Actual high speed rail around North America. Every major metropolitan area connected to minimum 150mph speeds.
All of the idiots who joke and make fun of CHSR and Brightline have never truly seen an actual rail system in practice. I read the Facebook comments, they’re all the same. “It would never work here”, “We’re too big”, “Flights would be faster”, “I just like to drive”, blah blah blah. The fact is that they’ve never been outside of the country (and most of them outside of their immediate state area) to ever see what it’s actually like, and have never seen what we’re desperately missing here in America.
Oh and the worst of the complaints, the absolute worst - “It’s a waste of money”. Says Darrel, the guy who has done zero research about rail beyond what conservative pundits have told him, and has absolutely zero idea how much we piss away on highways every year. How much is that new lane on the local freeway costing? No freaking idea do you. But California HSR, they know to the penny how much that’s costing. (You don’t even have to know which freeway I’m talking about, because I know there’s also a freeway near you who is getting yet another lane, everyone in the country has a freeway getting another lane.) Rail though? Oh no… the costs!
I firmly believe this would help ease a lot of the nation’s major problems. Probably not solve, but ease some of them.
- Climate Change (obviously)
- Some of the divide this nation is feeling (because it’d be easier to travel around and actually see)
- for example, I live in Seattle, there are a lot of conservatives living just 200 miles away who never come because it’s “too far” and we’re “constantly having violent protests”. Well come and see for yourself then. Take a day trip.
- Housing Crisis (immediately nearby cities and towns become commutable)
- This would also help with income inequality a bit, because all of a sudden you can again commute much farther
- We waste so much land due to parking and driving, relieving that a bit could revitalize downtowns as people would pick up and leave the train in urban centers, renewing development downtown.
This list goes on
How we move around is such a huge part of our daily lives. Most people spend hours a day in their car, burning gas, driving around getting to work, stores, errands, schools, etc. We have made it so damn difficult on ourselves just to move around, and I’m sick of hearing the regurgitated excuses why it “would never work” here.
A couple good videos if you’re curious.
Alan Fisher, the Armchair Urbanist explains how rail gets such scrutiny while roads get a pass
Okay, you do the high-speed rail. I was gonna say 15-minute cities, so I’ll do that. We’ll attack the same major problems from complementary angles.
Love it! I’ll work at a national scale, you work at the city scale.
You’re right, double headed problem there, I’d love to see my city really starting to tackle transit
If I were American this would be my absolute priority too. I don’t like driving too much but love being able to get everywhere I want to by train. I don’t even own a car.
I love driving. HSR is still super nice, because the worst part about driving is long distance trips. Day trip to the hills to drive fun windy roads? Hell yeah. Trip across the US where I spend 9 hours a day driving straight in Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas? Awful. That section of argument never makes any sense to me. “I love driving. Nothing better than sitting in the right lane for 7 hours on a perfectly flat, straight road”. Morons lol
This is amazing. I already love the train, this would be my dream mode of transportation.
Acela has proven that rail can work in the US. I don’t know the stats but it has made a significant difference in both highway traffic and air traffic, and is a lot more comfortable. It’s also in high demand - people want to use it.
Complaints hear are: not high speed, not frequent enough, too expensive. Victim of its own success (and lack of funding compared to highway and air travel), but never anyone saying it’s not a great choice
Find a way to live a productive life with more dignity despite my physical disability that will lead me to an ever darker future. I was hit riding a bicycle to work, by a political refugee that had the cognitive capabilities of a third grader. Surviving is so much worse than death in the USA. It is a terrible place to live like this; an inhumane and pathetic disgrace of a country.
I hear the UK makes an honest effort for accessibility
Eliminate religion
Welp, unpopular opinion time.
Honest question: all of it? Like including all the history and its influences on our modern society? Every opera, classical music and piece of art? Will we be forbidden to listen to its influences?
Tom Holland (who is a secular historian, not that actor guy) writes:
“Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was … [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”
And again, he is not actually a christian believer, but his thesis is that all of our western society is drenched in christian values, and it would have looked absolutely different without it.
Even Richard Dawkins calls himself a “cultural christian”. Would you destroy that culture too? Our whole western society is built upon it. To destroy religion is to destroy way more than you might realize.
Do some religious people do bigoted things? Yes! Would I like that to be different? Yes! But “destroying religion” is throwing away the baby with the bathwater. The time of the new atheists movement has been over for a while. The sentiment of religion= bad is getting old and frankly, outdated. In the academic world they’ve moved on: more and more academics see atleast some value in religion, even if they don’t necessarily uphold a faith themselves.
Not trying to sway you to believe in anything religious. I don’t care. But not seeing any value in religion is… a depressing take on this world and it’s beauty.
Every bit of it, and I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit guilty.
First, I think Religion’s impact on the arts is over played. And they probably would have been better without the arbitrary religious restrictions placed on them.
And even areas where religion has some slight positive impact. It is miniscule compared to evil it has wrought on humans.
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I doubt it’d go that far, humans like killing each other too much. But at least it would eliminate one source of control.
Thinking a lot smaller here… I’ve always wanted to build a custom pinball machine. I already possess most of the necessary skills, but the materials are expensive and I don’t really have the time or space to do it right
I absolutely love this.
My list is quite different than the ones currently in the thread.
The boring ones:
Creating a vaccine or other cloaking to make humans invisible to ticks & mosquitoes. A separate project would be to do the same for parasites.
Enacting strict pollution/carbon limits and mandatory circular economy everywhere in the world.
Researching, trialing and Enacting a sustainable post-capitalist system everywhere in the world.
Developing solar energy until covering global energy demands, including a power network that can transport energy from the sunny side and/or orbit everywhere.
The slightly more ambitious:
Establish self-sustainable colonies living on off-earth resources, most probably also situated off-earth.
Create a Dyson swarm with enough energy output for in-system exploration, mining, colonisation, and terraforming.
Perfect matter replicators.
I have some other ideas as well, but those would be a start.
In this economy, retirement.
Free EFI conversion for any carbureted vehicle still on the road.
Giant space laser to destroy military infrastructure and aircrafts. All of them. Bring peace on earth through terror.
Space mining.
I would buy the space next to the breakfast/lunch cafe in my neighborhood and make it a supper and drinks place that opened right when they close each day. Bribe whoever it is you have to to get a liquor license, hire a few people, pay really well, have no set menu but a supper service and then a few hours of drinks and small plates, close by midnight. Oh and a big cappuccino machine of course, coffee too.
I know this doesn’t sound impossible but it’s out of my reach and is what I’d do if we got a big windfall, like more than we need.
Making food and housing free.
A matching pair of show cars, custom built from the ground up to cruise in and turn heads.
Also, build the modern equivalent of the Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, something like that. The super practical, oddly attractive, easily repairable, energy sipping cheap-mobile. It would be hard to meet all these goals plus modern safety requirements, but that’s where the endless money comes in for R&D.
Making an MMO
Can I join once you’re done?
My 3d printer could use some 220v 3 phase motors for sure.
No reason for it except that i want to know at what speed linear rails start melting.
Big? Rail gun to launch stuff into orbit.
Small? A proper shed/workshop instead of a corner of the garage. I know it asked impractical, but with how long I’ve been trying to make space for myself… It feels impossible at this point.
Big? Rail gun to launch stuff into orbit.
Have you heard of SpinLaunch?
Yes, I love the idea! It’s too much, in my opinion. The centrifugal forces to achieve that linear speed are just too high. I love the idea and I’m glad they’re actually trying it.
“Trying it”
“Forces too high”
I’m unsure what you mean. You don’t believe it works…?
https://www.space.com/spinlaunch-aces-10th-suborbital-test-launch
Last I saw it launched a dummy payload just fine. However, the payload has to be rugged stuff. It can’t be sensitive equipment because of the high G forces due to the rotation.
Oh right, right.
But the technology is feasibly, now just have to optimise satellite builds, and I’m sure institutions like NASA are better at making “the bullet”, and this company is rather just the gun-smiths, metaphorically.
But the technology is sound, and pretty impressive to boot.
