> Tesla is a company that is trying to make AMERICAN electric cars, he should encouraged and cheered ... science and technology can actually have a good impact on climate and consumer practices vis à vis greenhouse gases and the approach to modernity.
A vastly more effective approach would be to encourage and cheer those trying to wean America from its addiction to automobiles....
Elon does cool things, but it's not clear Tesla really represents a desirable future.
I agree with you. I am from Europe where mass transit and reliable and efficient public transportation has been implemented and enjoyed by the population for a long time, I think this is a way for the future.
Siemens, a German company and Alstom, a French one both have the technology to make 200+mph on a train happen in the USA.
The West Coast for example could and SHOULD have a HST from Vancouver to San Diego. By car that's roughly a 1400 miles trip or something like a 15 hours drive (give or take). With a HST, that suddenly becomes a 8 hour trip with next to no greenhouse gas emissions per person while everyone just chills out browsing the interwebs in a comfy seat.
Same for the East Coast, there should be some sort of East Coast HST as well (something to the tune of Boston -> NYC -> Philly -> DC -> somehow down to Florida or some other route, I don't live in the States).
If Germany, Spain, France, Japan and China have that, there's no reason why the USA shouldn't be able to do it as well.
EDIT: By saying that I am not implying that the "middle of America" should not benefit from HST as well, but its population density and sheer size makes that less cost-feasable.
There is a HST system under development in California, with the first segment planned for completion by 2017, with the rest scheduled in just 25 short years:
The "Criticism" section highlights how the current rails infrastructure in the USA currently places a limitation on the speeds the train can achieve. Still a reasonable good experiment. With President Obama's mention of the structurally deficient bridges in the States, maybe it will change for the better. I surely hope so.
Yeah, with those restrictions, Acela is next to useless as an upgrade from Amtrak, at a much higher ticket cost. I really wish we could just do a proper job and make a Lyon-Paris TGV-like route between Washington and Boston.
>A vastly more effective approach would be to encourage and cheer those trying to wean America from its addiction to automobiles....
While that's true, it's also not happening: the only real way it might is through considerably higher density (which I support, both through the removal of urban height limits and mandatory lot setbacks), but across the world density has actually been declining for decades, as Shlomo Angel shows in Planet of Cities:
New empirical evidence on the average population density of cities across space and time confirms that these densities have been in decline almost everywhere for a century or more. The new evidence is counterintuitive, since numerous academic researchers believe that urban densities have been on the increase. Were that true, it would lend encouragement and support to those favoring densification. However, urban density decline has been persistent and global in scope, and it predated the automobile. It is not restricted to the United States or other industrialized countries, but is pervasive in developing countries as well. [. . .]
You should support greater density, bike lines, etc., but in reality we're going to be relying on car-based transportation for the foreseeable future—which means decades at the very least.
Again, I would like to see more cities that allow and encourage non-car transport, but I haven't seen much of it, and current property law prevents people from actually building those kinds of cities.
> in reality we're going to be relying on car-based transportation for the foreseeable future—which means decades at the very least.
Well, maybe you (and much of the U.S.) will be. Not me or my friends in Europe, China, etc, though....
Anyway, the fact that there's a long way to go (in many places) makes it all the more important to push hard, and soon. Part of the issue is that even though many countries haven't sunk to a level quite as low as the U.S., they still ironically look to the U.S. as an example, so when the U.S. does something bad, the effect is magnified.
... and yeah, getting rid of idiotic zoning laws is an important part of the solution.
> Well, maybe you (and much of the U.S.) will be. Not me or my friends in Europe, China, etc, though....
Fun fact. Italy has a very extensive non-car infrastucture, particularly trains. Yet I have dozens of friends and relatives in Milan, Rome, Rimini, and the countryside of Emilia-Romagna. Every single one of them has a car, sometimes two.
Of course, some people owning cars is not the same as society "relying on car-based transportation" (as the grandparent said).
Tokyo has probably the best public transport system in the world, and automobiles have a ridiculously low mode-share for a modern city (12%), but car ownership rates are, relatively, much higher (approx. 300 cars/1000 people). Many people own cars that they use "occasionally," when it makes sense, not as their primary means of transportation. If those people all suddenly lost use of their cars, what would happen? Not much really; the city could cope easily.
It certainly can be harmful. Urban sprawl. Time wasted via excruciatingly long commutes has now become the status quo in many parts of the States (certainly is around the Bay Area where I reside).
Less harmful would be advancements in public rapid transit systems. Though there is the hyperloop which Elon hinted at in the past. Let's hope that works out :).
Urban sprawl. Time wasted via excruciatingly long commutes has now become the status quo in many parts of the States (certainly is around the Bay Area where I reside).
The only real alternative is either a) making the Bay Area a less desirable place to live or b) allowing higher buildings. The Bay Area has chosen c) neither, which leads to d) the concomitantly higher prices that go with it.
Edward Glaeser's book The Triumph of the City has a useful discussion of these issues.
A vastly more effective approach would be to encourage and cheer those trying to wean America from its addiction to automobiles....
Elon does cool things, but it's not clear Tesla really represents a desirable future.