Political Discussion

What were the Hamas strikes in response to? Settlers? Crack down on protests?
What I read is that Israeli officials put Covid restrictions in place, but Muslims travel into Israeli areas to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque right now for Ramadan. However, there are too many Palestinians wanting access to the mosque and tensions got heated over the weekend. Eventually, officials stormed the mosque and evicted everyone.

Meanwhile America's infastructure is crumbling.

A blog I read would file this under "Imperial Collapse".
 
What I read is that Israeli officials put Covid restrictions in place, but Muslims travel into Israeli areas to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque right now for Ramadan. However, there are too many Palestinians wanting access to the mosque and tensions got heated over the weekend.


A blog I read would file this under "Imperial Collapse".

As a Tennesseean that is a bridge with a ton of cross country traffic, they are saying it could be closed for at least 6 months.
 
That happens with any bill.

But for many Republicans, anything public transportation wise in a infrastructure bill is extra wishlist bullshit socialist crap.

I hate that public transportation money is often the first to see cuts on the negotiation table.

Just get me a reliable train for when I need to start commuting back into Boston.
@Max Sterling touched on a point I 100% agree with. We need to stop with all of the giant omnibus bills full of pork and bullshit. Federal bills should be single issue to allow each item to rise and fall on its merits alone.

As to your particular issue, why is the commuter train service you seek a federal issue? It seems to me that it’s a regional decision that should be made and funded by the local stakeholders. Also, from your previous posts on the matter, I thought that most of the problem with getting train service was due to local NIMBYist opposition?
 
As a Tennesseean that is a bridge with a ton of cross country traffic, they are saying it could be closed for at least 6 months.
In addition to the repair, there will have to be a full, in depth inspection of the entire structure. The other bridge available nearby will not be able to handle the additional load. Besides being much smaller it is also much older. They’re going to have to keep a close eye on it and the additional load will tax the structure quite heavily.

On the bright side, this inspection that found it is actually about six months ahead of schedule. So that’s a big positive.
That is awful. I'm very sorry for y'all.
Save some of the sympathy for yourself. It will affect y’all. Truck traffic will divert to avoid Memphis and some of it will end up in your area. Also, river traffic under the bridge has been halted. As of now there are 229 barges parked that cannot continue on their journeys. If that doesn’t get rolling again soon, the freight will start getting moved to truck and rail. That’s going to lead to increased traffic and congestion in your entire region.

This whole situation is bad, and has the potential to get a whole lot worse.
 
As to your particular issue, why is the commuter train service you seek a federal issue? It seems to me that it’s a regional decision that should be made and funded by the local stakeholders. Also, from your previous posts on the matter, I thought that most of the problem with getting train service was due to local NIMBYist opposition?

Internationally, public transportation is is funded at the national level. And at a much higher rate than in the United States. We fund it pretty much dead last in the developed world.

It needs to be subsidized to be priced in a manner that people can actually afford to use it. Your point about regional is the main issue. People don't want to pay for things other people use that they won't use.

At the state level, towns not connected to public transportation don't want their tax dollars going towards it because it doesn't benefit them. At the local level in the towns that have the public transportation, the affluent people don't want their tax dollars going towards it as they don't use it and always fight it. Basically, no body wants to pay for it. So the infrastructure is crumbling much like the bridge posted earlier today.

The bridge heading into Gloucester is 150 years old, and has been out of service for more than a year now. This mean the line to Gloucester and beyond for Commuter Rail has been replaced by shuttle busses for the past year. And will be for at least the next year or two.

Most of the public transportation equipment Commuter Rail and Subway is 40+ years old. Has had the bare minimum of repairs done over the years and is always in need of repairs / breaking down. Not to mention, we don't have enough rolling stock to meet pre-2020 ridership demand. We are good right now, but when ridership returns, we don't have enough capacity. We need more trains / cars.

NIMBYs are a whole other problem. And they get in the way of any upgrade or expansion.

It all comes down to as a country, we don't want to pay taxes. And the taxes we do pay aren't really used to any notable percentage to improve society / infrastructure.

Just like with that group of CEO's who have been calling for spending on our infrastructure for years all said Biden's infrastructure bill is too expensive and are against it. This despite that Biden's bill doesn't go anywhere far enough to fix all the issues with our infrastructure from years of neglect and not funding it.
 
Internationally, public transportation is is funded at the national level. And at a much higher rate than in the United States. We fund it pretty much dead last in the developed world.

It needs to be subsidized to be priced in a manner that people can actually afford to use it. Your point about regional is the main issue. People don't want to pay for things other people use that they won't use.

At the state level, towns not connected to public transportation don't want their tax dollars going towards it because it doesn't benefit them. At the local level in the towns that have the public transportation, the affluent people don't want their tax dollars going towards it as they don't use it and always fight it. Basically, no body wants to pay for it. So the infrastructure is crumbling much like the bridge posted earlier today.

The bridge heading into Gloucester is 150 years old, and has been out of service for more than a year now. This mean the line to Gloucester and beyond for Commuter Rail has been replaced by shuttle busses for the past year. And will be for at least the next year or two.

Most of the public transportation equipment Commuter Rail and Subway is 40+ years old. Has had the bare minimum of repairs done over the years and is always in need of repairs / breaking down. Not to mention, we don't have enough rolling stock to meet pre-2020 ridership demand. We are good right now, but when ridership returns, we don't have enough capacity. We need more trains / cars.

NIMBYs are a whole other problem. And they get in the way of any upgrade or expansion.

It all comes down to as a country, we don't want to pay taxes. And the taxes we do pay aren't really used to any notable percentage to improve society / infrastructure.

Just like with that group of CEO's who have been calling for spending on our infrastructure for years all said Biden's infrastructure bill is too expensive and are against it. This despite that Biden's bill doesn't go anywhere far enough to fix all the issues with our infrastructure from years of neglect and not funding it.
Other countries do a lot of things very differently than we do here. For the most part, I find it a feature and not a bug.

As far as all the obstacles you mentioned, I fail to see how intrastate opposition makes it a national issue. If enough of the locality views something as a net positive, they’ll fund it. If they don’t, well I guess you need to seek out other options.

As far as Biden’s infrastructure bill, it’s full of the kind of wishlist bullshit I was talking about. Strip all of the excess BS out, make it just roads, bridges, ports, it’ll sail on through, and that’s with leaving all of the public transit stuff in it. All of the stuff about housing, caregivers, internet, etc. those are all important conversations to have, but they should be had separately.
 
Other countries do a lot of things very differently than we do here. For the most part, I find it a feature and not a bug.

As far as all the obstacles you mentioned, I fail to see how intrastate opposition makes it a national issue. If enough of the locality views something as a net positive, they’ll fund it. If they don’t, well I guess you need to seek out other options.

As far as Biden’s infrastructure bill, it’s full of the kind of wishlist bullshit I was talking about. Strip all of the excess BS out, make it just roads, bridges, ports, it’ll sail on through, and that’s with leaving all of the public transit stuff in it. All of the stuff about housing, caregivers, internet, etc. those are all important conversations to have, but they should be had separately.

Im gunna shock everyone here and agree with you.

Your country is fucking huge. What might work in a smaller more densely populated European country isn’t going to work across the vastness of the states.

The department of transport at federal level would have to be fucking gargantuan to be across all of that. At that level there is definitely a place for larger interstate projects such as potential high speed rail etc. But metro and state level public transport should be dealt with by the metro area(s) states involved.
 
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Im gunna shock everyone here and agree with you.

Your country is fucking huge. What might work in a smaller more densely populated European country isn’t going to work across the vastness of the states.

The department of transport at federal level would have to be fucking gargantuan to be across all of that. At that level there is definitely a place for larger interstate projects such as potential high speed rail etc. But metro and state level public transport should be dealt with by the metro area(a) states involved.

I wouldn't consider Commuter Rail metro. I can agree with you when it comes to Subway.

But commuter rail is interstate. 4 states feed into NYC.

Boston is 2 states right now, it has been as high as 3 but New Hampshire wants the service without paying for it so they got axed.

And that's the region commuter rails. Not including Amtrak.
 
I wouldn't consider Commuter Rail metro. I can agree with you when it comes to Subway.

But commuter rail is interstate. 4 states feed into NYC.

Boston is 2 states right now, it has been as high as 3 but New Hampshire wants the service without paying for it so they got axed.

And that's the region commuter rails. Not including Amtrak.

I know, greater urban conurbations are outgrowing traditional city/state boundaries.

The question is. Is a civil servant, even a hugely capable and dedicated one, in Washington in a better place to understand the combined needs of those one or two states/metro areas or is it people/planners at a more local area? I’d argue it’s always the later unless it’s a huge national level project.
 
Getting word that inspection divers may have also located structural damage beneath the waterline. This is very bad and getting worse. This bridge closure will have national ramifications. This is one of the primary east/west commercial arteries in the nation.
 
Getting word that inspection divers may have also located structural damage beneath the waterline. This is very bad and getting worse. This bridge closure will have national ramifications. This is one of the primary east/west commercial arteries in the nation.
I am hearing on NPR that it’s also fucking up barge traffic traveling on the Mississippi too. They can’t raise the bridge until its proven structurally sound.
 
I am hearing on NPR that it’s also fucking up barge traffic traveling on the Mississippi too. They can’t raise the bridge until its proven structurally sound.
It has halted barge traffic. Over 200 barges are waiting to pass under. The bridge doesn’t raise or lower, it’s a high bridge. But until they can determine that it isn’t in immediate danger of collapse, barge traffic is halted.
 
I wouldn't consider Commuter Rail metro. I can agree with you when it comes to Subway.

But commuter rail is interstate. 4 states feed into NYC.

Boston is 2 states right now, it has been as high as 3 but New Hampshire wants the service without paying for it so they got axed.

And that's the region commuter rails. Not including Amtrak.

This is a very NE corridor-centric view. Most of the country isn't a place where you can drive for 2 or 3 hours and be in 4 different states. Regional commuter systems don't necessarily cross state lines in much of the country. Funding decisions are at the state, county, and local level, although they are dependent on federal dollars for projects. Management is at the local and regional level.

There are so many complications, especially with something like regional rail in most of the country because it's very difficult to gain access to rail corridors that are owned and managed privately... and regulated federally. Beyond the funding and public support issues this is why there isn't high speed rail between places like Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. It's also why there isn't service between Rockford and Chicago.

As far as public support / motivation goes: In most places in the U.S. a car is required and has been for generations. So there is that conditioning, but even if you get buy-in from more "urban" populations who will commute 5 days a week via public transport they still don't live places (even within cities) where you can exist w/o cars or even with car-share lifestyles. These are not places you can ride-share affordably for groceries - for the most part. Also, if you build your transit system to primarily service commuters you are building something that doesn't provide sound service to the people in your community who need the service the most... the people who need it to work second or third shift in the service industries for instance. So you're building inequity into the system and asking people who don't want/need it as much as others to pay for it.

All of that being said, most metro areas would massively benefit from a robust local and regional public transportation system. Massive benefits also cost massive amounts. The reasons why we don't have a sound, on time, clean, well-maintained system like Japan anywhere in this country are not necessarily good ones, but Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Indianapolis are also very very different places than Tokyo, London, or NYC that require different solutions to achieve a Japanese-esque quality of system.
 
Liz Cheney has been in the spotlight and yesterday's vote to strip her of her position was highly publicized. But what happened to the other 9 members of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump?

According to a news story I just heard, they were all punished at the state level. Which is why we haven't heard as much about them.

In all cases state GOP officials voted to censure. States have said their house members "betrayed their constituents" and "no longer represent our community's values"

In all cases a primary challenger has been lined up to run against them. The vote to impeach Trump pretty much amounted to political suicide and these politicians are considered unelectable now.

Some states passed a resolution condemning the impeachment vote of President Trump by their house of representative member.
 
If enough of the locality views something as a net positive, they’ll fund it. If they don’t, well I guess you need to seek out other options.
The problem with this thought is that often times the ones making decisions about public transit are not the same people that rely on public transit. Policy makers would rather spend money on things that benefit them, which often leaves public transit inadequately funded. When it is inadequately funded, it becomes a catch 22. It sucks, so why fund it? But it sucks because we didn't fund it...
 
The problem with this thought is that often times the ones making decisions about public transit are not the same people that rely on public transit. Policy makers would rather spend money on things that benefit them, which often leaves public transit inadequately funded. When it is inadequately funded, it becomes a catch 22. It sucks, so why fund it? But it sucks because we didn't fund it...

Exactly. Often times the policy makers are millionaires living in their multi million dollar house who drive expensive sports cars and would never be caught riding public transportation.

The decisions made with the when making cuts to commuter rail just proves this. Traditionally service peaks M-F during rush hour. People commuting into Boston for their 9 to 5 job. However, a lot of people also commute for third shift or weekend jobs. And oftentimes their destination is not Boston. For example, low income people in lynn without a car commuting to Gloucester to work.

During the first few months of the pandemic, numbers actually showed ridership flattened out. At one point in time early on during the pandemic, there were actually more people commuting for third shift and on the weekend than rush hour commuters to Boston. The data also showed that the bulk of the riders were interzone and not commuting into Boston. And that is a huge problem when it comes to revenue. Tickets are priced with a commuter mindset. There is a $7 base charge for commuting in or out of Boston. Then the ticket price goes up by about $1 per zone further out you travel. So someone traveling from say Lynn to Gloucester is only paying $3 for interzone.

So when revenue was down and they had a budget deficit, what did the policy makers do? They cut service from weekend and nights. So all the interzone commuters to rely on the commuter rail to get to their third shift or weekend job no longer have service. Their lifeline has been cut. The hour of operation now only works for those commuters commuting into Boston for a 9 to 5 job.

They didn't think about the need and how they can benefit society. They just made service cuts based on the thought that it's a commuter only service and that they would lose money operating nights and weekends. The issue wasn't ridership as it was higher at times during the pandemic for nights and weekend. The issue was it produced less revenue with the same number or more of reiders because of the ticketing structure that was designed for commuters. A better solution would have been to cut more of the frequency of trains during the weekday rush hour commutes instead of running trains at 15% capacity at rush hour levels all of 2020. Only in 2021 did they cut back that frequency and take away the express trains. Changes that came after cutting the weekend and night service.


Another laughable matter is what happened on Cape Cod in the 90's.

The New Haven railroad pulled out of the Cape in the 50's due to no freight prospects. I believe they abandoned and the row ownership was given to each community.

A regional railroad was started up and they used the line to haul the trash from the Capes transfer station to whatever dump it goes to off the cape.

There is only road over the canal into the cape, and only one main road that gets you to the end of the cape. With the number of vacationers and people who have second homes on the cape they visit during the weekends traffic onto the cape has become completely gridlock. You can sit for hours trying to get across the canal.

In the 1990's the State funded a project as well as accepted federal grants to rehab the whole rail line and create rail service all the way in to Providence Town at the tip of the Cape to alleviate traffic and give weekend vacationers and weekly vacationers a much easier method to get onto the cape. They spend millions on rehabbing the track and building new stations.

Only for no revenue train to ever go into service. Because policy makers for one community near the start of the cape decided they wanted a bike path for their recreation. So the full time residence of the Cape, the millionaires who live in their mansions tour out the tracks and put in a bike path after millions were spend in their town alone updating the tracks and putting in a station.

Because the row was owned by the town after the New Haven's abandonment, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

In 7 years ago they did finally get some sort of train service to the cape in the summers. Though it pretty much just gets you across the canal and dumps you at Cape Code Transportation Authority transfer station. Your only option if you take the train is pretty much to take the bus. It doesn't dump you anywhere useful to get to without a car.

Also to the north and west of Boston there is a huge rapid transportation black hole. This is because they choose a bike path over rapid transportation in the 80's. When the commuter rail line was being transformed into rapid transportation / light rail.
 
The problem with this thought is that often times the ones making decisions about public transit are not the same people that rely on public transit. Policy makers would rather spend money on things that benefit them, which often leaves public transit inadequately funded. When it is inadequately funded, it becomes a catch 22. It sucks, so why fund it? But it sucks because we didn't fund it...

Yes. Political power remains focused in the suburbs and the wealthiest - whitest urban neighborhoods. While there is some overlap between transit users and those earning above the median household income I would guess it's less than 40% of commuters and less than 20% of full time transit riders.

Roads and bridge infrastructure have been massively underfunded in most places and the car is a symbol of the culture wars. Outside of the heavily urbanized NE corridor, where there is a larger divide between the # of people living in urban vs. rural areas, there is even more pressure to use the culture war car narratives for political gain because of the perceived lack of benefit by those in rural (and suburban) areas. So urban areas with the greatest tax base, where most of the people and money is, are often sending their transportation dollars to more rural areas for roads instead of into a public transportation system that also is critically under funded and if you want to look at it a certain way provides the most benefit to the most people.

Often times the policy makers are millionaires living in their multi million dollar house who drive expensive sports cars and would never be caught riding public transportation.

I don't think this is accurate. Policy-makers, those with the political will and the capital to be in positions to form and push policies are more well off than many on average but they are not millionaires. A lot of policy is formed at the local, county, and regional level and those folks often serve on city council's, boards, etc. It's not their full-time gig. They may need to be millionaires to afford to run for some offices, particularly at the state or federal level, but district representatives even at the state level have to live in the district - yes i know people with money can get around this.

People with the most political capital, with the most vocal constituents, who know how to raise the most stink, are often white and suburban, who are (like most of us) conditioned to think that propping-up the people who they rely on for "service" doesn't benefit them. Similarly, people who don't live in the economic, capital generating zones, also have an-anti city, urban liberal etc. etc. identity war issue that public transportation fits right into. It's an illogical argument because if you keep making cities shittier places to live, they keep costing more, and people keep sprawling out across the landscape to move to nicer and cheaper places... and the communities on the fringes start to "lose their character" - code for whiteness. Basically it's a cake and eat it too thing.
 
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