MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:45 pm
old salt wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:11 pm
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:07 pm
old salt wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:00 pm
a fan wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 11:00 am
Old Salt is livid at even the idea of altering the above percentages even one percentage point....which is absurd. And he's telling us that if we dare to move those numbers around, we're pie-eyed commie-hippies.
He doesn't REALLY believe this.
He certainly doesn't believe what you restated on his behalf.
Most funding for transportation infrastructure comes from user fees & fuel taxes from the transportation modes used,
except when trillion$ are spent to deprive consumers/voters of what they prefer to force massive unwanted, unproven, impractical PC changes on the consumer/voter before the technology is mature...further enriching their political allies & donors who cash in in the change (Fisker, Solyndra).
Keep improving existing transportation modes until market forces & tech advances drive incremental changes where practical.
44% on roads is not enough? Or is your problem just electric/hybrid infrastructure? Heaven forbid those oil and gas subsidies for a century don't continue instead. Gee, we should have stuck with horse and carriage and steam, not some new fangled technology that was "unproven".
Or is it mass transit that's the enemy? Is that unproven technology?
"prove" the "unproven" technology before you bet the farm on it. The first automobiles were steam driven.
Henry Ford & the Boeing 707 killed passenger rail travel in the US. The consumer/traveler chose.
yup, shoulda stuck with that steam...it was "proven".
Huge investment in roads and subsidies for oil and gas exploration dwarfed investments in rail and mass transit. That said, US size had a lot to do with the usefulness of road system...it's just that that's where all the emphasis went. Note 20 years after the Model T was introduced, less than 25% of Americans owned any car. We're early days of electric in a market where most of the subsidies have been for oil and gas...still...
Mass transit is highly proven, including high speed rail. Electric and hybrid/electric is very nearly more efficient than gas powered, certainly for short trips where most of America actually lives. With charging infrastructure and continued battery improvement and electric distribution improvements, electric will certainly displace a big portion of the individual transport...and we'll see bus and short haul trucks all go that way. Gonna take some more innovation before heavier load vehicles are displaced.
Steam automobiles were as practical as current range limited EV's which can't be "refilled" in 5 min at every corner stop & don't work in cold temps. ...just minor glitches to be worked out.
US size had a lot to do with it... No sh!t Sherlock. We haven't gotten smaller.
Oil & gas subsidies ? How 'bout the consumption taxes we pay on them ? Nice try with that BS sleight of hand.
How are we going to generate the necessary electricity ? We can't meet current demand without brownouts & outages. Nonspecific blather like "strengthen the grid" is a dodge. Renewable gen elec is not storable to meet peak demand periods.. We have a war on fossil fuel generation & we're afraid of nucs, You can't just blithely wave away the tech challenges for which we have no foreseeable practical solutions.
You just want to limit our freedom of choice options
Mass transit is not dispersed enough or practical to meet the needs of our current disbursed population.
The Orwellian plan is clear. Make POV travel impractical & unaffordable. Force us out of the rural areas & into the cities.
That's why the public is rejecting EV's. even with subsidies, & forcing Biden to back off on his unrealistic mandate.
https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/ ... -its-cover