this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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Similarly, I struggle to understand why people think paying for roads to connect houses 5 miles away from each other isn’t astronomically expensive
Not sure who's downvoting you, you're absolutely correct. Infrastructure for rural, and even suburban areas isn't even close to being paid for by the people living there. I thought this was common knowledge. It should be obvious that 5 families living in a single large building require significantly fewer resources than 5 individual homes 5 miles apart.
Rural people, and I get it: I grew up in rural Montana. But America doesn’t run on people like my grandpa driving 6A worth of corn to the grange any more. People like my grandma driving literally 7mi each way to the nearest grocery store isn’t sustain long term
Yeah, I’d love to live in my own mansion on an island and fly my private jet to work. But that’s not realistic if everyone waaaaaaaants to do it
Discussions like this are always a good reminder that area descriptions are different across the world. I live in what is considered a rural area here(in a small terraced house where houses where already there when the Ferrari maps of the Southern Netherlands where drawn in 1780...). Farms everywhere. Behind the terraced housing and small apartments. Still have a population density of 500 people per km². And our public transport is shit outside of the typical congestion hours. Personally I wish they'd both put tram tracks down again with a dedicated track cars can't drive on and improve the cycling paths to be more safe. Guess I'm part of the problem driving an EV, but it gets me to work in 15 minutes. While with public transport it'd 90 minutes if nothing happens when I need to go from one bus to the other. And there simply are no safe cycling paths. (And no showers at work) Shopping I can do by bike or by walking though.
You don't understand how minimal maintenance on roads is less expensive than the equipment and personnel to drive through it on a frequent basis?
That's worrying indictment of the education system.
I'm not sure what your comparing here, but there are constant budget shortfalls for rural paving in my state. It's not cheap. There's also the cost to build the roads (and run electric, phone, internet, etc). There's a reason we needed a bunch of subsidies to add services to rural (and even suburban) places. I think we owe it to everyone in our society to provide basic services, but we don't have to pretend it isn't expensive to do so.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money
why would rural roads need to be paved, just lay gravel, or just flatten and pack dirt.
Actually I understand it just fine. My city alone has a $4.4B road maintenance backlog, and it’s not that big of a city
It’s cheap”er” to maintain roads. It is not cheap. Use Google next time
And how much do you think a transit system that is meaningfully comparable to cars would cost?
Edit: either big"I was told there would be no fact checking!" vibes from anonymous downvoters or sour grapes on my end., I guess.
To your edit: it's the former
The taxes might be cheaper, but everyone on these cheap roads purchases their own car, their own insurance, wastes their own time in traffic, lives near nothing but a church an hour walk away, etc.
I’m curious so let’s explore this. Say someone in a rural area needs to drive 10 mins down the road a day and 10 mins back. Let’s say you employ one person for just 12 hours at federal minimum wage. That’s $609/week PLUS maintenance and gas on the bus. If someone owned their car/truck and paid maybe $2.50/gal with a 15mpg car, that would only be like $1.70 a day for them. (30mph20min/15mpg$2.5/gal*7(days)=$11.67). That community would only need 60 people taking the exact same path as the bus to make it worth it for them.
I’m all for public transit. I take it to work a few times a week and even when doing leisure, but it’s not a replacement for extra-suburb transit.
The problem comes when people who insist on living away from civilization demand the perks of civilization by being able to drive to a city and park their cars for free.
This becomes very expensive, and degrades the quality of life of those who live in the City.
well why are you living in the city?
If left to private companies, they can’t even seem to bring internet service 5 miles down a rural road. How the heck do you even imaging the whole road being a reasonable idea