• 6 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I dought a government could just out right ban something, because “freedom” like you say.

    Though the action of taxing something is IMO preferred, especially for a government. It allows people, or corporation’s, to still attain or use a product, but they need to be willing to pay the costs. (ie. Freedom & Capitalism)

    The only thing i would change is the amount of tax. Paying a few cents for a plastic bag as a example is still “cheeper” in a one time cost for a consumer, then buying a reusable bag or paper bag. And that plastic material is still cheep enough for manufacturer to buy, create the bag, and sell it at a profit.

    Tax for polluting materials should be equivalent to both the “true cost” and the “external costs”, such as environmental costs and public health costs. These are a little harder to quantify but should be accounted for.

    This means if a company wants to use plastic or some other material for bottled water it needs to pay the full costs of said material or choose to use something “cheeper” like glass (after accounting for the tax on plastics).

    This would work similar to how counties enact tariffs on imported goods. And yea it would probably mean items would become more expensive as plastic is pretty light compared to glass meaning higher fuel/transportation costs.


  • I was just wondering about this topic this morning.

    My thought was peoples happiness seemed to have been higher during the lock downs as driving habits changed drastically, such as a great number of individuals not needing to commut to/from work. This decrease traffic and commute times for essential workers, and increased satisfaction of both commuters and now non-commuters.

    “Extreme car dependence is affecting Americans’ quality of life, with a new study finding there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. It found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.”

    The car has artificially increased distances people need to travel, and has also had a impact on inducing urban sprawl. Cars require space to drive and at the same time require large parking spaces at destinations points. If all this infrastructure was instead used for trains, trams, and buses, things would be closer and cities would be denser.

    It would also be interesting to know how increased commute times on all forms of transportation affect peoples happiness and satisfaction. For example increased crowding and increased commute times on public transportation such as trains and subways could also be draining and frustrating when performed on a daily basis.













  • If you were to see a article that said Texas is offering land to build a affordable housing neighbourhood, people would probably loose their shit in the USA.

    Trouble is the plan is to send full families to these camps. These individuals will be waiting here a long time without the agility to freely leave.

    Unless they plan to split women, men, and children apart. That means these camps will need to be built like walled neighbourhoods with schools for the kids while they wait. Housing with AC and heating, electricity, plumbing, fire protection. Streets to get around inside the complex, stores or shops.




  • Abandon would be the best approach. A ban would just make people want to use it more.

    When twitter (now formally know as “X”) was first a thing, the only reason I joined was because private business, city services, and news agencies became a little easier to follow in one unified location. It also made it easier to reach them with quick tweets.

    Maybe the solution is to put a restriction on business, news agencies, and government services from using it?


  • North American has this concept in roadway design where traffic engineers feel the need to make every roadway large. Think of interstate interchanges.

    There is also this need to try and design roadways as both roads and streets, while maintaining the flow of high speed traffic at the same. This leaves us with neither good roads or enjoyable streets.

    Roads get you from point A to point B without regard for what’s in between or along the route. They are meant to move large amounts of traffic with minimal to no lights/stops/driveways.

    Streets on the other hand are “destinations” and are meant for the people that live along them. Streets are traffic calmed, streets give the right of way to pedestrians. Streets have driveways, and multiple interaction zones between people on foot, on bikes, and on cars.

    A street cannot act as a road nor can a road act as a street.

    This image trys to turn the underpass into a street (which it can be), but it’s main function is still designed as a high-speed roadway. So this leaves us with a combination of the two (a strode) which neight is a good road or a enjoyable street for the local community.

    Some examples of simplified highway off ramps that connect directly into traffic calmed streets.

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    City planing also plays a role here, and its usually has to do how our we build city centres right next to highway off ramps. This leaves no room for proper roadway design where you “stepdown” your roadway classification.

    Good planing would have a interstate (130-100kph) connect to a highway (100-80kph), which then empties into a high-speed road (80-60kph), which steps down to a road 50-40kph, and then transitions into a street (30-10kph).

    Instead we have interstate highways empty right into a city street.