressed by congestion, which means that
| any alternative means of relieving the congestion will
| also restore the demand.
|
| Suppose you actually built mass transit and removed the
| equivalent of one lane worth of traffic from the road.
| Now you still need to add the other lane because the
| reduction in traffic congestion restored demand for the
| road and offset what was removed by the improved mass
| transit.
| tshaddox wrote:
| But there is some limit to the number of lanes you can add,
| even theoretically from a topological perspective, but more
| imminently from a practical standpoint of limited budgets
| and ability to tear down existing non-road infrastructure.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The theoretical limit is irrelevant. It's like saying you
| can't always improve emergency response time because of
| the speed of light. Nobody is really up against the
| theoretical limit.
|
| The practical limits are all trade offs. How much does it
| cost to add two lanes? How much does it cost to maintain
| low ridership bus service to low density suburbs? There
| are circumstances in which adding more lanes is the best
| available alternative.
| asoneth wrote:
| Just to be clear, the "induced demand" that concerns me is
| not the latent demand of a few deferred trips being taken
| in the days/weeks/months/year after the road is widened,
| it's the long-term generated demand of people choosing to
| move further into the suburbs because they can commute more
| miles in the same number of minutes. The cumulative result
| is that property values on the periphery of the commuting
| zone increase and within a decade or so the highway traffic
| exceeds the optimal capacity again.
|
| Some regions have concluded that adding a lane per decade
| is sustainable and already have highways more than a dozen
| lanes wide. I'm curious to see where the upper bound is.
|
| (Personally I think dynamic pricing to maintain optimal
| highway capacity is a more sustainable approach.)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Just to be clear, the "induced demand" that concerns me
| is not the latent demand of a few deferred trips being
| taken in the days/weeks/months/year after the road is
| widened, it's the long-term generated demand of people
| choosing to move further into the suburbs because they
| can commute more miles in the same number of minutes. The
| cumulative result is that property values on the
| periphery of the commuting zone increase and within a
| decade or so the highway traffic exceeds the optimal
| capacity again.
|
| Property values increasing there actually offsets the
| problem by making it less desirable to live there.
|
| The real trouble is that people build more houses there.
| But the reason people build more houses there, and suffer
| a 30 minute commute (which more congestion might have
| turned into a 60 minute commute), is that they can't
| afford to live in the place with a 15 minute commute.
| Typically because zoning prohibits building more housing
| there.
|
| Now let's see what our choices are here.
|
| We can do nothing at all. Well, now people are screwed.
| They still need somewhere to live, the place that now has
| a 60 minute commute is the only place housing can be
| built, so the housing still gets built there, but now the
| commute is longer. That's just horrible and helps no one.
|
| Second, we could widen the road and that's it. The new
| housing still gets built in the suburbs but at least now
| people waste less time in their cars.
|
| Third, we could loosen the zoning so higher density
| housing can be built closer to the city, but not widen
| the road. This is pretty good, because now the people who
| live in the new housing get the 15 minute commute. But
| the people who already live in the suburbs are still
| stuck with the 60 minute commute.
|
| Fourth, we could loosen the zoning and widen the road.
| Then new housing gets built in the city instead of the
| suburbs, because people prefer a 15 minute commute to a
| 30 minute commute, but the people who already live in the
| suburbs still get a 30 minute commute instead of a 60
| minute commute because of the wider road. And it stays
| that way because the new housing is getting built in the
| city instead of the suburbs. This is pretty obviously the
| one that we want.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as
| success. That means people _want_ to use the road, doesn 't
| it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software
| doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the
| demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more
| than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people
| busy.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| Road usage isn't necessarily success. For a political
| region, economic activity is usually considered a success.
|
| If by building a larger road through your city, you induce
| people to live outside of your city instead of in it, then
| you've added costs while reducing your economic activity,
| while creating more total wasted hours in traffic in the
| process.
|
| Are the trade offs worth it? Sometimes! But induced traffic
| demand is not by itself a success criteria for regions:
| it's only a success if it means more people are able to
| work and have higher productivity in a region, as opposed
| to just spreading out the existing workers and reducing
| their productivity through increased commute times.
| massysett wrote:
| The workers have spread out because they prefer spread-
| out housing. They prefer larger homes on larger lots.
| Roads allow people to live where they wish in the housing
| they want. People are willing to accept longer commutes
| so they have the housing they want. This is a success.
| [deleted]
| twoodfin wrote:
| I'm not sure that tracks: If a new road allows me to
| build a home where I would not have built a home before,
| that's economic activity enabled by the new road.
| alistairSH wrote:
| But it's activity somewhere other than where part of the
| road was built.
|
| Take DC and NoVA, typical large suburb next to a large
| city. If DC wants to increase economic activity, does it
| want to invest in a new bridge that allows more people to
| live in NoVA (where most of their retail/commercial
| activity will occur)? Or, would DC be better off spending
| that money on redeveloping run-down neighborhoods and
| adding some light rail (or other transit improvements)?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Doesn't DC have a height limit on buildings? Seems like
| eliminating that would be a way for the city to increase
| economic activity without spending any money
| JPKab wrote:
| Just to be clear (I lived in DC/northern Virginia for 10
| years, and witnessed induced demand over and over), if the
| goal of widening a highway is to ease traffic congestion,
| induced demand quickly makes this a failed strategy. In
| northern Virginia, every project to widen 66 or 95 has
| always been sold to taxpayers as a move to ease congestion.
| But the result of that is temporary. As soon as the
| congestion is eased, cheapish land opens up for new
| development and more affordable housing. People flock to
| these new developments, and the cycle repeats.
|
| It does result in growth for an area, but quality of life
| stagnates. The traffic in northern Virginia/DC/Maryland is
| at a point where it noticeably affects the mood of a bulk
| of the people who live there. Spending 90 minutes each way
| day after day after day fucks people's heads up.
| zip1234 wrote:
| If driving demand can be induced by massively subsidizing
| it with billions as is currently done, so can other forms
| of transportation.
| mrfusion wrote:
| You're spot on. Plus the argument doesn't hold water since
| there are a finite number of potential drivers.
| asoneth wrote:
| "Induced demand" doesn't just mean increasing the number
| of drivers, it means increasing the number of miles
| driven.
|
| In a metro area housing prices are generally correlated
| with how many minutes it takes to get to a city center.
| If you add highway capacity then people will choose to
| move further out to the suburbs. (Though that is great
| for property values, especially around the periphery of
| the commuting range.)
| nostromo wrote:
| Yeah, they're shifting the goal posts.
|
| Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit
| tends to be spotty and slow for most people.
|
| So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course.
| Speedbumps _everywhere_. Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes.
| Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make
| through streets dead ends.
|
| Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too.
| _Success!_
|
| I love transit and want more of it, but the transit folks
| realized it's hard to compete with driving, so they've just
| given up entirely on making transit great. It's easier to
| ruin driving.
| azylman wrote:
| > Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because
| transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people...So,
| what's the solution? Make driving worse of course.
| Speedbumps everywhere. Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes.
| Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make
| through streets dead ends.
|
| This is obviously not the solution that anyone is
| proposing. You're arguing in bad faith against a
| strawman. The solution to bad public transit is to make
| public transit better.
| asdff wrote:
| Go to /r/urbanplanning and you will find this creed of
| road dieting written in stone tablets by a thundering
| voice
| ufmace wrote:
| How is he arguing against a strawman? He's saying that's
| exactly what they actually did in his city.
| VintageCool wrote:
| > I love transit and want more of it, but the transit
| folks realized it's hard to compete with driving, so
| they've just given up entirely on making transit great.
| It's easier to ruin driving.
|
| Seattle just opened light rail from Northgate to the
| U-District to Downtown this year. We will also have light
| rail from Downtown Seattle to Bellevue opening next year,
| and light rail to Redmond the year after that.
|
| And the opening of light rail from Downtown to Capitol
| Hill to Husky Stadium a few years ago drove some pretty
| big changes in transit in Seattle.
| dont__panic wrote:
| This is a really good point, but I also want to bring up
| a (small) counterargument:
|
| I live in Denver, CO. Cars basically make it impossible
| to walk around most of the city, even in the more
| residential areas. Walking is an essential part of the
| public transit/non-car transportation experience because
| essentially everyone has to walk a few blocks from a bus
| stop, train station, bike rack, etc. to complete their
| trip on both ends. If walking those few blocks is
| unpleasant, unsafe, or impossible, people will
| (reasonably) prefer cars.
|
| Unfortunately, car and pedestrian traffic are at odds in
| most cities. Situations that seem better for cars
| (turning lanes, right-on-red, faster speed limits, street
| parking) often make life hell for pedestrians who try to
| cross the road. Or make life very, very noisy for
| pedestrians who need to walk or live or work near those
| roads.
|
| I agree wholeheartedly that we can't just make driving
| suck to encourage more people to walk or take public
| transit. But there are aspects of driving that need to be
| sacrificed to make public transit better. A great
| example: changing 4-lane roads to 2-lane roads -- if you
| can introduce a bike lane, bus lane, or both, those
| methods of transportation become _significantly_ faster,
| safer, and better. Biking is basically a non-starter
| without lanes; busses can be so slow as to be not worth
| using when they get stuck in normal traffic. The same
| argument applies to parking removal -- instead of using
| an entire effective lane of traffic for parked cars, we
| can dedicate it to bikes or buses.
|
| Lowering the speed limit reduces noise at street level,
| makes streets safer to cross for pedestrians, and allows
| bikes to peacefully coexist with cars in an environment
| where you don't need to go that fast anyway.
|
| It would be interesting to hear what holds you back from
| using buses, walking, or bikes instead of your car to get
| around town. In Denver, the main issues I encounter are:
|
| - bike theft
|
| - literal crazy people shouting at me on buses/trains
|
| - drivers who park/stop in crosswalks, or try to kill me
| on my bicycle
|
| - the bus network is extremely slow to get around town
|
| I think there's a fair argument that we should focus on
| solving these problems first, before we degrade car
| traffic. Bike theft is a really bike one in Seattle, too,
| iirc, and a huge blocker for folks trying to switch away
| from cars. But eventually you need to degrade car traffic
| to make public transit as good as it can be.
| robcohen wrote:
| > I love transit and want more of it, but the transit
| folks realized it's hard to compete with driving, so
| they've just given up entirely on making transit great.
| It's easier to ruin driving.
|
| Wow. You just crystalized exactly what I felt was wrong
| with the argument that induced demand is bad. Thanks.
| crowbahr wrote:
| It's an entirely bad faith and shallow argument. You
| should probably reconsider what you're thinking is.
|
| The goal of transit first infrastructure is to make the
| majority of trips unnecessary. You shouldn't be required
| to own a car to participate in American society.
|
| This means we need to rezone our residential sprawl to
| allow for more frequent, smaller grocery stores. We need
| to increase the amount of mixed zoning, increase density,
| decrease the insane quantity of land dedicated solely to
| the movement and storage of privately owned heavy
| machinery (automobiles) and focus on easily accessible
| areas of bike & bus friendly infrastructure.
|
| The Netherlands was fully capable of transitioning from a
| nation of car dependent choked cities to a bike first
| micromobility haven in 30 years. The only thing stopping
| the USA from doing the same is the enormous government
| subsidies paid to car owners to keep the roads paved.
|
| If the federal government stopped taking 90% of the cost
| of every road in the US and you had to pay gas tax to
| support it all do you think you'd still be driving? Do
| you think you'd support billion dollar bridge extensions
| and lane additions when it means gas is an extra
| $5/gallon?
| twoodfin wrote:
| _If the federal government stopped taking 90% of the cost
| of every road in the US and you had to pay gas tax to
| support it all do you think you 'd still be driving? Do
| you think you'd support billion dollar bridge extensions
| and lane additions when it means gas is an extra
| $5/gallon?_
|
| The Federal Highway Trust Fund was fully funded by the
| gas tax and other user fees until 2008, all while a
| significant percentage of revenue was allocated not to
| roads but to mass transit. Congress has topped it up with
| general revenue since, but the gas tax hike required to
| eliminate that need would be measured in cents, not
| dollars.
| zip1234 wrote:
| You realize speed bumps are not there to 'ruin driving'--
| they are mechanical means to stop drivers from speeding
| as signs are useless and as soon as people are past the
| cops they speed again.
| [deleted]
| alistairSH wrote:
| Almost nobody would disagree that making both transit and
| driving awful is not a good solution.
|
| The real solution is to make transit at least as good as
| driving (measured roughly by time to get from A-B). Not
| easy to do in some cities - Seattle has some unique
| geography to work around. But for someplace like Houston
| or Dallas? Making transit work shouldn't be that hard
| (other than the cost to build it out and getting people
| to agree it can work).
| mikestew wrote:
| _Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too._
|
| And now bicycling and walking suck just a little less.
| _That_ is a success.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because
| transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people.
|
| I don't drive and I live in Ballard. Driving has always
| sucked in Seattle since I can remember from the late
| 1970s. My dad, who lived in Seattle after coming back
| from Vietnam said the same thing.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I've always hated driving around Seattle, but a few years
| ago I was bumming around for a few days in my Miata and
| it was a whole different experience. Having a tiny car
| that can go anywhere and park anywhere is awesome.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| > I love transit and want more of it, but the transit
| folks realized it's hard to compete with driving, so
| they've just given up entirely on making transit great.
| It's easier to ruin driving.
|
| It's way more like the driving folks have absolutely
| ruined transit in almost every single city in the
| country.
| azylman wrote:
| It depends what your success criteria is. It's true, you've
| successfully increased the throughput of the transit
| network, but you haven't done anything to improve transit
| times - you just have more people stuck in traffic now.
| There are other ways you could have spent that same amount
| of money (public transit) that both increase the throughput
| of the network _and_ improve transit times.
| [deleted]
| njarboe wrote:
| Not if you build enough roads. This argument just does
| not hold up. There was less time wasted stuck in traffic
| in the past. Go with tunnels underground so as not the
| create the large problems with having surface roads. If
| your idea theory is right, why don't we just stop
| maintaining all roads, shut them down, and save a lot of
| money, if new roads are useless.
| tshaddox wrote:
| In some cases it might be theoretically possible to just
| outspend the problem. But in most cases the roads have to
| be going somewhere, and you don't have significant
| control over where and how big that somewhere is (i.e.
| you can't easily move a whole urban center, or slice it
| into chunks and move all the chunks apart from each other
| a little to fit more roads). If all the roads are ending
| at the same place, making wider and longer roads to that
| place will (often) just induce more people to drive to
| that place from further away.
|
| The reason "just shutting down all roads" doesn't make
| sense is that it doesn't solve the actual problem, which
| is that people want to _both_ work in places with good
| jobs (traditionally often dense urban centers) while
| living in cheaper places that are far away _and_ not
| spend significant chunks of their lives stuck in traffic.
| Shutting down all the roads only "solves" the traffic
| problem in a deliberately ridiculous sense (same as "just
| kill all humans").
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Shutting down or tolling chokepoints lowers the
| opportunity cost of alternatives.
|
| I work for a big central business district employer. You
| can pay $150-250 a month to park or $75/week to take a
| motor coach bus from your suburban town. Those numbers
| drive behavior, and make for a better solution as folks
| who need flexibility can pay for it.
| mrfusion wrote:
| But those extra people are choosing to be there so there
| must be some benefit.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They're choosing to be there now, precisely like they
| were choosing to not be there before you changed the
| roads. Other people are also choosing to not be there,
| and instead choosing to live in the woods in northern
| Canada. I'm not sure how this mode of argument is really
| demonstrating anything. It seems like you just
| considering literally any state of affairs other than
| active physical coercion to be a good state of affairs.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > But those extra people are choosing to be there so
| there must be some benefit.
|
| As long as your roads are saturated, they have less
| throughput, not more. It is kind of like a clog in your
| toilet: more things are there in your pipes, but not much
| is getting through.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| A clogged toilet isn't flowing. More like dumping a 5-gal
| bucket into a sink . The drain is running at full
| capacity but any one drop may take a long time to
| actually clear the sink. The 5-gal bucket is peak demand.
| Total time to sink clear is how long rush "hour" lasts.
|
| Fluid analogies are crappy because fluids flow more when
| you add pressure and traffic doesn't.
| bsder wrote:
| > I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count
| as success.
|
| More lanes generally improves throughput. However, more
| lanes often increases _latency_.
|
| City planners may prefer this, but individuals may not.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| If the point of adding lanes is to reduce delays, and
| induced demand prevents that, you have failed in the task.
| asdff wrote:
| The point of adding lanes is not to improve commutes.
| It's to improve thoroughput. If you add more lanes, and
| traffic moves at the exact same speed as it did before,
| guess what that's a win. Your throughput is now higher,
| more vehicles are moving per hour, and that ultimately
| means fewer trucks clogging up the port across town (or
| across the country).
| bluGill wrote:
| That means you didn't add enough lanes. You need to get
| ahead of induced demand, otherwise you city isn't meeting
| the needs of the people who live there. If you don't want
| to have many places you can reach in a reasonable amount
| of time can you can move to a rural area. The point of
| cities is to give people options to reach lots of places
| quickly. Get busying being a good city.
|
| Note, it can be better to add transit other than lanes of
| road. Even though I said add lanes, adding lanes is but
| one possible solution. Good transit may well be better.
| Figure out how to make your city serve the people who
| want to get around.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > You need to get ahead of induced demand, otherwise you
| city isn't meeting the needs of the people who live
| there.
|
| Well, there's an annoying edge case that must be
| considered as well. In some cases, "induced demand" is
| "stealing demand from somewhere else".
|
| Lets say you have Town Foo and Town Bar. If you build a
| highway to Foo, all the additional traffic might be
| "stealing" traffic from Town Bar and benefiting Town Foo.
| Especially if people emigrate out of Town Bar for closer
| housing to Town Foo, you didn't really improve the lives
| of anyone. You just caused everyone to migrate over.
|
| ---------
|
| Ideally, you want to build highways / roads /
| transportation in ways that benefits people, and causes
| the least inconvenience to other towns.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Well sadly, roads have a bad habit of being confined by
| physical time and space and cannot just be arbitrarily
| widened.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The point of roads, from the city's perspective, is to
| support additional transportation, which causes growth of
| the city.
|
| More transportation means more trade, more services, and
| better life for all who live near the roads. It might be
| in the form of easier-to-get deliveries (Amazon goods),
| or new jobs that have popped up close by, or new housing
| developments (aka: homes that previously weren't possible
| due to the time of transportation, but are now possible
| thanks to sped up transportation times).
|
| -----
|
| It turns out that "individualism" is a crappy reason to
| do anything. The individual argument must be made because
| we live in a democracy, and its impossible to get the
| people to agree to something unless you sell them a story
| regarding individualism.
| azylman wrote:
| It's not correct that cities look at road throughput with
| no concern for how long that travel takes. The success
| criteria that city planners use always includes travel
| times which are impacted substantially by traffic
| congestion.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| You are moving the goalpost.
|
| The purpose of adding lanes was to REDUCE DELAYS. Not
| support additional transportation. Your entire post
| hinges on an incorrect premise
| nostromo wrote:
| The point of adding lanes is to increase throughput.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Because the metric people care about is traffic on the
| roads, not how many motorists are able to use the road in a
| given day. The Big Dig by this metric was a resounding
| success in Boston, able to dramatically scale up the amount
| of commuters in and out of the city, but driving still
| absolutely sucks because of traffic. To the person on the
| road, the Big Dig solved nothing.
|
| Parent comment is saying the only way to scale with higher
| demand of transportation in a way that feels like an actual
| improvement to people is public transit, because public
| transit scales so much better with higher numbers of people
| commuting.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If the metric was _really_ traffic, then that could
| easily be solved on any road by only allowing even-
| numbered license numbers to drive on even-numbered days,
| and vice-versa. If that 's an absurd solution, then
| traffic severity is not the only metric.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > If the metric was really traffic, then that could
| easily be solved on any road by only allowing even-
| numbered license numbers to drive on even-numbered days,
| and vice-versa.
|
| They tried this in Beijing. People would just buy second
| cars so they could drive on both days. Eventually they
| had to restrict new license plates as well.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming that is literally the
| _only_ metric, because if it were, you could also just
| ban driving completely, or kill a bunch of people, etc.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I mean, I don't see how that's really a fair response to
| saying what people care about is traffic. Yeah, ability
| to use the road, sure. I don't think people want a new
| highway to be built and then told they can't use it
| because they don't have a new car or something.
|
| I as a motorist could not give less of a shit if I'm
| stuck in traffic for 3 hours a day but the road is able
| to move hundreds of thousands of cars a day. I'd prefer a
| road that could only move 20 people a day with 0 traffic.
| It's the only thing I care about.
| bagacrap wrote:
| why would you count that as a win? you almost certainly
| wouldn't be one of those 20 people allowed on the road
| kaesar14 wrote:
| The example was clearly intended to include the motorist
| in question, being allowed to be on the road. As long as
| the motorist got to use the road, it wouldn't matter to
| said motorist how large the capacity of the road was, if
| they weren't able to clear through it quickly without
| traffic. It wouldn't matter if the road in question was
| servicing large amounts of people, it's only visible
| impact to the motorists time on the road that matters.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Having lived through it all and seeing the outcome, the
| Big Dig was a pain while it was happening, but a smashing
| success now that it's done. A later removal of some of
| the toll booths in favor of automated tolling has made
| the road network even more effective.
|
| Is there still some traffic? Yes. Is it better than it
| was 30 years ago, even as the roads handle way more
| traffic? Absolutely.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I'd rather the T be functional and get me to where I need
| to be, and a better commuter rail system, then having to
| drive to and fro on Storrow at rush hour. There's no
| amount of bridges or expansions to the roads that would
| make it better short of leveling the city to build a
| giant highway, which I'm sure some percentage of
| Massachusetts drivers would be in favor of.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You prefer the T or commuter rail. That's fine and
| improving those modes of transit seems a fine goal as
| well. That preference/goal doesn't support an argument
| that the Big Dig solved nothing for those who choose to
| drive.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| The only goal is to get in and out of Boston in a
| reasonable amount of time. I wasn't around for pre Big
| Dig Boston but it's still dangerous and time-consuming
| driving to get out of Boston by car. The Big Dig might've
| made it _less_ dangerous and time-consuming, but the
| point is the solution barely scales since the total
| number of people driving just increased instead. If they
| spent those 20 years and billions of dollars on burying
| and expanding the T lines, and improving the commuter
| rail offerings, I wager we'd have achieved a lot more
| towards the aforementioned goal of getting in and out of
| Boston quickly.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| The less you invest in public transportation, the more
| people will drive. The more people that drive, the slower
| traffic gets. If you just widen the road, all you do is
| increase the amount of cars that drive. If people can't get
| to where they are going via public transportation, then
| they are going to drive instead, increasing congestion.
| Would recommend watching this video on it:
|
| https://youtu.be/RQY6WGOoYis
| massysett wrote:
| Yes, if you increase the amount of road and more cars get
| people to where they are going, the result is increased
| economic activity. The result also is increased well-
| being because more people are getting to places where
| they wish to go - destinations that are improving their
| lives. This is a success.
| criddell wrote:
| I think generally what you said is true, but there are
| other factors. Right now we're in the middle of a
| pandemic. I'm very thankful I don't have to rely on
| public transportation.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count
| as success.
|
| That depends on what you see as the goal. If the goal is
| reducing congestion, then induced demand means that
| particular goal is harder to achieve. If the goal is to get
| more people driving then induced demand is a clear success.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| Why in the world would "get more people driving" be a
| measure of success? For industries that directly benefit
| from that, sure, but I can't imagine how that could be a
| societal goal.
| asdff wrote:
| Freeways also carry significant trucking traffic. Like
| iPhones and food? Increasing throughput makes these
| things cheaper to deliver into your home from where they
| are produced.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Transportation is directly related to how much your local
| cities are doing.
|
| When you order goods from Amazon, that gets delivered to
| you. It might be a road, sea, rail, or plane, but its
| transportation. The more of packages ordered / delivered,
| the more things are happening in the city.
|
| The more jobs being created, the more people will need to
| transport to-and-from work. The more homes built, the
| more transportation is needed. Etc. etc.
|
| Its a crude measurement with flaws, but generally
| speaking, the more transportation that's happening, the
| bigger and better the city is functioning. People
| wouldn't travel unless they needed to (travel always
| sucks: traffic accidents, getting stuck, dealing with
| others on planes/trains/busses, etc. etc.). But we deal
| with it because without transit, we couldn't do our daily
| business.
|
| Be it a meeting for work, going to school, delivering
| goods or other such need.
|
| -------
|
| Mass transit options, like Rail, get more things done
| with far less money. But there's a latency issue: rail
| can be slower for the individual... but its cheaper and
| more-bandwidth for the city.
|
| This conflicts with individual options like roads: it
| costs a gross amount of money for an individual to buy a
| car / use it on the highways (plus the cost of highways
| themselves: rubber tires wear out faster than steel
| wheels on trains. Asphalt roads need replacing more often
| than steel rail lines. Gasoline costs much more than the
| electricity used to move a train). But the individual
| latency is such an advantage, that the individual will
| typically prefer car travel.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yes, but if you reduced the average amount of time stuck
| in traffic while the total number and distance of trips
| remained the same, you certainly wouldn't say that your
| local city is doing worse. Moreover, if you replaced some
| car trips with other ways of transporting the same person
| or freight, that certainly isn't a loss for your local
| city simply because the number of people driving
| decreased.
| mrfusion wrote:
| But more people wouldn't drive if there wasn't a benefit
| to it. So you're benefiting more people.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| There was an article[1] posted here a while back which
| changed my perspective on this issue.
|
| Indeed, there's nothing wrong with induced demand on its
| own. In any other market, more demand induced by lower
| costs (whether those costs be monetary or in the form of
| commute times) would almost certainly be a _good thing_.
| The only reason it 's a potential issue for roads is that
| road use is an externality.
|
| Building and maintaining efficient roadways comes at a
| significant cost, but our current system of road
| construction funded primarily by income taxes means road
| users don't pay that cost in a manner proportional to their
| use of those roads. Road construction is "free" from their
| perspective, so there's no incentive to use alternative
| means of transportation even if those alternatives would be
| superior overall once road construction and maintenance
| costs were factored in.
|
| Because of this it's hard to be sure whether the demand
| induced by increased supply of roadways is worth the cost
| in any particular instance. It could be a worthwhile
| increase in utility, or it could just be a waste of money.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28320834
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| Taking a trip is a cost, not a benefit. It's _evidence_
| that the cost of the trip is considered worth taking and
| that there 's some advantage being gained, but more trips
| in and of itself is a terrible metric.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The problem is that demand has other consequences.
|
| I drive 2-3 times a year from NY to South Carolina or
| Florida for years, always timing crossing through DC around
| 5AM. Traffic 15-20 years ago coming into DC extended down
| to Potomac Mills. When I passed though in 2019 it extended
| almost 60 miles, well past Fredericksburg!
|
| More demand drives more sprawl that drives more demand for
| roads. Eventually metastasizes into a nightmare like LA or
| Long Island!
| IdoRA wrote:
| Part of the reason there is unusually high traffic in
| that location is the confluence of two things: one is
| that local traffic doesn't have a great alternative to 95
| over the Rappahannock river (the local Rt. 17/1
| interchange is famously awful) so you take 95, and the
| other is that there is a large amount of truck traffic
| between Rt. 17 and 95. Basically over the span of the
| Stafford/F'burg area 95 sees an additional ~30k cars/day.
| There are road improvements in progress but they are too
| little, too late.
| tshaddox wrote:
| In some sense I understand what you're saying, but that
| mode of argument has limitations. Like, you certainly
| wouldn't say "I don't understand how increasing medical
| costs doesn't count as success, that means people _want_ to
| spend their money on medical care, doesn 't it?"
| twoodfin wrote:
| If you doubled the number of hospital beds, doctors,
| nurses, diagnostic equipment, labs ... and demand was
| high enough to keep prices constant, you've doubled
| healthcare access at a rate patients were already willing
| to pay.
|
| "Induced demand" in every other industry is described as
| "latent demand".
| tshaddox wrote:
| No one is against increasing access to healthcare. But I
| deliberately chose the example of _healthcare costs_ to
| be analogous with people _experiencing traffic
| congestion_.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Right, and I'm suggesting they are, in fact, quite
| analogous in this context. If there's latent, unsatisfied
| demand for healthcare, and you increase the supply, you
| shouldn't be surprised or disappointed if the new supply
| is consumed. More people are getting the healthcare they
| wanted!
| yuliyp wrote:
| Is there really that much induced demand in rural interstate
| highways? They're congested rarely enough and still almost
| everywhere the standard 4 lane interstate can handle things
| without seeing demand fill the available capacity. Certain
| corridors see increased demand at times but that's because of
| the surrounding communities happening to grow (and thus need
| more goods delivered / ability to ship goods) more than the
| highways necessarily inducing that growth.
|
| I understand that induced demand is a thing in sprawling
| metropolis where transport is the bottleneck preventing
| growth in certain areas, but this feels like a different
| situation.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I love how people think induced demand is an iron clad
| argument against any road building.
|
| What about the induced demand of going from 0 lanes to 1
| lane?
| yifanl wrote:
| Depends on where that 0 lanes is initially I guess. You can
| bulldoze a housing block to add a new lane, that's not
| necessarily an economic success.
| asdff wrote:
| It is if destroying those ten houses relieved a trucking
| bottleneck at the train yard.
| dave_aiello wrote:
| HOV lanes, special toll lanes, driverless vehicles, new
| alternative means of transportation that never quite
| materialize, etc., don't cut it and never did.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Correct, The Downs-Thomson paradox [1] is a known issue in
| urban planning stating basically unless you improve public
| transportation car congestion will continue to get worse.
|
| > the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is
| determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent
| journeys taken by public transport.
|
| NotJustBikes has a good introduction to it [2]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/RQY6WGOoYis
| rayiner wrote:
| I grew up in Northern VA. Public transit here is a solution
| looking for a problem. The job centers and commercial are too
| spread out for public transit to make any sense. Most of the
| population and jobs in the DC metro area aren't in DC but
| spread around in Tysons, Loudoun, Reston, Arlington,
| Bethesda, etc. The state spent billions building the Silver
| line out to Tysons, Reston, and Loudoun, and ridership was
| disappointing even before COVID. (And it's approximately zero
| now.) In a traditional hub-and-spoke city like Chicago, heavy
| rail can bring tons of commuters down to where the jobs are
| in the core. But when the jobs are spread out all over the
| spokes, that model breaks down. It's impossible to take Metro
| to Reston from most of the surrounding residential areas (all
| the ones except the narrow slice on the Silver line itself).
| And it's a huge pain in the ass to do the spoke-hub-spoke
| commute and take Metro from a different suburb to Reston. And
| for married couples, it's a real roll of the dice whether
| both your jobs will be easily accessible via Metro.
|
| Rail transit is an anachronism, best suited for the 1950s
| when life involved a woman staying home with the kids while
| dad took the train into the city for work. I did that for a
| year before my wife started her job and it was lovely (took
| Metro North down from Westchester to Manhattan every day).
| But in a modern family with two jobs in two locations, plus
| kids with daycare and school and after school activities,
| it's not scalable.
|
| My wife and I are "city people." We really tried to scale the
| transit lifestyle. We lived in downtown Baltimore for two
| years and took Amtrak to work each day. We lived in downtown
| DC and took Metro. We've commutes in the Silver line, Orange
| line, Blue line, MARC, etc. And every year the service got
| worse, and every time we had another kid the equation got
| harder to balance. Eventually we threw in the towel, moved to
| a red county, and bought an SUV that gets 13 mpg. And we've
| never looked back.
|
| You want to know what the future of America looks like? Go to
| the Dallas suburbs. That's where all the immigrants with kids
| are, and where the next generation of Americans are being
| raised. It's a glorious place. And it doesn't involve public
| transit.
| polygotdomain wrote:
| I just want to say that the comments about public transport
| in DC are spot on. It's incredibly hard to design a system
| that can actually get people where they need to be because
| A) people are so spread out, B) everyone is going to
| different places, C) there is minimal incentive to make
| public transit better because costs completely outweigh
| potential ridership.
|
| It's sad, but without a car in the DC area, your options
| are very minimal and you pretty much have to live in the
| city.
|
| I lived in the DC area for nearly 30 years and moved out
| right as Covid hit, and have tried to use public transit at
| various points in my adult life. Unless you live super
| close to a metro stop and/or need to go to a metro stop the
| system will barely work for you, and even then you'll be
| hamstrung with where you can go and how long it will take
| you to get there.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Use public transit to incentivize development.
| baq wrote:
| If you design your space for cars as the mode of getting to
| places, you get exactly that... but it really doesn't have
| to be like this. It is possible to plan cities in a way
| that public transit works. Obviously it won't if you need
| to jump into a car to buy bread for breakfast, because
| otherwise you won't be back for dinner.
|
| I say this as a member of a two car family who routinely
| ferries children to places and hates every minute of it
| that could be spent paying attention to something other
| than the road.
| vjust wrote:
| Right on.
|
| I lived literally next to Dulles International Airport - ~8
| miles. Yet, to get to Dulles (or Reston/Herndon) by Public
| transit, would've taken me 2 hours perhaps, or more.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Ha! I live in Reston and mapped out some options on Goole
| Maps...
|
| Home to IAD by car: 5 miles, 9 minutes
|
| Home to IAD by transit: 40+ minutes across 2 bus lines
|
| Home to IAD by foot: 10.9 miles, 3+ hours
|
| Home to WAS by car: 24 miles, 29 minutes
|
| Home to WAS by transit: 90+ minutes across 1 bus line, 2
| Metro lines, and a few walking segments to link them.
|
| It's sad that walking to the airport is twice as far than
| driving. It's also sad that I can drive to a airport
| further away than I can access my closest airport by
| transit.
| stransky wrote:
| You forgot to include time to park.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Fair enough, I always take a cab/Uber to IAD, as that
| cost is far less than the price of parking. And living so
| close to IAD, I try to fly out of it whenever possible
| (all work travel, 80% of pleasure travel).
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 8 miles in 2 hours? That's a brisk walk!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I also grew up in Northern VA. Biggest issue there is how
| _hard_ it is to build public transit. The silver-line was
| such a clusterfuck largely because of fights over who
| should pay[1], how much it should cost and how to balance
| construction-induced disruption and costs with long-term
| TCO.
|
| If we could build rail miles as cheaply and quickly as
| Western Europe, everyone in Fairfax Co could commute via
| rail except perhaps those work west of there.
|
| 1: Fairfax county is rather centrally planned compared to
| everywhere else in the US I've lived since then, but the DC
| Metro is funded by MD, VA, DC, and the federal government.
| The difficulty of building infrastructure seems to scale
| super-linearly with the number of people paying for the
| infrastructure...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > But when the jobs are spread out all over the spokes,
| that model breaks down.
|
| So don't spread the jobs out all over the spokes? Is some
| urban planning really hard to do here?
|
| > Rail transit is an anachronism, best suited for the 1950s
| when life involved a woman staying home with the kids while
| dad took the train into the city for work.
|
| That isn't true at all in much of the world. Rail transit
| still works in many non-dysfunctional countries.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > Rail transit still works in many non-dysfunctional
| countries.
|
| Define "works". Sure it can move millions of people each
| day, but those people live miserable lives most of the
| time. Have you lived in a city where commuting one hour
| each way by train is considered "very good" ? And some of
| the worse are around 1.30-1.45 hours each way, each day?
| Even if for a while the train is fine, if the city is
| growing it will become unbearably crowded, smelly, hot
| and just a nightmare to deal with when you're tired and
| want to get home at 6 PM.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Caltrain in the SF Bay peninsula is basically that and
| people do cope with it and manage to lead happy,
| fulfilling lives.
| MandieD wrote:
| Yes, our life in Franconia (northern Bavaria) is nothing
| but suffering, in our townhouse with a yard that's a 600m
| walk from a subway station and a suburban rail station,
| either of which gets me to downtown Nuremberg in 20
| minutes, because that place is a hellhole, and to the
| miserable corporate 35-hour-a-week job (the fault of IG
| Metall) that pays for said townhouse in 40 minutes. I
| especially resent the fact that I can go out for that
| swill they call beer in Bavaria with my colleagues after
| work in that dump called downtown Nuremberg without
| worrying how I'll get home.
|
| A truly regrettable existence that no human should have
| to endure. We mourn the lack of a reason to own a second
| car. My husband's bike ride to work is an even worse
| torture.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Is there a downvote brigade of motorists in this thread
| or something? The quoted comment here is absolutely
| ridiculous. Hop on a train in Hong Kong and tell us again
| how rail transit is dysfunctional and meant for 1950's
| America. Hell, visit New York.
| asdff wrote:
| Visit NYC but try to take a train from somewhere in
| brooklyn to somewhere in the bronx without having to
| spend almost an hour with a transfer in midtown
| manhattan. Even in NYC the rail network is primarily
| oriented toward you having a 9-5 job in midtown or lower
| manhattan, and everyone else gets served nearly an hour
| commute transferring on busses or trains.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Sure, I wish we had more outer borough connection lines.
| This country sucks at building anything but 12 lane
| freeways.
| weberer wrote:
| Sometimes the majority of people just disagree with you.
| It doesn't always have to be some conspiracy.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| It's a good thing the majority of the world's population
| in non-dysfunctional countries live in places where the
| parent is just wrong, then.
| barneygale wrote:
| Because the readership of HN is mostly Americans who
| can't imagine not driving. The knee-jerk against public
| transport is pathetic and predictable.
| dugmartin wrote:
| Some numbers for comparison according to a Google search:
|
| Hong Kong Area: 427 mi2
|
| Washington DC Metropolitan Area: 5,565 mi2
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Hong Kong is actually just a few urban areas separated by
| a bunch of really really tall hills (and rural areas in
| between). That anyone can get around at all in that city
| is already amazing.
|
| The DC metro area is just a pretty flat sprawl. It should
| be an easy case transportation wise, but...Americans.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Ok, just compare the Metropolitan areas. The actual city
| of DC is 68.34 mi2, smaller than Hong Kong. Still worse
| to get around in.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes, it's hard to literally relocate hundreds of
| thousands of jobs according to some urban planners
| dreams. We aren't talking about intra city planning, but
| about state wide job markets. I guess Canada is
| dysfunctional too because there is absolutely no way to
| get rail service working beyond the big cities. Maybe it
| has something to do with north America not being Europe
| so trying to just force a European model here is a pure
| pipe dream.
|
| Again, not talking about public transit in cities (which
| is amazing and should be scaled up) but about
| intercity/state/province transport. The distances, and
| spread are just not comparable to almost anywhere else in
| the world and you can't just magically make everyone
| move.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Again, not talking about public transit in cities
| (which is amazing and should be scaled up) but about
| intercity/state/province transport. The distances, and
| spread are just not comparable to almost anywhere else in
| the world and you can't just magically make everyone
| move.
|
| This problem has been solved for awhile now, at least
| since the 1960s when the first intra-city/province
| shinkansen came online. Just because some other countries
| suck as badly as the USA at it doesn't mean it is an
| unsolved problem.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| There's just absolutely no way to compare the shinkansen
| to what would be required in the DC/VA area. Yes the US
| should connect its big cities with high speed rail but
| that would still not do anything for small intercity
| transit _for everyone else_
|
| This is just rehashing pop-urban planning buzzwords. Like
| I'm not sure where the trend of just handwaving every
| problem as easily solvable by "rail! Shinkansen! City
| public transit even out of cities!" came from but it
| particularly does not make sense in this situation
| considering the commenter you replied to specified he
| talked about spread out, smaller cities with frequent
| stops. Which is the opposite of what the shinkansen is
| for.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Yes the US should connect its big cities with high
| speed rail but that would still not do anything for small
| intercity transit for everyone else
|
| Have you ever tried taking these lines before? They have
| high speed rail between big cities, and tons and tons of
| small branch/feeder routes out to small towns with the
| most frequent stops ever imaginable. Getting from huge
| Tokyo to small Gifu actually works.
|
| It did take some planning however. The USA's model of
| just "build that office complex wherever you want!"
| wouldn't work.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| The context of this thread is about Virginia which is
| part of the I-95 corridor, the most densely populated
| area in the country, with a population density comparable
| to many Western European countries[1].
|
| This is like the one region of the country you actually
| could scale up intercity/state transport, and it sucks so
| bad that Amtrak is terrible.
|
| 1: https://tetcoalition.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/03/2040_Vis....
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I guess it could be, but the point of the GP was that the
| jobs and the population were spread out widely even if
| the population density is similar. Now I could be wrong,
| but from what I know from the half of my family living in
| France, transit in Paris for example is mostly pouring
| into the city where the jobs are. In this case,
| everything is spread out, so the density itself does not
| really matter. The problem is the spread.
|
| Even here in montreal, while the metro is pretty good and
| we are currently building a pretty nice light rail system
| you still can't really depend on the rail system if your
| job isn't in montreal itself. The whole transit system is
| based on feeding the big city, not move people in between
| smaller cities. (Also, It's a bit tiring then to hear
| about just how dysfunctional the US is and how good they
| have it everywhere else when it's just not true. The
| American self loathing just get repetitive honestly)
|
| I think public transit is amazing for city transit but
| does not scale very well when there's something else than
| the usual suburb->city->suburb pattern of movement. You
| can't really interconnect every single medium-small ish
| city at a north American scale
| kaesar14 wrote:
| You can connect those smaller cities with stuff besides
| rail, you know.
| qaq wrote:
| bus service is fairly decent in NoVA
| asdff wrote:
| >So don't spread the jobs out all over the spokes? Is
| some urban planning really hard to do here?
|
| Yes, impossible actually to prevent this from happening.
| Corporations always want a good deal for office space, so
| they will literally shop around different cities looking
| at who will give them the biggest tax advantages and the
| most developable land. City councilmembers literally make
| careers out of wooing corporations into building suburban
| office parks, and why wouldn't they? They just injected a
| thousand white collar workers who will be paying taxes
| into their school district and another 5 thousand workers
| who will be driving in every morning and spending money
| on local sales tax when they get starbucks from the drive
| through. It's a race to the bottom as long as local
| governments have local control over their planning
| processes, and it would probably still continue if
| planning were done regionally or nationally since it is
| very easy to bribe American politicians.
| btreecat wrote:
| >And every year the service got worse,
|
| Because every year we refuse to fund public transport at an
| appropriate level to prevent it from getting worse let
| alone improving.
|
| If your idea of public transport is confined to only what
| the US has to offer currently, then you have already
| stopped having a conversation in good faith and instead are
| being myopic in the realm of solutions.
| scythe wrote:
| It doesn't exactly help that tall office buildings are not
| allowed in DC. It's hard to have a "hub" when it's illegal
| to build a hub.
|
| >You want to know what the future of America looks like? Go
| to the Dallas suburbs.
|
| Can I point out the irony that you're posting this in a
| thread about a natural disaster exacerbated by suburban
| development patterns, and your example of Dallas suffered a
| similar disaster less than a year ago, made worse by the
| thermal inefficiency of the same development patterns? Is
| that the future we should want?
| worstestes wrote:
| The future is Dallas suburbs? Let's just call a quits now
| and save America the trouble
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Seriously, suburbia is hell
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >You want to know what the future of America looks like? Go
| to the Dallas suburbs. That's where all the immigrants with
| kids are, and where the next generation of Americans are
| being raised. It's a glorious place. And it doesn't involve
| public transit.
|
| Dallas should probably get some better research
| universities if this is going to be a thing.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't understand why public transit doesn't have exactly
| the same induced demand problem as highways. If there's
| enough people to fill up new highways, they'll also fill up
| the public transit... Unless the plan is to make public
| transit miserable enough that only outside with no better
| options will use it, in which case it seems like it's all
| going according to plan already.
| asoneth wrote:
| Increasing public transit capacity does induce demand. In
| areas with excellent public transit people choose to live
| further away from work, take more discretionary trips by
| transit, etc. (That's one reason I would be wary of making
| transit free as some politicians have proposed.)
|
| One reason many people are more concerned about inducing
| driving demand is that private vehicle travel generally
| emits more carbon, uses more valuable land (e.g. parking,
| highways), and results in more fatalities per person per
| mile than comparable forms of transportation.
|
| Another problem with inducing driving demand is the degree
| to which those costs are subsidized by taxpayers (roads,
| highways), other shoppers (required/subsidized parking), or
| left as externalities (carbon, noise). Tolls, gas taxes,
| per-mile fees, and parking fees would have to be quite a
| bit higher in most places to cover those costs.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think that technically the same problem exists with
| public transit. It's just that the constant factor people-
| moving density difference of multiple orders of magnitude
| gives you a lot of headroom.
|
| Of course, there are also other potential advantages of
| public transit unrelated to induced demand, like pollution,
| safety, cost, impact on the design of living spaces, etc.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Improving public transport absolutely does induce demand
| and that's part of the point of making it better. In
| particular because it's much more space efficient it also
| reduces congestion as people switch to it. Same thing with
| improving cycling facilities.
|
| It's just inducing demand on an already overused system
| like private cars doesn't fix the system being overused
| unless you can get beyond the desired capacity.
| azylman wrote:
| The way that public transit scales to meet higher demand is
| different than roads. Whereas roads require more lanes,
| public transit such as trains can scale by either adding
| more train cars to existing trains or adding more frequent
| service. More frequent service, in addition to improving
| throughput, also helps everyone else using the system by
| making it more convenient. And, if it "induces" people to
| move from roads to trains, that also reduces congestion on
| the roads. So induced demand for rail lines is a good
| thing.
|
| If induced demand is high enough even that, too, may not be
| enough - but then building a new rail line is at least no
| harder than adding a new highway lane (in most cases), and
| can support substantially more throughput with equal or
| lower travel times.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't buy the lower travel time thing, not unless your
| trains or whatever are running every five minutes. In
| practice public transit has always at least doubled my
| travel time. Waiting at stops (a) introduces substantial
| latency that (b) is unpredictable, forcing me to pad my
| travel times further. I mainly use it to avoid parking at
| the destination.
|
| Mostly DC metro rail and a bit of LA buses, FWIW.
| njarboe wrote:
| Before COVID, BART in the Bay Area was completely full
| during peak hours. You had to wait for multiple trains to
| finally pack into the car. That, or take the train the
| opposite direction for a few stops from downtown and then
| get back on in the other direction. They are starting to
| remove more and more seats to pack in more people, but
| eventually if use keeps increasing you will have to build
| a new subway and who knows how much that will cost or how
| long it will take. It is probably not really possible
| right now. See the failure of California's bullet train.
| azylman wrote:
| Yup, this is a big reason why I said "in most cases" and
| not "in all cases". When your trains have to go
| underground and underwater and your highways go over
| roads and over bridges, that dramatically changes the
| numbers. Of course, none of those are a requirement of
| rail systems - just how the BART is built. There are
| plenty of trains that go over roads (e.g. the L in
| Chicago) or over bridges over water.
|
| By the way, even BART could increase throughput today
| without adding more lines. Not all trains are 10-car
| trains, because they don't have enough cars in the fleet.
| Adding more cars to their trains is a significantly
| cheaper prospect than adding a new lane to the Bay Bridge
| (which was also basically fully maxed out on throughput
| during peak traffic times, pre-COVID). And BART carries
| substantially more people across the Bay than the Bay
| Bridge does.
|
| So, certainly the BART needs more capacity, both now and
| in the future - but so do the highways.
| dekhn wrote:
| Bay Bridge 260K ppl/day + San Mateo Bridge 93K ppl/day is
| within spitting distance of BART (411K ppl). If there was
| another whole bridge across the bay (well, maybe two or
| three) it would alleviate the Bay Bridge and the traffic
| around it.
| asdff wrote:
| Increasing service is very difficult to do. For example,
| before the pandemic I would take the red line in LA which
| would be packed to the brim by the time it rolled into
| downtown LA, not enough room to even turn around while
| standing. During my commuting I would do a lot of reading
| about transit and about the redline in particular.
|
| To increase the capacity of the red line would take a lot
| of work that would not be cheap. For instance, the length
| of the trains could be increased, but to do that you have
| to construct new stations, since the train is already the
| length of the entire platform, at least the ones used for
| rush hour. LA has actually lengthened platforms that are
| on the surface before to accomodate longer light rail
| trains, but underground this is so much more difficult.
|
| You could lower headways from the 10 minutes they are
| currently at, but this becomes a physics problem fast.
| One issue is a lack of turnback stations at the ends of
| the line so the train has to come to a stop then
| 'reverse' at the end. Another issue is a subway with a
| train works like a pneumatic tube, there is a volume of
| air moving that needs sufficient ventilation, which is
| why you see these big ventilation grates on sidewalks
| where subways run below, and to run more frequent trains
| would require significant upgrades to the ventilation
| systems along the entire line.
| massysett wrote:
| The idea that highways are "never" a solution due to induced
| demand is an utter falsehood. It may well be that the expense
| of sufficient highway capacity is, in some cases, more than
| society is willing to bear. But that does not mean that
| highway construction is "never" a solution.
| trhway wrote:
| public transportation doesn't work for people with pets, in
| many situations for people with children, people with various
| health issues.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| they can still drive?
| acdha wrote:
| > public transportation doesn't work for people with pets,
| in many situations for people with children
|
| Do you mean the millions of people who do this every day
| don't exist? You might personally prefer that and it's
| certainly an opinion which has been lavishly subsidized in
| the U.S. but this is a lifestyle choice, not a truth.
|
| > people with various health issues.
|
| How many of the people who cannot take transit are capable
| of safely driving cars? Public transportation -- whether
| bus/rail mass transit or on-demand access services -- is
| key for a large number of people who cannot drive
| themselves and a large number of people who could but are
| not affluent enough to afford the $10K/year or more that
| personal car ownership (considerably more if you need a
| vehicle customized with assistive technologies).
|
| Again, you obviously have an opinion on this issue but that
| doesn't make such blanket statements less incorrect.
| trhway wrote:
| It isn't a preference nor choice. It is direct
| experience. More than half of my life i was using public
| transportation in USSR/Russia, no issues, we'd take our
| cats/dogs when needed. Not the case in US.
|
| >How many of the people who cannot take transit are
| capable of safely driving cars?
|
| It doesn't matter how many (though a lot of people for
| example develop back issues by mid age and beyond so
| prolonged walking/standing is much harder than sitting in
| the car especially after a workday). The point is you
| just dismiss them. And this is why those tone-deaf public
| transportation proponents like you aren't going anywhere
| - you dismiss all those supposedly small groups and thus
| as a result left with pretty much no support.
|
| And just a bit of meta to illustrate the point - notice
| that i'm telling you about the issues with your approach
| and instead of addressing them, you're dismissing them
| outright as supposedly just "my preferences".
| acdha wrote:
| > The point is you just dismiss them
|
| This is pure projection: I was pointing out that millions
| of people's daily life contradicted the absolute
| statement you made. If you'd said "doesn't work for many
| people" I would have agreed: it's no secret that the U.S.
| has heavily subsidized car-centric design for the last
| century and there are many people living in neighborhoods
| which don't even have sidewalks, much less transit or
| bike paths.
|
| This has also encouraged many people to think that they
| must drive even if it's not a great choice: in the city I
| live in, it's not uncommon for people to cling to the
| habits they acquired growing up and trying to drive
| everywhere even though it means they're paying
| considerably more to sit in traffic while their friends
| who biked or took the train wonder why they're late.
|
| There isn't a single answer here but the important thing
| is remembering that these are choices. Giving private car
| owners exclusive use of public land might be a popular
| choice but it's not a law of nature, and when it doesn't
| work well it's reasonable to question whether it's the
| right design for the context. There's no reason to think
| that the same answers will be true in rural areas,
| suburbs, and dense urban cores.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or
| otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so
| here.
|
| Well... not really. Taking the 95 corridor in the Northeast as
| an example, the only places with alternative highways are
| 95/295 between DC and Baltimore, 295/NJT in lower New Jersey,
| and Merritt Parkway/95 in Connecticut to New Haven. In all of
| the other segments, 95 doesn't have a close-ish parallel
| highway to take off traffic.
|
| And when you dig deeper into traffic statistics, the traffic
| tends to be heavy on _both_ segments at the same time. That is,
| there are two highways there because the traffic needs require
| there to be two highways; the second highway isn 't just
| "merely" a there-for-when-the-first-one-is-full kind of
| highway. And induced demand basically says that it's impossible
| to have that kind of highway setup.
| cafard wrote:
| Well, there is Route 1, if you can get to it.
|
| Back in I think 1995, somebody rolled a tanker full of
| sulphuric acid on I-95 southbound about Fredericksburg. It took
| a long time to get to the Acquia exit from just past the
| previous one, and Route 1 didn't move that well once we were
| there.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Instead, the state of Virginia focused on building additional
| lanes to the already existing highways
|
| They do this because they get to turn the extras into toll/HOV
| lanes and rake in dough without making tons of people's lives
| worse and getting pressure put on them to not be jerks like
| that.
|
| Follow the incentives.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > there are no alternative roads to take if this one road
| closes.
|
| US Route 1 basically parallels I-95 in most of VA. I was once
| detoured on it after a military HAZMAT incident. It's slow
| going, but it works.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The former Jefferson Davis Highway (now Emancipation Highway)
| has never had the capacity to back-stop I-95. It can be used
| in emergencies, but only if one wants to get stuck in a
| slightly different place with an occasional soda machine
| within walking distance... A feature one stuck on that road
| may be able to take advantage of, given the speed one will be
| going.
|
| And I don't imagine it would be much use in a sudden-onset
| winter storm, since it's right next to I-95; it's going to
| get blanketed about as fast as I-95 will, and most of it
| lacks enough shoulder for plows to get along it if it gets
| jammed with traffic.
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| ~2006?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Route 1 seems like a local-road to me with lots of traffic
| lights though.
|
| I-95 works really well as long as its clear. But as soon as
| an emergency happens, the spillover traffic is too massive
| for Route 1 to ever hope to handle. An interstate-highway
| can't rely upon a traffic-light laden local road to handle
| the traffic from a 4-lane interstate.
|
| EDIT: In the case of the 2017 eclipse, the traffic was so
| heavy that truckers started to pile up on the side of the
| roads (allegedly due to the laws stating that they could only
| drive for X hours at a time). Losing a few lanes slowed down
| traffic dramatically, causing even more truckers to just pull
| over due to legal requirements. I don't think the GPS / Waze
| ever recommended for us to leave I-95 during this time, so
| Rt. 1 was never a consideration.
|
| ----------
|
| A 2-lane highway without traffic lights that runs parallel
| would help a lot. I don't know the lay of the land in
| Virginia (ideally such a road would be coordinated with local
| suburbs / local cities to lessen day-to-day traffic as well).
| Larrikin wrote:
| It looks that way on Google maps maybe, but as someone who
| grew up in Richmond it's a route nearly all Virginians take
| up to DC if there is any traffic on I95 and is a well known
| alternative route.
| dwater wrote:
| US Route 1 is already an interstate highway with 4+ lanes
| through the area you're talking about. Development was
| encouraged down the I95 corridor since its creation and the
| density that has resulted pretty much makes this
| unavoidable. There was a similar situation with the Woodrow
| Wilson Bridge on 495 outside of DC in 1998 when it was
| closed due to a jumper during afternoon rush hour, and the
| traffic jam lasted overnight despite there being alternate
| major routes in every direction. The problem is that the
| bridge carried more traffic than all of the alternate
| routes put together (I'm assuming based on my experience).
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
| srv/local/longterm/wilson/...
| lsllc wrote:
| If VADOT were unable to sand and plow I-95 for this storm then
| presumably they'd have the same problem with the backup
| highway. I suppose given a bad crash then the backup highway
| would help, but in that case, detouring off the highway between
| the crash-adjacent exits would work too.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Well there is US Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, that is stuck in
| this situation (But not in immediate danger ).
| dragontamer wrote:
| Tim Kaine maybe could push through a US Senate bill for more
| infrastructure, but that's really high level and may not
| necessarily benefit Virginia directly. The ones who need
| convincing are the local officials, not the national-level
| ones.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Sounds peaceful. If it were of military importance, that would
| not be the case.
| [deleted]
| michaelnik wrote:
| Tokyo: In 2007, _65_percent_ of trips within a 50 mile radius
| were by mass transit. Overall transit usage is [...]
| approximately double that of all combined usage in the United
| States and nearly 10 times that of Paris
| [http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-
| urba...]
| gumby wrote:
| Interesting to consider that the oil industry may have made a
| mistake by reframing "global warming" as "climate change".
|
| Harder for people to see events like this as part of "global
| warning" while it is more understandable as a consequence of
| "climate change"
| cm2187 wrote:
| I thought we were told to make a distinction between "climate"
| and "the weather"...
| _moof wrote:
| Only to entertain the delusion that most people have when
| they hear the word "weather": that it doesn't involve
| anything outside a 1 cm buffer around them. When you gain
| even a tiny understanding of how the atmosphere works at a
| planetary scale, that misapprehension vanishes.
| abyssin wrote:
| But nobody told us there's no link at all between these two.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Where is the scientific proof that this isolated weather event
| is climate change?
|
| Just like you cannot claim that one day of bad weather refutes
| global warming you also cannot claim that an isolated event is
| climate change. It takes time to prove that.
|
| Getting tired of everyone spouting off about climate change
| every time bad weather occurs. It's just as anti-science as
| denial.
| acdha wrote:
| This is a common argument encouraged by the fossil fuel
| industry but it's not that simple. Climate science operates
| on a longer time scale so there isn't a single "We did it -
| Exxon, et al." note to find but what you can talk about are
| the probabilities shifting (100 year floods become 20 year
| floods, etc.) and that tends to happen after most major
| events. For example, two noteworthy weather events this
| summer:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/pacific-northwest-
| he... https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/europes-july-
| floods-...
|
| In this case, what I'd look at is whether this event is in
| line with what the climate scientists have been saying for
| decades, namely that we'd see more volatility and extreme
| weather events. This is especially compatible with
| predictions for the mid-Atlantic region which have called for
| more big snow events despite generally less snow on average.
| No, it's not definitive enough that you could use it in a
| criminal case but it tells anyone that cares to expect higher
| insurance rates, taxes, etc.
| heartbeats wrote:
| You guys are talking past each other. It's (mildly)
| dishonest to point at any one event and say "this is global
| warming". It's entirely accurate to point at a single event
| and say "if it weren't for global warming, there would be a
| 1% this happened, but with global warming, it's a 10%
| chance".
|
| It's like the Swiss cheese theory of accidents: accidents
| don't happen because one guy wasn't paying attention, they
| happen because one guy wasn't paying attention AND because
| the guy who was supposed to supervise him was off AND
| because the manager hadn't thought to call someone else in
| AND because the system designers forgot to add a rule for
| this AND the regulators because they forgot to require ...
|
| There's a fine line to thread here. On one side, you're
| lying if you say that global warming was the sole, isolated
| cause of this. On the other side, you're criminally
| irresponsible if you forget to mention the fact global
| warming certainly was an important contributory cause.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Where is the scientific proof that this isolated weather
| event is climate change?
|
| There is no evidence that this event is climate change.
|
| However, this is not an isolated event. Do you not remember
| Texas' snowstorm last year? These "freak, isolated" events
| are becoming more and more frequent. That is climate change.
| badthingfactory wrote:
| I want to have this comment tattooed on my forehead.
| evilotto wrote:
| The way I think of global warming is just that the atmosphere
| as a whole is containing more energy. If this idea is
| translated to simple and easy to understand mathematical
| models, wild behavior results as a direct outcome.
|
| The simplest version of this is the period-doubling bifuration:
| X(n+1) = r * Xn * (1 - Xn)
|
| "r" is the amount of energy in the system (i.e., heat in the
| atmosphere) and Xn is the severity of the behavior. The insight
| is that while the "severity" naturally goes up as the "energy"
| goes up, once you get to a certain point, the severity goes
| both well above and below the "natural" level in unpredictable
| ways. In other words, a more energetic atmosphere leads to both
| much hotter _and_ colder days.
|
| The Lorenz attractor was described in a very similar way,
| related to turbulence and temperature gradients. It's not
| weather or climate, but I do find it a useful analogy.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| It wasn't "the oil industry", but climate activists who, during
| a period when the earth wasn't warming starting around 1998,
| decided to reframe it as "climate change" in order to maintain
| the sense of crisis.
| outside1234 wrote:
| And it scientifically makes sense to call it this.
|
| While the planet overall is warming, the extra energy in the
| system can actually make colder in some places.
|
| For example, by enabling stronger storm systems to push
| arctic air farther south than previously.
| ratboy666 wrote:
| What about the snow in Miami then? (Jan 19, 1977)
| gumby wrote:
| Err, no, though I wasn't completely accurate either, as Luntz
| came up with it after he'd stopped being a lobbyist for a
| while in order to join the Bush White House:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
|
| There are various articles and interviews with him on this
| topic. Layoff has an excellent discussion of the topic too.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Luntz did not "come up" with it. By 2003 -- when Luntz
| started pushing for this term, all the green groups were
| already using it. The inflection was point was 1998. You
| can see this in the google n-gram data or just do a time-
| boxed google search. Every single green group switched to
| "climate change" by 2001, two years before Luntz started
| talking about it.
| mullingitover wrote:
| It's not that global warming isn't happening, it's that the
| effects aren't just a blanket 'warming.' Increased warming in
| one area can affect weather patterns that result in extreme
| weather (or even cooling!) in another. Climate change is a
| more understandable term for the layperson.
| frenchy wrote:
| Both terms have been in use since the 80s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yes, both terms existed since the 19th Century, but the
| concerted push on branding dates to the late 90s by green
| groups which began to discourage the phrase "global
| warming" and replace it with "climate change".
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22climate+ch
| a...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That's my recollection as well. There was a conservative
| meme in the late 90s/early 2000s about "Huh...it's cold
| during summer...how's that for global warming?", and I
| feel like "climate change" is a result of climate
| activist groups realizing global warming is a
| bad/confusing descriptor. I also recall in the early
| 2000s there was an attempt to get "global weirding" to
| replace "global warming" among activist communities, also
| seemingly in direct response to the conservative meme
| above.
| gruez wrote:
| >the oil industry [...] reframing "global warming" as "climate
| change".
|
| source? The wikipedia section on it is surprisingly scant on
| this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology,
| and a search for "global warming climate change" on google
| doesn't reveal much either.
| Maxburn wrote:
| I had no idea CNN had a "lite" mode.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Many news sites from the dial up era have legacy low bandwidth
| modes. There's a text-only npr.org, for instance.
| https://text.npr.org/
| Nition wrote:
| Similarly if a Reddit link on mobile ever harasses you to get
| the app or whatever, just change the www to i. i.reddit.com
| is the low-bandwidth mobile site.
| dublinben wrote:
| These sites aren't a legacy of the dial up era. They were
| relatively recently introduced (circa 2017) to more
| efficiently deliver vital information during natural
| disasters. They're a reaction to the bloated nature of their
| primary homepages.
|
| https://www.poynter.org/tech-tools/2017/text-only-news-
| sites...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wow. I've just used text.npr.org and I've realized that I
| forgot just how fast a website can be. Even on a current
| gen S21+ Ultra I've had the habit of "zoning" out for the
| few moments that I'm expecting a news website to load for.
| Thanks for the link!
| tomohawk wrote:
| I95 in that section is only 3 lanes, when it should have been
| upgraded to 4 many years ago. Instead, they focused on adding 2
| HOV lanes which change direction mid day. They could have added 3
| lanes in EACH direction (6 total) given the space required for
| the HOV, and spent less money doing it.
|
| In addition, NIMBY cancelled the eastern bypass (upgrade of US
| 301 to I97), which would have allowed interstate traffic to
| bypass this section of I95. So there is really only one major
| trunk route in this area. You have to go a couple of hours west
| to get to I81.
|
| So, they essentially have 8 lanes worth of traffic trying to
| share 3 lanes. And they have both interstate and commuter traffic
| on the same route.
|
| Many commuters have adapted as best they can to the situation
| (look up "slug lines", HOV, and a few other things). That plus
| rail is all maxed out. They need more roads and lanes.
| Animats wrote:
| 14 inches of snow at Fredricksburg, VA. All at once. The annual
| average is 13 inches.
|
| This seems to be an unexpected consequence of climate change.
| Slower moving storms, with huge amounts of rain or snow in a
| short period.
| IdoRA wrote:
| The average doesn't tell the whole story. F'burg weather is
| strange, it never seems to line up with Richmond nor DC. We've
| gotten these sorts of snowfalls every 5-10 years since the 80s,
| give or take: https://fredericksburg.com/lifestyles/johnston-a-
| look-back-a...
| kbutler wrote:
| Does climate change also explain the larger storms in the 18th,
| 19th, and 20th centuries?
|
| https://www.novec.com/About_NOVEC/Virginias-Historic-Snowsto...
| Animats wrote:
| UN: "In the period 2000 to 2019, there were 7,348 major
| recorded disaster events claiming 1.23 million lives,
| affecting 4.2 billion people (many on more than one occasion)
| resulting in approximately US$2.97 trillion in global
| economic losses.
|
| This is a sharp increase over the previous twenty years.
| Between 1980 and 1999, 4,212 disasters were linked to natural
| hazards worldwide claiming approximately 1.19 million lives
| and affecting 3.25 billion people resulting in approximately
| US$1.63 trillion in economic losses.
|
| Much of the difference is explained by a rise in climate-
| related disasters including extreme weather events: from
| 3,656 climate-related events (1980-1999) to 6,681 climate-
| related disasters in the period 2000-2019.
|
| The last twenty years have seen the number of major floods
| more than double, from 1,389 to 3,254, while the incidence of
| storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034. Floods and storms were the
| most prevalent events."
|
| [1] https://www.undrr.org/publication/human-cost-disasters-
| overv...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I believe in climate change, but hate when people trot out
| these poor arguments every time a weather event occurs.
|
| Not every storm is or can be caused by climate change, and
| average weather occurs in a minuscule amount of the time.
| even without climate change, 50% of the times it will be
| more than the average, or 50% it will be less.
|
| Similarly, your data shows a doubling of events in 20
| years, which is completely outside the range of predictions
| and models from actual climate scientists. I get that the
| intention is good, but poor arguments only pollute
| discourse.
| kbutler wrote:
| Sounds really conclusive, doesn't it?
|
| If you look a bit deeper at the statistics, this database
| "records disasters which have killed ten or more people;
| affected 100 or more people; resulted in a declared state
| of emergency, or a call for international assistance."
|
| What factors besides frequency and severity of weather
| events could affect these statistics?
|
| Most obvious are population growth (doubled over that
| period) and increased urbanization (reversed from 60:40
| primarily rural, to 60:40 primarily urban). This means that
| an event with the same severity is greatly more likely to
| be reported and included in this database. Similarly for
| economic effects - because of the growth in assets,
| infrastructure, and GDP, that doubling of economic losses,
| even if in constant dollars, represents a decrease in
| losses relative to total assets. So this data doesn't
| really represent a measure of change in the weather as much
| as change in human society (and the page is titled, "The
| human cost...")
|
| The IPCC report is somewhat equivocal about change in the
| actual heavy precipitation events, stating "the frequency
| and intensity of heavy precipitation have likely
| increased...with increases in more regions than there are
| decreases". (with "likely" meaning > 2/3 probability)
|
| Roger Pielke, Jr., has done a lot of work on extreme
| weather events: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-
| to-understand-the-n...
| [deleted]
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Jan. 16-18, 1857: The Great Blizzard's foot of snow and wind
| wrecked ships at sea and almost buried Norfolk under 20-foot
| snowdrifts. Virginia's rivers froze. At the mouth of the
| Chesapeake Bay, one could walk from the lighthouse 100 yards
| on the frozen Atlantic.
|
| Amazing... It really puts a 14 inch snowstorm into
| perspective.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It could certainly explain the increased density of such
| snowstorms in the late 20th and early 21st.
| meatsauce wrote:
| It is called winter.
| arberx wrote:
| How do electric vechicles hold up in something like this?
| exhilaration wrote:
| A stranded ICE vehicle will exhaust its gas tank in 8 hours,
| max. You can turn it on an off to stretch it out but I wonder
| if you'll just burn more gas that way. Google (and Quora)
| suggests that a Tesla will last 36-72 hours, "or less" if it's
| very cold. I think EVs win in this case, assuming a full tank
| versus a full charge.
|
| Regardless if you're in a place where this could happen you
| should have a box of chemical handwarmers, a heavy blanket,
| food, water, and other stuff in a box for emergencies.
|
| Edit: looks like I'm wrong, much better answers below!
| relaytheurgency wrote:
| Where are you getting the 8 hours from? A car that gets 30
| mpg with a 14 gallon tank can _drive_ for nearly 8 hours at
| 60 mph. That same car may burn (on the highest end) 1/2 a
| gallon an hour idling which would be more than 24 hours of
| idling time.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| 8 hours seems quite quick. I've heard that the average car
| will idle for 2 days on a full tank, though I haven't tried
| it myself.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > A stranded ICE vehicle will exhaust its gas tank in 8
| hours, max. You can turn it on an off to stretch it out but I
| wonder if you'll just burn more gas that way.
|
| Idling consumes little gas compared with actually moving the
| vehicle: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-861-februa
| ry-23-20...
|
| A 4.2L engine burns 0.39gal/hr under no-load conditions
| according to the study there for a large sedan. Let's assume
| that the load of putting the blower and heater on equate to
| even 1 gal/hr (an absurdly high value, the rule of thumb I
| can find quoted in a few places tends to be add 10-20%
| depending on interior size and conditions outside). Let's
| also assume a fuel tank size on the lower end (~15gal) for
| this sedan.
|
| This means in the absolute worst case conditions (you're
| blasting maximum heat the entire time) around 15 hours of
| operation for a full tank, 7.5 if you had half a tank.
|
| Comparatively, the Tesla, depending on Model, could use as
| much as 4.8kWh[0][1] under similar worst-case conditions.
| Modern versions of Tesla and other electrics have or are
| moving to heat pump heaters, which is encouraging as it will
| likely be better generally (though this comes with the caveat
| that they don't work as well in lower temperatures and I
| believe are supplemented by coil heaters under those
| conditions).
|
| At any rate, the worst-case electric scenario gives a full-
| charge length of 18.75 (90kWh useable out of a 95kWh pack in
| the largest long-range models) or 9.38 at half. Note, this is
| giving the Tesla an enormous advantage here as I'm going with
| the largest battery pack possible. With the long range pack
| available in the Model 3 those numbers drop to basically the
| same as the smaller-tanked gasoline sedans.
|
| If you have better sources for those numbers on the Tesla
| idling with the heaters on, these were all I could find
| quickly.
|
| [0]: https://insideevs.com/news/340327/lets-look-at-energy-
| consum... [1]:
| https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/idling.139235/
| oneplane wrote:
| So in essence, if you're stuck for a day you're going to be
| screwed regardless, except for some edge cases like a large
| full tank and an ICE that doesn't consume a lot of fuel
| when idle, or a heat pump driven EV with a full charge in a
| decently sized pack.
|
| There will always be older or less efficient cars, smaller
| gas tanks, smaller battery packs, resistive heaters, and
| people not rationing the energy available to them.
| grayfaced wrote:
| Not well, the heater is a major drain. If you stop the heater,
| the batteries get cold and perform significantly worse.
| s5300 wrote:
| I'm pulling this out of really old knowledge I've not looked
| over in years so may be incorrect...
|
| While you are right about "not well", the other option can
| often be "not at all"
|
| The batteries used in most EV's should always work to some
| degree, with regards to temperatures experienced on Earth -
| the batteries & other systems in most ICE can be completely
| crippled/not work at all under certain temps faced on Earth
|
| Now, you can specifically go out of your way to ruggedize all
| systems in your ICE so it works to a much better degree than
| the EV, but the average person is definitely not doing that.
| kube-system wrote:
| The saving grace with ICE is that they are so inefficient
| that they literally are mostly heat generators that also
| produce some mechanical force as a significant byproduct.
| They might not like starting in the cold, but once they're
| started, they're fine.
| beerandt wrote:
| There's similar efficiency losses for EVs, but (besides
| battery efficiency or thermal penalties) they're just
| further upstream.
| crooked-v wrote:
| A heat pump system (such as in a Tesla Model Y or a Kia Niro)
| is significantly more efficient than a plain electric heater,
| though I haven't seen any hard numbers for cars with that
| equipment in winter weather.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Doesn't Tesla recommend that users use the heat as little
| as possible, and use the seat warmers instead, to conserve
| battery? Or has that changed in more recent models?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If they're not moving and have a heat pump, well, but like a
| combustion vehicle will exhaust their energy storage
| eventually. Resistive heat or suboptimal battery architecture?
| Poorly.
|
| Jerrycans for some, tows to Fast DC chargers for others. Class
| 8 semis should have sufficient diesel reserves for long
| loiters, even with truckers using auxiliary power units for
| heat. If not, it is trivial to refuel them on the road with a
| transfer pump.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Aren't EVs programmed to hold a reserve charge for
| emergencies? To avoid the cost and inconvenience of a tow,
| shut off power before you lose the ability to drive yourself
| to the nearest charger. (Bonus points for adjusting the
| threshold based on the distance to known stations.)
|
| But in the case that a car does drain the battery, how
| difficult is it to get a portable charger to someone? Have
| roadside mechanics started carrying generators in their
| trucks now? They probably should, with the appropriate
| cables.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To your first paragraph, yes, but battery charge can
| decline rapidly in the cold at low states of charge. You
| may exhaust the reserve depending on your circumstances.
|
| To your second paragraph, AAA (the tow service) piloted
| mobile generators for stranded EVs. There was no demand,
| and the service was discontinued.
| TedShiller wrote:
| The governor doesn't seem to care. Good to know.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I've been stuck on closed interstates because of snow ( I-40
| between Amarillo TX and Santa Fe NM ). It sucks, i've never had
| to spend the night though. We were re-routed in the middle of the
| night off I-40 during a storm and spent about 5hrs navigating
| pretty bad conditions way out in the middle of nowhere. I
| remember slowly creeping up on a dark figure in the middle of the
| road to go around, it turned out to be a giant boat that had
| fallen off a trailer! It was pretty surreal to see out in the
| middle of the desert in a snow storm.
|
| Thankfully we were with a ton of other traffic, if we were by
| ourselves it would have been scary.
| basseq wrote:
| My mom drove the ~120 miles from Northern VA to Richmond
| yesterday, leaving around 3pm. This trip takes 2 hours on a good
| day, and has taken me 4+. It took her SEVEN HOURS. She ended up
| taking "back roads", had to backtrack several times, and
| eventually came into Richmond on I-64 from the west.
| carabiner wrote:
| May the fates hold off the coming of the storm.
| lsllc wrote:
| Driving apps like Waze don't seem to have a "weather on my route"
| option which would be a key feature for long distance drives in
| any climate that can have severe weather.
|
| Can anyone recommend a navigation app that supports weather
| forecasts along the way?
| binaryblitz wrote:
| https://abetterrouteplanner.com/
|
| It's designed for electric cars, but it does include weather
| info in its routes. I'm not 100% sure how it works, but it is
| there.
| lsllc wrote:
| Ah, thanks! Seems that the weather info is only available for
| a Premium account though.
| vjust wrote:
| VDOT (Virginia Dept. of Transportation) had such a bad reputation
| for delayed/costly projects (among lawmakers/funders) that they
| once decided only fixing patches/potholes (basically minor stuff
| like that) would be given to VDOT - it was too risky to fund VDOT
| projects for new road infrastructure.
| evilotto wrote:
| It sucks a little less, but some customers in California are
| going on a week without electricity after big snowstorms, with a
| few days yet to go. That's rough when you rely on a well for
| water.
|
| https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/california/pge-pres...
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| admiral33 wrote:
| Hey doordash here is your marketing opportunity. Bring them food,
| water, handwarmers, etc on a bunch of snow mobiles. Some people
| get helped and you get a super bowl ad
| cortesoft wrote:
| Umm if a doordash driver could get to them, then the cars could
| just leave themselves.
| kbutler wrote:
| "...on snowmobiles..."
|
| So the drivers could leave, but the cars would remain
| stranded.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Are there that many snow mobiles in VA?
| dotancohen wrote:
| That's a Fermi question if I've ever heard one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
| kbutler wrote:
| :-D Great question.
|
| Probably? https://www.yellowpages.com/search?search_terms
| =snowmobile+r...
| daveevad wrote:
| > 1.3 million registered snowmobiles in the US [0]
|
| For fun, let's just say those are evenly distributed
| amongst the states and there are 26,000 snowmobiles
| available in Virginia at DoorDash's disposal. I'd wager
| snowmobiles wouldn't be the limiting factor in this
| operation.
|
| [0](https://www.snowmobile.org/snowmobiling-statistics-
| and-facts...)
| [deleted]
| chasd00 wrote:
| road's closed. maybe airdrop with drones?
| Larrikin wrote:
| Being profitable and showing their value during a time period
| where most of the world was locked in their homes and
| restaurants couldn't seat anyone would have been a better
| marketing opportunity.
|
| But they couldn't even do that and had to race to an IPO.
| jart wrote:
| The geographical location is I-95 near Fredericksburg, VA if
| anyone wants to look it up on Google Maps.
|
| I can't tell if this video is a deep fake or a modern compression
| algorithm but one of the guys stuck in the jam for 15 hours says
| he hasn't seen a single emergency or police vehicle
| https://twitter.com/DeFede/status/1478361020670394370 So I
| wouldn't be surprised if some political scandal comes out of
| this, similar to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal
|
| The function of government is mostly to do things like build
| roads, collect garbage, operate sewers, and segregate criminals.
| Roads aren't much good if the roads don't work. If the U.S.
| Government continues to fail at these kinds of core competencies
| then there'll likely be opportunities for truly revolutionary
| startups in the future.
| emptybottle wrote:
| A good reminder to keep some warm blankets/coats/gloves/hats in
| your trunk, along with some non-perishable snacks and a first-aid
| kit & flashlight.
|
| Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and
| burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a
| container to put it in.
|
| Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and
| stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathroom
| breaks.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| If I really kept kitted out for an incident like this I use up
| all my grocery room or most of the back seats. I was in my last
| car, but because I usually didn't take passengers.
| kadoban wrote:
| If you optimize for space it's not too bad. Even a thin
| blanket of the right material is a huge improvement over
| nothing. That and nest things inside of each other where
| possible and/or use vacuum seal bags. I've typically been
| able to jam everything in the least convenient corner of the
| trunk.
| asdff wrote:
| You could easily fit it all in a milk crate and shove it in
| the back of your trunk with your spare tools.
| btgeekboy wrote:
| I keep a few moving blankets in my trunk. Good for protecting
| my car/items in trips to the store, cheap enough I don't care
| if they're ruined, and they'll also come in handy if something
| like this scenario ever happens to me.
| analog31 wrote:
| Greetings from Wisconsin. We have one car that we use for
| trips, the other is just used locally. But even for just going
| somewhere in town, we have a rule: Make sure you're prepared to
| walk a mile if necessary.
| bombcar wrote:
| Knowing where the nearest Kwik Trip can be a life-saving
| necessity, if you have to walk from a dead car. Planning
| winter trips on high-travelled roads (avoid backroads not
| only because they may not be plowed, but there may be nobody
| along if you have trouble).
| silisili wrote:
| +1. My father drilled this into our heads. He's been known to
| exaggerate, but always told us a story of when he worked for
| the Highway Dept, below zero weather, and his truck broke down
| in the middle of nowhere. Claims he would have died if a cop
| hadn't just happened along at the right time.
|
| True or not, when I lived in the midwest, I -always- kept a
| huge blanket in my vehicle.
| jcims wrote:
| >Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty
| and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with
| bathroom breaks.
|
| This also helps limit the amount of water that can condense on
| the walls of the gas tank and wind up freezing in the pump or
| fuel line.
|
| It's possible modern cars have some countermeasures for this
| because it has been years since I've seen it happen, but an
| additional (potential) benefit.
| pempem wrote:
| No one kitts their car out like this in DC bc this amt of snow
| is basically unheard of...?
| fundad wrote:
| we have a new climate
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| One storm is not a trend.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'm almost willing to bet that storms will get
| progressively worse in the next few years.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Right, we've never had snow and cold in Virginia before.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The DC area gets a "good" snow storm (>=6") about every 2 or
| 3 years. Typical behavior is to get a snow day the day of the
| storm and often the day after as well. Anyone trying to go
| anywhere during the storm is likely to have a rough time--the
| local streets won't see anything like a plow come through for
| a good long while, so it's not really sane to attempt to go
| anywhere. Even for smaller storms, only 1-2" total, shutting
| down completely for the day is pretty typical.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It's not so much unheard of in DC, more that we don't get
| enough snow to warrant heavier investment in snow removal -
| easier to shut down for a day or two. Anybody who sees snow
| in the forecast and gets on I-95 or any other major highway
| in the area is insane.
|
| This site lists most major winter weather events in the DC
| region over the past decades...
| https://www.weather.gov/lwx/winter_DC-Winters
| cure wrote:
| Good advice. I also keep a "Portable Car Jump Starter" in the
| trunk. These days they are basically big batteries (mine is
| ~3100mAh at 12V apparently) and they come with USB plugs and a
| built-in flashlight... Handy if you need to recharge your phone
| in a pinch.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I hope you're off by an order of magnitude on that current
| rating, or it might not deliver the goods when you need it...
| repiret wrote:
| He didn't give a current rating. "mAh" measures energy
| storage, and 3100mAh is enough to jump a car a couple
| times.
|
| Jumping a car doesn't take a lot of energy. But it does
| take a lot of power (and therefore current). Small Li-ion
| car jumpers can be surprisingly capable.
| bix6 wrote:
| I jumped a stranger's car with my 66.6 Wh battery the other
| day. DC output 12V/10A. Peak current 2000A. Battery is
| still 3/4+ full. Haven't tried charging a phone from it
| though.
| cure wrote:
| I have actually used this thing several times to jump a
| car. It works _great_.
| massysett wrote:
| Is possible battery damage or malfunction due to the heat in
| a car a concern?
| binaryblitz wrote:
| Those are great to have. I will say that 3100mAh is pretty
| low and wouldn't even fully charge most smartphones. 20kmAh
| batteries can be purchased for less than $100, and 10k-15k
| mAh for less than $50.
|
| A good idea to have just in case. :)
| cure wrote:
| Mind you that's 3100mAh at 12V. That's roughly 7400mAh at
| 5V (USB voltage).
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Since you are probably not talking about
| kilometeramperehours, might want to fix the unit to just
| Ah.
| nanidin wrote:
| Battery packs are usually marketed with their capacity in
| milliamp-hours. I thought the 15-20k mAh made it pretty
| clear that we were taking about a 15000-20000 mAh battery
| pack.
| carabiner wrote:
| Specific recs:
|
| Sleeping bag:
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Coleman-0-F-Rectangular-Sleeping-...
|
| Warm gloves: https://www.amazon.com/1927KW-L-1-Premium-pigskin-
| polyester-...
|
| Warm hat: https://www.amazon.com/Minus33-Merino-Wool-Ridge-
| Beanie/dp/B...
|
| Headlamp: https://www.amazon.com/Vont-Flashlight-Batteries-
| Headlight-H...
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| How does this logic work with electric cars; just cut the range
| in half?
| _moof wrote:
| Electric cars are apparently much better in these situations
| than gas-powered cars, because you can keep the heat on for
| hours and hours without using up much charge (or creating any
| CO). Don't personally know if that's true but it's what I've
| read.
| bix6 wrote:
| Emergency (foil) blanket saved my life one night when I was
| freezing. I carry one more often than not now. Minor
| space/weight penalty to avoid hypothermia.
|
| Camelbak 3L comes with me on all road trips but I'm considering
| a permanent water tank in my car.
| TedShiller wrote:
| How do foil blankets work actually? Doesn't metal foil
| transmit heat very well which would make them a bad blanket
| to trap heat?
| nerfhammer wrote:
| It's actually mylar that they're made of.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoPET
| jwagenet wrote:
| I believe besides acting as a wind barrier, the foil
| reflects heat internally. They would not be effective in
| direct contact with skin and another surface.
| zepearl wrote:
| Btw. I replaced some years ago the blanket with a sleeping bag
| (warmer + can be folded/compressed better therefore needs less
| space when stored/hidden in the trunk), and the normal
| flashlight with another one which is magnetic on one side (for
| example so that it won't move while mount snow chains).
| MikeKusold wrote:
| A sleeping bag that is stored compressed loses it's
| insulation properties: https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-
| advice/how-to-store-a-sleep...
|
| I keep a Harbor Freight moving blanket in my trunk. It's
| thick for insulation, and also cheap in case you need to
| protect your seats after a muddy activity. I also wouldn't
| feel torn up about laying it down on ice if I need some
| traction.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If you get one of those vacuum pack bags you can store a
| blanket or sleeping bag in very little space.
| dqv wrote:
| I know this is gross to talk about, but I'd also add
| "incontinence blankets" to this list. Specifically for being
| locked in traffic for this long. There are reusable
| incontinence blankets you can get. This way you have something
| designed to catch waste if you misfire.
| Jxl180 wrote:
| I have these bags made for urine or vomit with a gel in it
| that will congealed the contents. I was stranded on a closed
| highway and had to pee so bad. Never again.
| [deleted]
| neom wrote:
| Never heard of these before, after skimming amazon reviews
| on a few products, looks like most folks like "Travel John"
| and "OUMEE" brand the best. Seems useful!
| Jxl180 wrote:
| Yes, Travel John is what's in my glove box.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Why didn't you just take a pee by the side of the road?
| hyperbovine wrote:
| In my experience, men will piss anywhere/on anything/in
| front of anybody. Women not so much.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| Believe it or not, in some parts of the USA that can get
| you labeled a sex offender for life.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Wow, didn't know that! In the UK and most of Europe it's
| standard practice.
| Jxl180 wrote:
| I was considering it (very lucky the traffic cleared),
| but it was a major highway at midnight that was closed
| due to flooding ahead, and emergency vehicles were
| speeding down the shoulder fairly frequently. I didn't
| consider it safe for me to leave the vehicle.
| [deleted]
| julianh95 wrote:
| Some _fast_ and reliable mass transit like the trains in
| Japan/Europe sure would be nice to help alleviate situations like
| this and general traffic.
| javagram wrote:
| http://longbridgeproject.com/
|
| Virginia is working to double rail capacity between DC and
| Richmond by 2030.
|
| People will still drive cars though.
| weberer wrote:
| Its called the Acela Express, but most people don't take it
| because its so expensive.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right? Imagine a mode of travel which does not suffer from
| emergent collapse, which is managed by professionals with
| expertise and specialized heavy equipment, which in any case is
| not normally troubled by snowfalls of less than 2 meters in
| depth, and which in clear weather is dramatically faster and
| cheaper than driving, and which, as a bonus, is systematically
| cheaper than cars and highways and which will not destroy the
| atmosphere!
| kube-system wrote:
| People are also stuck on Amtrak in VA
|
| https://www.upmatters.com/news/national/snow-stalls-amtrak-i...
| jeffbee wrote:
| That happens even without snow. I've been stuck on Amtrak
| trains because there was some object on the track (crashed
| vehicles) and the train just sat there for hours and they
| refuse to open the doors even though were were in the center
| of Oakland and could have happily just walked out.
|
| Amtrak is not a great example of how trains should work.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't think any train operators are immune to the issues
| caused by track obstructions. Nor are car drivers immune to
| obstructions on I95.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Amtrak is particularly vulnerable in that they lease
| their tracks from freight companies, who generally
| prioritize their own (much longer) trains over Amtrak. So
| a small delay can snowball into a large one very quickly.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Trains are often disrupted in Europe by snow. Even the tube in
| London is a mess when it snows.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's less likely to help in this specific corridor. The I-95 is
| for people going from everywhere to everywhere up the eastern
| seaboard; there's definitely room for improvement on, say, the
| Richmond-to-DC direct trains, but to really take pressure off
| I-95 here you'd need a total overhaul from Florida to Maine and
| up through to Chicago. I-95 north of Richmond choke-points
| almost everyone driving any of that.
|
| It'd be a good idea though.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It happens to trains, too.
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/12/national/heavy-...
|
| > Around 430 passengers in Niigata Prefecture were forced to
| spend the night on a packed four-car train after it got
| stranded Thursday evening by heavy snow along the Sea of Japan
| coast.
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/1904881/jap...
|
| > About 110 passengers on a Sanyo Shinkansen bullet train bound
| for Shin-Osaka Station stayed overnight on the train at Okayama
| Station, western Japan, after the train arrived around 2am on
| Monday.
|
| > The train had been stranded en route for about two hours due
| to a breakdown of railway equipment, apparently caused by snow.
|
| (I'd rather be stuck in a train, that said.)
| epistasis wrote:
| Agreed, being stuck on a train in a winter storm is far far
| less terrifying to me than being stuck in a small car,
| running out of gas (or battery charge), without water or food
| or access to bathrooms.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| And that's why you always have a blanket, a few cans of
| water, a few cans of food and a book in the trunk in
| wintertime. There's no excuse not to.
| epistasis wrote:
| Still significantly less comfortable than being able to
| walk around and use a proper bathroom.
|
| And if you have young kids.... yikes I can't even imagine
| the hell of that sort of situation.
|
| It would be really nice to have an alternative to being
| forced to drive for every day tasks. Instead, we have
| forced car dependent through law and through federal
| spending.
| dangrossman wrote:
| If you're in the middle of Virginia on I95 in an electric
| car, you'd be fine.
|
| To get from Fredericksburg to Richmond or vice versa, you
| have at least 60 miles of charge in your tank or you were
| never going to make it. At highway speeds, that's at least
| 20 kWh of battery power. It won't take more than 300-500
| watts to heat the cabin continuously even in the middle of
| a blizzard. That means your battery will last 44 to 66
| hours at minimum. So you've got multiple days of heat,
| water is falling from the sky, and the bathroom is
| immediately outside your doors.
|
| This is one of the nice things about electric cars: the
| motor uses no energy while idling, and moving the car
| requires so much energy that you'll never run out if you're
| stationary. Most new EVs today have 60-80 kWh batteries. It
| would take several _weeks_ to drain a full battery just
| running A /C or heat along with the radio and screens.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Also of note- in a snowstorm situation there are no
| exhaust pipes that can be clogged with snow on an EV.
| It's self-contained!
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I've never heard of exhaust pipes getting clogged with
| snow, the gas coming out is hot. I'd be surprised if this
| has ever happened unintentionally.
|
| If what you mean is that the exhaust can linger too long
| or be redirected in ways that aren't ideal then yea.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you're trapped for a day in a inches-per-hour
| snowstorm, you're not going to be able to run the engine
| the whole time. You may also be in a snowbank, with wind
| causing drifts to build up.
|
| It definitely happens.
|
| https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/carbon-monoxide-
| poi...
|
| > In New Jersey, 23-year-old Sashalynn Rosa, of Passaic,
| and her 1-year-old son, Messiah Bonilla, died of carbon
| monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that
| had its tailpipe covered in snow. Rosa's 3-year-old
| daughter, Saniyah Bonilla, was hospitalized in critical
| condition and died on Jan. 27. The father of the children
| was just steps away shoveling snow from around the car.
|
| > Angel Ginel of New York died in a similar way Monday
| afternoon. Police say Ginel was found inside his running,
| plowed-in car in Brooklyn. His relatives believe he got
| inside the car to warm up Sunday, and the car got buried.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I ran a similar calculation for my Spark EV with 14 kWh
| capacity remaining. I can run my router and two wifi APs
| for around 15 days (at least) if needed. So I picked up a
| small inverter and will manually fail over from my UPS if
| a power outage goes beyond an hour or so. (Of course, if
| there's no power for 15 days there are likely bigger
| problems than internet access.)
| ninefathom wrote:
| I'm getting a bit of a chuckle over these suggestions of "backup
| roads" and "alternative routes." NoVa is just as strapped for
| housing as it is for transportation. Mass transit in this area
| doesn't and won't work, no matter how much money is poured in,
| because much of it is not a "city" in the usual sense, but rather
| endless miles of suburban sprawl stretching from one horizon to
| the opposite. The only viable solution- though the idea seems to
| make people break out in a rash- is to move the capital. Move it
| somewhere central to the nation, geographically speaking, keep it
| as compact as possible, and for heaven's sake prohibit its use as
| a place of residence (ahem).
| asdff wrote:
| Where would they possibly move it? St. Louis and everywhere
| else you could imagine that isn't a corn field or a feedlot in
| the central U.S. also has suburbs sprawling to the horizon and
| suburban office parks. Constructing a new capital in the middle
| of nowhere is like corrupt dictator tier stuff.
| maxwell wrote:
| Agreed, let's combine the Kansas Cities into a new Metropolis
| federal district on the Missouri River.
|
| https://qr.ae/pG6gOR
|
| https://smallville.fandom.com/wiki/Metropolis
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27749590
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/yes-let...
| rbanffy wrote:
| > no matter how much money is poured in
|
| Challenge accepted.
|
| Now we need the money.
| 58x14 wrote:
| It's remarkable how quickly our vehicles and roads succumb to
| such conditions. I used to drive that route on I95, and in the
| winter I would always pack a blanket and bottled water. I can
| only imagine having children with me.
|
| From an infrastructure perspective, realistically, I suppose it
| isn't feasible to account for more extreme snowfall.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's not just in the US. Denmark had a snowstorm about a month
| ago and it was chaos because people take stupid risks. Large
| numbers of people drive around on summer tires as well as the
| majority of both trucks and busses.
|
| If people only put themselves at risk, fine. The issue is when
| trucks and people who felt compelled to drive on summer tires,
| in a snowstorm, during covid, block the roads and prevent the
| remaining population from getting home safely.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Southern France, same. The highways get closed when it snows,
| or due to heavy rainfall (happens a few days per decade)
| scifi6546 wrote:
| a big part of it is how prepared both the government and the
| people are. In fairbanks, alaska we recently had a much
| larger storm and although many people lost power for a couple
| of days and most of the town was stuck at home we recovered
| pretty much immediately after the snow stopped falling. For
| many town along the coast large winter storms are normal so
| they recover even quicker.
| guntars wrote:
| Link for people that DO want megabytes of tracking Javascript
| and, you know, media:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/04/weather/winter-weather-tuesda...
| PopeUrbanX wrote:
| Thanks, I hate having to resize my browser window just to make
| 100% width paragraphs readable.
| coolso wrote:
| And here are some links for people who prefer to avoid CNN:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/snow-storm-weather-195-virginia-6...
|
| https://www.nbc12.com/2022/01/04/vdot-continues-clear-i-95-h...
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-i-95-winter-storm-traffi...
|
| https://wtop.com/traffic/2022/01/the-storm-paralyzed-traffic...
|
| https://wjla.com/amp/news/local/drivers-stranded-stuck-for-h...
| oneplane wrote:
| I was actually about to comment that I had forgotten about the
| light (or 'lite' as they like to commercially re-spell it since
| the 1950's) version and was pleasantly surprised that it works
| as expected.
| buybackoff wrote:
| This page made me smile almost like when I had only started
| to use internet. Expected to see such a subthread before
| wanting to post similar.
| meatsauce wrote:
| Unprecedented? This happens all the time. It is called a major
| winter storm and they happen every year. It is also a cautionary
| tale. If you rely on cell phones for communication, you may find
| yourself in big trouble when the cell phones no longer work. Get
| a two way radio. At least a FRS or CB radio, but better off with
| an amateur radio license so you can use the many repeater sites
| and HF if you are truly stuck someplace that is remote.
| symlinkk wrote:
| I think something satellite based would be superior, e.g.
| Garmin inReach
| manquer wrote:
| A satellite phone seems a simpler solution which is more
| reliable than Ham radio?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The ineptitude of the state governments in DC/VA/MD is amazing to
| me. Snow happens in these places?
| vgel wrote:
| I used to live in VA and how incredibly incompetent VDOT is
| baffles me. There's basically no public transport in the state,
| and the roads are still horrible. Where does the money go?
| They're building new lanes on the highways like SR66, but
| they're privately-funded hotlanes (toll lanes), not regular
| lanes.
|
| I live in Seattle now, public transport is infinitely better,
| _and_ the roads are better (though they still kinda suck).
| Baffles the mind.
| steelframe wrote:
| > I live in Seattle now, public transport is infinitely
| better
|
| Perhaps it's because of the bias one always seems to have
| against the infrastruture where they live, but until at least
| half of the planned light rail expansion opens up, I'm not
| exactly inclined to sing praises about Seattle's public
| transport. Virginia must be downright miserable.
| vgel wrote:
| Yeah, it is. For reference, I have a biological sister in
| VA, and a sister-in-law out here, both of whom can't drive.
| Both live a similar driving distance from the main city (DC
| vs Seattle).
|
| My SIL can bus basically anywhere with enough patience. She
| goes to board game nights, college (pre-covid), etc.
|
| My sister in VA can't go anywhere without getting a ride
| from my mom. She's actually only a few miles away from the
| one DC subway line that comes out in her direction, but
| despite having a disability that qualifies her for the
| public transport door-to-door vans, she's ever-so-slightly
| out of their service radius. Even if she could use that,
| that line is a commuter line that goes straight into DC,
| it's useless for anything else, and they heavily cut
| service due to covid + derailment incidents (inspectors
| were falsifying inspection reports) + car fires. She could
| use Uber or Lyft, but that's expensive and she's read about
| people getting assaulted and is scared to use it (I know
| it's rare, I've tried...)
|
| So, yeah. I complain about Seattle PT too don't get me
| wrong, but thinking about other states does put it into
| perspective (even if thinking about Europe puts it into a
| different perspective...)
| Bud wrote:
| Snow actually didn't use to happen in those places. Not in this
| way. That's why the word "change" is in "climate change".
|
| DC, btw, is not a state, and has no "state government".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Snow actually didn't use to happen in those places. Not in
| this way. That's why the word "change" is in "climate
| change".
|
| Grew up in DC, this is wrong. Large snowfall happens
| irregularly, but it absolutely happens.
|
| The 2009-10 Nor'easters had substantially more snow than
| this.
|
| See the charts here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2
| 021/01/14/washington...
| wiredfool wrote:
| Grew up outside of DC. Snow absolutely happened then, and it
| was a standing joke that the Russians were investing in
| weather control so they could cause an inch of snow to shut
| down the city.
|
| I still remember Feb 1979, when we got 2 feet of snow
| overnight and school was closed for a week.
| wiredfool wrote:
| What is new is the leaves coming off the trees in December
| instead of the end of October, and the common occurrence of
| 70 degree days in the winter.
|
| It used to be that shorts weather at Christmas was
| something to remember and retell to the next generation.
| (That would be the year of the roller skates, and the
| horrifically muddy ski trip) Now it's just last week.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You can be pedantic about it, but DC functions in many ways
| like a state government.
|
| Snow has always happened. Large accumulations are atypical,
| but snow is a thing and Virginia is uniquely incompetent at
| handling it.
| IdoRA wrote:
| In this case, a major issue was that the weather was rain
| transitioning to heavy snowfall. VDOT couldn't pre-treat the
| roads because the rain would wash it away, and they couldn't
| clear the roads of snow fast enough to prevent ice formation.
| Similar to the Atlanta "snowmageddon" in 2014, once you have
| enough 18-wheelers stopped, they can't start moving again on
| ice, and they (plus the normal car traffic) clog the roads
| enough that the snow trucks can't operate. I am having
| difficulty envisioning how a hypercompetent northeastern DOT
| could do better in these circumstances, other than improved
| communication.
| asdff wrote:
| This sort of weather pattern is not unusual at all. This is
| how winter is for the most part in places that have winter.
| I'd go out to clear snow off my car and find that my car
| would regularly be coated in an inch thick layer of ice from
| rain-turned-ice before the storm progressed to snow like a
| dozen times a month in the winter when I lived in the east.
|
| VDOT could just close the freeway section in advance of the
| storm if they knew they didn't have the capacity to keep up
| with the snowfall and have the road be drive able, like other
| state DOTs do for their freeways when bad weather is coming.
| I feel like this must have been a textbook whiff in transit
| department circles.
| beezle wrote:
| The major issue is that VA, for whatever reason, does not
| have plows and trucks to put them on (unlike say NYC that
| puts them on the garbage trucks when needed) - at least in
| numbers necessary to keep the highway relatively passable in
| the first place. As others have said, (relatively) heavy wet
| snow storms in VA/MA are not once in a century type events,
| more like every three to five years. Paying the consequences
| for failing to pay to be prepared.
|
| The secondary issue is the stupidity of semi-drivers to have
| tried to keep driving in the storm. It wasn't like there was
| no warning at all. Reports I have read indicate disabled
| trucks are the largest impediment to getting things going
| again.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| MD not MA, MA is certainly prepared for snowstorms
| IdoRA wrote:
| Does increased numbers of plows allow you to clean this
| portion of road quickly enough to keep it navigable? The
| main issue is that the road is a sheet of ice, so as I
| understand it you really need chemical treatments, not just
| snow removal (although snow removal should certainly help).
| And does the density of cars pose a unique problem? The
| F'burg portion of 95 sees around 130,000 cars/day pre-
| pandemic.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| New York and Massachusetts are different, but usually the
| only thing that truly overwhelms them is lake effect snow
| in Western NY and some nor'easter events. I grew up in
| the NY metropolitan area, and things like flash floods
| ancient parkways in the Bronx were the only total
| disaster like this.
|
| The key thing is that they have equipment and close roads
| to trucks. VA express lanes gouge drivers avoiding
| traffic, there should be plenty of money to put plows on
| 2 1/2 ton trucks.
| IdoRA wrote:
| I lived in Rochester. At least when I was up there, there
| may have been a hundred inches of snow in the year, but
| there was rarely fresh ice. This storm delivered a sheet
| of ice with snow on top, and because of the earlier rain,
| you couldn't pre-treat the roads. How does the northeast
| deal with those conditions, other than people being smart
| enough to stay home? How do plows remove ice when the
| roads can't be pretreated? I'm very, very open to the
| idea that VDOT is doing a bad job with winter road
| maintenance, but "more plows" isn't a convincing
| improvement plan for the wintery mix seen here.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you see it coming, maybe ban 18 wheelers temporarily?
| Agree it's not a major problem with the govt.
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