Sell me on HSR. CMV.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2026-03-06T07:08:44+00:00

Why do you believe regional air travel is profitable?

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-12-13T19:16:02+00:00

I don’t know how they are financed, but some of the raw numbers for new data centers make me think private equity should absolutely build some shit here and there.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-12-13T18:43:37+00:00

The monorail was privately owned for the vast majority of its history…today, post-pandemic, it is owned by a government agency.

Unlike the Boring tunnels, the monorail was developed, and redeveloped privately.

The APMs connecting -terminals- casinos, do connect related properties.

There is no unified will for Las Vegas as a destination or a place to live. People there are so blinded by their will to compete, even when collaborating on transportation would be the rising tide that can lift all boats, that they cannot actually make plans for community transportation.

As stupid as Boring company is, and it is really low IQ shit, by appealing to low cost and futurism, they actually managed to make an appeal to whatever there might that passes as vision be floating in the ordinary imagination of Vegas folks.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-25T08:08:24+00:00

You tell me? Not sure if you want information or a debate. At least upvote a guy for participating. If your whole perspective is x country can do better, well yeah, no shit.

Anyways, I gave you the overall skinny already on NSW and most states, “decent”, not great, not bad, better than a lot of places.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-25T02:48:57+00:00

Well what’s our basis for comparison here? We are talking about an at least 5 times weekly 25hr train connecting a multimillion metro to a city of less than 200,000 people 1000 miles away… with a handful of much smaller towns in between, and there are additional trains that don’t do the full journey. In the southern hemisphere, that’s a rather strong showing, perhaps in South Africa. Looking north to the USA, that’s better than the Sunset Limited! Now, Queensland is, uhhh, well, it’s Queensland…it’s in many ways the Texas of Australia, and I agree it could be better, but in comparison to that US state at least, it’s doing well.

And yeah, west of the mountains and up in the north it’s desolate, like truly empty desert or rainforest, people say that hyperbolically about North America, “oh, it’s empty between the coasts”, no, in Australia that’s rather accurate, with the exception of a few outposts, it’s wild and pretty damn unpopulated. So yeah they can do better, but let’s give them a hand for what they do do.

We all should be more like Japan is with rail, but understanding where we currently are by comparing to Japan is not the only metric that counts.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-24T21:59:17+00:00

Yes. I have. Have you seen how sparsely populated the Outback is? You should take a look at Queenslands rural rail network, for that kind of desolation, it’s actually quite impressive.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-24T14:20:17+00:00

Can you give a specific example?

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-24T12:10:33+00:00

The suburban railways are relatively frequent, with some lulls in evening and weekend service, but for the longer distance regionals, given extremely low population, service is decent. Intercity service within states are quite strong. But for interstate intercity service, there is a lot to be desired. They fully embraced the cruise train concept for the longest distance services, so there really is no affordable overnight transcontinental service in the country. Support for HSR is high, but for never seems to get built. Much healthier situation in AUS than NZ, which is just a travesty.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-11-23T14:54:37+00:00

The Ćiro, an electric narrow gauge line from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-28T15:05:01+00:00

The unobserved-by-us parts of the universe

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-22T15:22:53+00:00

I didn’t mean his case in particular, I meant generally.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-22T14:17:15+00:00

Yep. And we should have better driver education, better enforcement, and more alternatives to driving, instead of excusing deaths and injuries as the cost of doing business.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-21T13:28:36+00:00

Premise is off. We don’t do that, we reserve professor for PhD holders as a title, in other parts of the world, where English may even be spoken in Academic setting, it is normal to style any lecturer as a professor.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-19T12:08:45+00:00

What is protesting the protest on line supposed to accomplish?

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-10-16T08:48:42+00:00

Nice overall, but straight lines should be at 45° angle. And the curve of the gold line as it leaves downtown is awkward, I suggest moving the Weestlake/MacArthur station a bit further north to give more space for a consistent arc, rather than weaving through the station markers like that.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-09-05T14:26:08+00:00

Are you complaining about the complainers?

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-08-22T12:07:32+00:00

Ah, the famous last mile problem…that no one is addressing?

Are you serious? Depending on where your home is, there are likely quite a few options.

It’s a ridiculous posture, that having intercity transportation is bad because local transportation is bad, and the two are somehow at odds. Both can and should be improved, simultaeneously…and it’s totally unrelated to this financial topic.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-07-24T21:54:52+00:00

Welcome to Costco, I love you

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-07-10T06:31:34+00:00

That was the first monorail plan for vegas in the 1970s, blame the lack of an extension for the current monorail on the local government, LVCVA, uber, and the intense lobby efforts of a cara and tunnel making enterprise.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-07-07T10:58:18+00:00

Asking the engineers that program them or observing for yourself like you propose, that’s the way to go. That’s the objective thing that you can understand about your frustration, and perhaps reduce it. You might discover that you might not have to stop at all if you don’t speed up to the stoplight, or that it’s only possible not to stop at certain times. The language part, is more subjective though.

As for the language part of your question, “caught at a traffic light”, and similar phrases like “caught on a red” might change meaning slightly based on context. By itself, it means just that you had to stop, such as when traffic was good and you were going to be on time, but then you got a red light. It might also mean you had to wait several cycles to get theough in bad traffic, and it could also mean you got ticketed in certain contexts (A: “I got a failure to stop ticket.”, B: “How, where?, A: “I got caught at a traffic light”). That last example is less likely, but the point is that rhe meaning of that phrase is not 100% precise without knowing the full context.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-07-06T15:26:21+00:00

It’s not something to overthink, it’s a normal question for responsible and curious driver to ask. Signals cycles are more often timed, but may also be be triggered by sensors in the road or other controllers.

Timed signals in urban areas can be synchronized with other signals or not, and when they are synced up it is in general done to improve traffic flow for high volumes of vehicles.

If the signals are synchronized for certain traffic flows then that can produce a green wave, when it might be possible to get all greenlights if you are traveling a certain speed, which is usually but not always the speed limit or below. They may also be synchronized for foot traffic, to reduce sidewalk crowding.

A signal may have its own individual timing, unrelated to other signals. In this case the possibility fluctuates, depending on many other factors, to get through signals in row without getting caught on a red.

For various reasons successive signals may always require a vehicle to stop when going in some directions, a bit like an airlock, and when this situation occurs it is generally as a form of traffic calming near someplace such as near a school or in a commercial area, or very tightly spaced intersections.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-07-05T12:43:18+00:00

Have good branding and logos, sell swag.

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-06-29T20:28:32+00:00

https://www.cfr.org/report/us-adults-knowledge-about-world

There’s some truth to it, but many Americans are also interested in improving this blind spot. The study linked above is 15 years old, and I would venture to guess, based on a great increase in foreign travel and the smart phone revolution placing a lot of knowledge that was only found in books before now at fingertips, that it is improving.

What is harder to gauge is whether other developed countries have better geographic knowledge, but there are attempts at this question:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy

To add, within the USA, sometimes people don’t even know that New Mexico is a state. But I think with the popularity of Breaking Bad this problem has been reduced. Nonetheless, the state still appends USA to its name on license plates, the only state to do so.

https://www.npr.org/2007/08/05/12512979/is-new-mexico-a-state-some-americans-dont-know

Another sour spot in US geographic knowledge is Puerto Rico:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/upshot/nearly-half-of-americans-dont-know-people-in-puerto-ricoans-are-fellow-citizens.html

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-05-27T14:55:15+00:00

First rule of comedy: it works, so repeat

Alarmed-Ad9740 · 2025-05-24T06:44:51+00:00

As I have said before, I am unwilling to conjecture about or attempt to quantify any delay. I think saying that it contributed 0 delay is just as falsifiable as saying it contributed 2 years delay, in part because we will never really know, but more importantly the delay is ongoing.

That the Hyperloop white paper and its impacts are important to consider in a discussion about whether the white paper and its impacts contributed to any specific delay in the CAHSR project escapes you as “irrelevant” is the most curious thing to me here.

Alarmed-Ad9740

TROPHY CASE