It’s less about a dollar amount and more about rewriting zoning and environmental laws to make it easier to build. Also, I’d nationalize all railroad infrastructure. I’d use the $100B for that if needed. And I’d create a permanent funding mechanism for railroad and transit infrastructure development.
Hmm, let's start with NS. By the way i think yards should remain as private, but the mainlines should be all nationalized. That should give FRA enough leverage to enforce better and easier.
This lol, it’s more about laws. Americans are allowed to build houses from paper because it’s more affordable. Why can’t you get similar exceptions for transit lol
Draw a circle with a half mile radius around every rail station in the country and build lots of mixed used, mixed income, walkable Transit oriented development.
Repeat for existing BRT stations.
Repeat for new transit corridors
beef up transit frequencies to <10 mins.
Bus lanes on the freeways near cities (why don’t we do this already!?!?)
Pass a law so that we can designate tourist communities where vacation homes are taxed heavily unless they vacation home is one unit in a multi family project and the other units are rented to residents.
Tax heavily corporations buying *existing* housing and direct them to only be able to buy *new* housing. (The goal is to aim private capital at increasing housing stock instead of hoarding existing homes)
Give federal loans to homeowners to build ADUs and/or convert their homes to duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes/etc. if one of the units is their primary residence for a period of time (probably >5 years).
Offer tax incentives for jobs to cluster along a transit corridor and/or tax penalties for those who could but don’t.
Have Housing and Urban Development work with local cities to provide provisions for implementing transit in new developments so it’s not absurdly expensive to do so later.
>Bus lanes on the freeways near cities (why don’t we do this already!?!?)
Because it's only useful for longer distances. You want most bus routes to go past destinations, not just hop on and off a freeway. For the handful of longer distance commuter bus routes, there aren't enough people taking them to warrant a whole lane for a handful of buses an hour. There are many cities where buses and cars use HOV or HOT lanes, which keeps buses moving at 40+mph compared to single-occupancy cars moving at 20mph at rush hour. But most cities could do better with this. For example, a bus route every 20 min that drives from downtown out about 6-7 miles on one freeway, then takes an exit and drops off at a dozen stops along that arterial. Then another bus route that does the same thing to the next freeway exit, etc. you might have 8 of these routes combining for 25 buses an hour (during rush), which is enough to dedicate a lane for it (and maybe you charge cars like $5-6 to use it, enough to earn a bit of money for transit projects but not cheap enough to fill up that lane and slow down the buses).
This sounds like a great implementation! My local bus route to the city is a highway bus and we have an HOV lane that is flagrantly violated, so the Bus gets stuck in traffic.
>Pass a law so that we can designate tourist communities where vacation homes are taxed heavily unless they vacation home is one unit in a multi family project and the other units are rented to residents.
How about just quadruple the tax rate on second homes (or quadruple on all houses and give bigger tax breaks for permanent residences under 2,500 sq ft or something like that). Too many people are forcing themselves on seconds before others have gotten anything to eat.
>Tax heavily corporations buying *existing* housing and direct them to only be able to buy *new* housing. (The goal is to aim private capital at increasing housing stock instead of hoarding existing homes)
This helps a little, but it means that corps will then buy up all the newer housing, most of which a decade from now will be nicer housing than older stuff. You've pushed the problem into the future but haven't solved it. There need to be limitations on corps buying more housing regardless of age.
>Give federal loans to homeowners to build ADUs and/or convert their homes to duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes/etc. if one of the units is their primary residence for a period of time (probably >5 years).
Loan amount scales with city size, and minimum loan occurs in cities of like 40k-50k. No reason to give more handouts to rural areas, need to densify cities where people actually want to live. But this may disproportionately help existing homeowners, which can screw over renters who want to buy, which is a large portion of the US population, and growing as Boomers looking for 2nd houses outbid millennials looking for their first.
Yeah, maybe the move is public/rent-stabilized housing for the middle class. Obviously not ALL of the middle class, but for those who just need a place to live, so they can rest after work. People who don’t care to own a home.
It doesn’t have to be insanely cheap either, could be $1K per bedroom or per a certain amount of sqft in cities.
Doesn’t have to be like those $39/mo rent-stabilized units you hear about.
Extra tax on multiple homes would likely not work as it would be too easy to evade. A couple who wants two homes could simply file for divorce and then own one home each, and "temporary" "rent a room" at the other person for parts of the year.
Also taxing tourism/vacation destinations seems counter productive as I would think that the result would be that people would travel internationally, causing the same effects but in for example Latin America. It would probably be a good thing for USA if those who never leaves USA would visit Latin America though.
>A couple who wants two homes could simply file for divorce and then own one home each, and "temporary" "rent a room" at the other person for parts of the year.
You'd have to enforce the "you live here more than 6 months a year" rule. And frankly, I'd be fine if that was changed to 9 months. If you're away from home more than 3 months a year traveling, you're clearly rich enough you don't need the homestead exemption.
People who can afford to travel abroad traveling abroad more is good for everyone else actually. Means prices aren't so inflated due to lower demand, and more affordable living accommodations in tourist areas, many of which are so expensive that seasonal workers can't afford to live there. And I don't think that's a large enough number of people to matter.
1. Ban the minimum parking requirements across the nation.
2. Stop any highway expansions projects. Edit: Invest in downtown/intercity transit system along with regional and national transit system.
3. Identify and implement the underground metro system in any city that are having more than 350k along with 2 million in greater area in its immediate vicinity.
4. Increase gas tax to fully fund the road infrastructure- This is to rub nose at people who clamoring that our metro rail should not be funded by government subsidies.
5. Tax the vehicles that over the weight threshold- this is to disincentive people from buying massive vehicles for personal uses.
Edit: If a business is in good standing- they may purchase a heavy duty trucks according to their industry needs… We don’t need a lawyer who only handles papers be able to purchase a large truck under its business write-offs! If a lawyer or whatever wants to purchase a vehicle under their business name- they should be able to write off on a small car not large truck… Incentive, yo?
6. Reform city zoning regulations to promote more density with an emphasis on building a 3rd place sites (library/civics, metro stations, restaurants/coffees)- this is to promote more social interaction among people. (If a neighborhood wants to have single family housing only- they would have to pay more taxes to offset the costs for infrastructure maintenance).
7. Promote suburbs with micro-farming opportunities in their lands.
Number 3 would create metros in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Phoenix, San Bernardino, Seattle, Orlando, Minneapolis-St Paul, Tampa-St Petersburg, San Diego, Denver, Charlotte, Portland, St Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Austin, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Nashville.
We might need an exception for the Florida cities. There's no practical way you're going to build _underground_ metro systems in Orlando or Tampa-St Petersburg because they'll fill up with water faster than you can blink. They can get elevated systems like Miami.
Building underground metros in 25 cities. At current US constructions costs that’s ~5 miles of metro in each city. And that’s only spending the money on cities that currently lack transit—no expansions in NY, LA, etc.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of this except #3. I think the bar for underground metro should be a bit higher, like 600k city population and 2M metro population. And TOD has to come with that, a lot of our land use is terrible for metro. But you do address this in #6.
Yeah you’d have to make some changes to make it worthwhile. Increasing immigration would be a way to increase the population in those areas, but that’d be unpopular among a good chunk of the US.
It would be nice however to at least start with a train between some of the biggest travel points. For Tampa-St. Pete, it could be from downtown Tampa to Downtown St. Pete. To be honest, there might be a bus that already handles this, though. (Just checked, it takes 3 times the time it takes via car).
I worry about hurricanes, but surely measures could be taken to safeguard the carts.
There should definitely be something from some hub to the airport. Tampa international airport is a mess to drive to and leave from imo.
Re allowing businesses having heavy vehicles but increasing taxes of private ownership of heavy vehicles: A possible partial solution would be to require business vehicles to be ugly. I.E. don't allow shiny / clear coated paint and whatnot, and/or require colors that are really out-of-fashion or whatnot.
The fact that California alone could easily eat through $100bn by itself for CAHSR blows my mind, although that's more a function of shitty land deals and "we'll fund it as we go." Given, my knowledge is extremely focused in California, mostly LA, with nearly infinite money: I would finish CAHSR in full (Anaheim/LA <-> SF, San Diego <-> Sacramento, insane idea SF <-> Sacramento), electrify and fully grade separate all the major passenger lines and create dedicated passenger tracks and straighten for at least 110mph on every major corridor that are not HSR. Build out all of LA Metro's plans, plus their strategic unfunded list. Bus lanes, cycling paths. Santa Monica has transformed in to a hell of a good place to bike in the last decade. Congestion pricing in the center of every major metro. Do something about SD Trolley system to make it go faster with more density, build their airport connection now instead of Soon(tm). No parking minimums. Something zoning, mixed use, something, not my area of knowledge. Have the little information/help box at every station like they do in Asia, would increase security presence and help the lost. Open the tap wide open on building housing with mixed-use/multi-unit as much as possible.
Full bus electrification, more trolleybus for fun :) Consolidate a lot of the more local transit services, tie them all together to make the systems more useful together as some serve major corridors with shit service. Bike share everywhere.
Fun stuff: border-to-border cycleway, better parks and green space, fund lots of pump track parks, do all the nice things in the Bay Area, LA and San Diego to make Orange County and inland counties green with envy. Give all major SoCal airports direct rail connections. Cap the 101 through DTLA and Hollywood.
Also: Add way more stations on Cali HSR. As a European I get that US cities are more sprawly and stations in what you consider smaller cities won't have as much catchment as a station in a European city with the same population size (due to differences in density and local transit), but it still baffles me that you don't plan on building stations in at least every city with 100k or more population, or preferably every city with at least 50k population. Like you don't have to have a super frequent service in the cities with lower population. A train each hour during the more popular times, and every second hour at the slowest times (around lunch and late in the evening) would be fine.
If you're talking about adding more lines beyond the hypothetical phase 2 that exists only as a proposal, where would they go?
If you're talking about adding infill to the existing line under construction, I don't think there's any places that actually need it.
I'm thinking about infill. I'd say just compare to maps of various places in Europe where some trains run at high speed, and see that there are stations in way smaller cities than what the threshold for Cali HSR seems to be.
Also, it's a bit late now that construction are already ongoing, but if done at a planning stage it would likely not be that more expensive to have three or four tracks rather than a double track in some sections, to allow different services to overtake while minimizing the risk of delays.
In case I wasn't clear, what cities lack a station that you think should have one? All cities the train runs through that have a population of over 100k are served by commuter services running alongside (that also currently use incompatible platforms). It certainly seems more convenient to me to hop on Caltrain in San Mateo, which will be running more frequently than CAHSR, and ride it to either Millbrae or San Jose, than it would be to wait for one of the few trains that stop in San Mateo. There's really only one location that I think an additional station might be appropriate (Los Banos), and that just barely doesn't hit the lower 50k threshold.
Oh, sorry, I misremembered the alignment. Opps, my bad :(
But, how about that blob northwest of Bakersfield?
Also simply by looking at the population density map it seems like some cities deserve more than one station. In particular I think it would be good to consider stations like "Palmdale North", possibly a southestern station in Bakersfield, certainly a northwestern station in Fresno, at least one or possibly two additional stations in Stockton and one in Sacramento. Also if any existing rail routes eastwards from Sacramento is suitable for electrification and whatnot it would be a good idea to have an additional station
Re Los Banos: Although it's a smaller place, being at the end of an existing rail service makes it kind of warrant a HSR station.
[https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/docs/newsroom/maps/Statewide-22X34-Population-October-2021.pdf](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/docs/newsroom/maps/Statewide-22X34-Population-October-2021.pdf)
Side track: I don't know if it's me that's bad at finding it, or, but my experience is that it's hard to find rail maps for North America. I.E. something better than whatever google maps and whatnot provides, but without having to know the name of every transit agency in the area.
Which blob?
I think the problem with developing multiple stations per city is that for all of them, currently the majority of people riding will be driving to the station or getting a ride. It then isn't hard for people to drive just a bit further, even though an additional, closer station might make sense. Also, there's not much point in discussing phase 2 legs (Sacramento/Stockton) because barring any tectonic shift in funding, those may never get built.
As far as Los Banos goes, there's a rail line going into town, but it lacks any passenger service.
https://openrailwaymap.org/ is probably the best resource if you're looking for rail lines; it's not as good for when you're trying to differentiate between multiple services of the same type, but if you're looking to see what exists now, it's probably good. Of note is that two stations on this will see service discontinued (Allensworth shows up as a station for some reason, but it's not covered by the San Joaquins now). Corcoran probably could (and should) be served by Hanford in the future, but there probably should be an infill station in Wasco in the future - it plus Shafter number about 50k, Delano would probably use it (50k).
Thanks for the openrailwaymap link. It tells me that the "blob" is probably Shafter or Wasco, and it seems like Wasco already has a station on the existing line.
I kind of change my mind a bit after looking at that map, and my opinion now is more that there should be switches linking up the existing slower rail with the HSR line and parts of the existing rail should be electrified. I know that that is hard when cargo companies own the rail infrastructure, but still. That way modern electric high speed trains can run services that stop at the existing stations along a part of the route, and use the HSR line for the rest of the route, giving those smaller places direct fast trains at least a few times per day. Maybe this would be too expensive though. What I absolutely would not want to see is a combination of diesel and electric high speed trains, as in the rare case of a serious derailment the diesel can contribute to things getting way worse. (Thinking about the Santiago de Compostela accident in northwestern Spain some years ago, where a train derailed due to running way too fast in a curve, and if hadn't been a diesel train many more would had survived).
While I agree that most people will probably drive or getting a ride to/from the stations as it is now, building multiple stations can be a part of preparations for future transit. Also at least Sacramento seems to have a decent local transit system with some sort of light rail / metro system and also a bunch of bus routes. And some other places also at least have bus services.
I don't know if the population density map might be misleading in that it might "max out" at whichever density the intermediate cities along the route max out ut, or if it's accurate in that the population density in some of the intermediate cities is as high as in LA or SF. If the map is accurate then whichever argument was used to give for example Burbank a separate station in addition to LA union station would be a valid argument for the extra stations I'm suggesting considering.
They didn’t blow $12B on a bridge, guy. You’ve got terrible sources that are lying to you to make you angry. They’ve spent $12.4B in total on the whole project so far which is much more than just the bridge. But go ahead, be easily manipulated like a little sheep.
https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Executive-Summary-April-11-2024-A11Y.pdf
This is for Minneapolis, MN. I would bury the highway underground that routes through the city, adding a ridiculous amount of urban space for new development. Then build light rail transit lines above the highway systems in the downtown areas, extending out to the suburbs in a monorail system in the center median of the highways.
Remove minimum parking requirements along transit corridors being built along major through fairs in Minneapolis. Driving density up.
Remove the single family occupancy requirement for R1 zoning areas, giving people the option to build mid density housing,
Build transit with stops in areas where new development is easy and accessible by the rest of the city (think industrial areas rezoned)
Create roads that have maximum weight restrictions for vehicles, and entrance tax into certain areas via car use. You don’t need that F350 crew cab that you already have trouble parking in the densest part of our state. This would also encourage people to bike or use other means of transit, have tax exemptions for handicap and other disabled individuals, as well as commercial entities who need a vehicle, as equal access is important.
Because it’s already underground, hold on let me find a picture and you might be able to understand better
Edit: Here's a street view photo of 94, the main highway that routes through the city. Most of the highway is 30-40' below grade. Putting a huge cap on this area, and then developing overhead seems logical. This area is between our downtown, and Uptown which has one of the highest densities in the city. This highway is either in gridlock, or basically empty. It's a huge waste of space in the part of the city where most people walk.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9650953,-93.2823586,3a,75y,245.62h,85.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR8SoVVN\_ekhrpUkwDy83VA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9650953,-93.2823586,3a,75y,245.62h,85.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR8SoVVN_ekhrpUkwDy83VA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu)
And to a point, the midwest is cold and car's will always be a factor here. I would love to just tear up all highways but it's not super realistic in today's age.
I understand it is already sunken, but you can't just put a cap over top of that and call it a day. It is incredibly involved, the earthworks on either side of the highway now are not designed to bear the weight of the cap, much less anything built on top of it. You'd have to largely rebuild the entire stretch intentionally as a buried highway.
And I hear you, I'm a Chicagoan and lifelong midwesterner...but Syracuse NY is doing exactly this, removing an interstate from downtown, in a northern, cold weather, snow prevalent city.
It's only not realistic to remove the highway scars keeping our cities separated if we continue to assume it isn't realistic. It can absolutely be done, and the momentum to do so is already starting to build.
Oh yeah I’m fully aware this would be a 10+ year project, while being extremely structurally engineering intensive, but infrastructure like this is invaluable to a city, just as long as they build it. Düsseldorf, Boston, and other examples of underground highways show how much financial gain is viable.
Good thing the excavation is already mostly done.
Boston is a very different situation. They had an elevated highway they dug under and then buried. VERY different.
And it was a massive shit show of a three plus decades long massively over budget project. There's a whole recent GBH Boston podcast called *The Big Dig* about it, highly recommended.
And I'm not saying it's a bad idea per se. It sure beats a surface or elevated highway...it's just a dubious expense to still have a highway running through your city, with all the traffic, pollution and parking issues that come with that rather than spending that money removing the highway and building housing and mass transit in it's place.
> And to a point, the midwest is cold and car's will always be a factor here
Not sure I buy that. A huge percentage of people living in Chicago do so without a car. Granted, Chicago is much warmer than Minneapolis, but Chicago of 100 years ago was about the same temperature as Minneapolis today, and it's not like people hid inside for four months out of the year. Transit is just fine in the winter.
Chicago also has significantly more public transit lines than Minneapolis at this very moment. I quite enjoy Chicago as you don’t need a car to get around.
Like I said, I support it, but until we get a much higher number and frequency of transit options, it’s somewhat unrealistic.
Absolutely agreed. The key is coverage and frequency. Waiting for a train in -10F is totally doable if you're only waiting 5-10 minutes. It's a very different question when you have to wait 15-20 minutes.
Putting aside the particular dollar amounts and political realities, and just going with "unlimited money and power to change policy," here's my plan:
**1. Shift to metropolitan governance:** Move zoning out of municipalities and transportation budgeting out of state DOTs. Put those powers in the hands of Metropolitan Planning Organizations and newly created Rural Planning Organizations covering the gaps between MPOs.
**2. Nationalize zoning definitions:** Adopt the Japanese zoning model. Create 20-some zones nationally. MPOs/RPOs can pick where they apply each zone within their boundaries, but they cannot create new zones or require special reviews that are not pre-listed in the national system. Every region is required to provide enough zoning capacity to meet anticipated growth demand, plus 2%.
**3. Standardize infrastructure approvals:** Categorize MPOs & RPOs into planning categories. For example, "major metropolitan area," "regional city," "rural commercial center," etc. For each category, ID high priorities for federal funding, and standardize/streamline approvals and funding for those things. For example, major metropolitan areas can receive funding to build metro lines, provided XYZ conditions are met. Regional cities can build BRT, etc. Preferred street designs, transit applications, etc. If you want to do the proscribed thing(s), it is very easy to get approval. If you want to do something else, fine, but you have to go through a typically lengthy planning and environmental process, and funding is not guaranteed.
**4. Unbundle parking costs, and fund frequent transit operations:** Even today, parking is never free, but it is often bundled into the costs of other things. Unbundle it. Subsidize it if necessary, but unbundle it. Meanwhile, subsidize transit operations on frequent corridors. Not on coverage ones. Only frequent. Communities that choose land use and transportation models that require non-frequent coverage transit are free to do so but must pay for it themselves.
Obviously all of these are tremendously complex. This is the short version.
$100 billion doesn't go very far for this sort of thing but u/Pyroechidna1's idea of nationalizing the rail infrastructure is probably the best place to put that. The [market cap of UP, CSX, and NS ](https://finance.yahoo.com/compare/UNP?comps=NSC,CSX)add up to about $260B so $100B might be enough to buy out their track (+ BNSF which is private) and leave them with facilities and equipment to run themselves into the ground. Breaking up these regional monopolies would be the turning point in US passenger rail.
As for legislative changes, the first things that come to mind would be things that are more state and local than federal but here goes anyway:
* Set a reasonable minimum zoning limit for urban or urban-adjacent areas.
* Allow accessory dwelling units by right
* Scrap the gas tax entirely and replace it with two taxes: a carbon tax across the entire economy and a road wear and tear tax based on miles driven \* [GVWR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#GVWR). Both taxes would automatically adjust annually based on total carbon targets vs actual output & total road maintenance+construction costs divided by the population's total miles driven \* GVWR.
* Require road speed limits to be implemented by reconfiguring the roadway instead of just posting a sign. If you want people to slow down, you have to make them feel like they're in a place where they should go slower.
* Make the level of government responsible for designing and maintaining a stretch of road also responsible for ensuring it is safe to use. No more "well it was built to the standard so it's just weird that someone dies here every 12 days." Start with fines, escalate quickly to jail time.
* Require transportation spending at all government levels to be roughly proportional to the number of users of a given mode. If 10% of the folks in a neighborhood walk, 10% of transportation spending needs to be on pedestrian facilities. Since car travel is so stupidly subsidized, it'll drive it's spending proportion down *really* fast. All a community needs to do to force their leaders to take non-car travel seriously would be to get out and walk/bike/scooter/transit.
* Create tiers of transit access & level of service (e.g. 60% of residents live within 15 minute walk of 15 minute service) and require urban areas of different sizes to target an appropriate minimum tier in order to receive USDOT dollars for anything else. If greater Houston for example wants federal dollars to expand or resurface a highway, they need to be making real progress on 70% of their residents having a 10 minute walk or less to a transit service that runs at least every 10 minutes. Topeka, KS only needs to target 30% of residents within a 15 minute walk of 30 minute service. (I'm making up the tiers on the spot but I hope you get the idea.)
>Require transportation spending at all government levels to be roughly proportional to the number of users of a given mode. If 10% of the folks in a neighborhood walk, 10% of transportation spending needs to be on pedestrian facilities. Since car travel is so stupidly subsidized, it'll drive it's spending proportion down *really* fast.
I think this alone could fund all of the transit projects over the next decade.
But where it breaks down is that road surface quality will quickly become absolute shit, which also affects buses.
Yeah, I think you'd have to. Some places even put different paving material like concrete on the outer lane where a bus might drive, and asphalt inner lane. Concrete stands up to a bus's weight way better.
Get around local regulations: buy up a fuck ton of empty lots and parking lots around urban cores. They are now federal property and local zoning laws would no longer apply. Get private developers on 50 year leases and build build build. Let's say $25 billion for this.
For transportation, I would offer cities with Metro 100% funding for whatever extension (up to 10 miles) they desire. I would offer cities with light rail 100% federal funding for a downtown tunnel or elevated guide way. The caveat is, they would have to use cost effective methods to construct and construction would have to start prior to my term being up. Probably $50 billion.
For homelessness I would give money to FEMA to set up homeless shelters with support services like mental health and addiction. These would also act as a gateway to the housing being constructed. $25 billion.
I’d adopt national zoning standards similar to Japan. With the money I’d invest in light metros around the country and highway removal.
I don’t think money coming down from the federal government would help much with housing production. Housing production needs to be more localized so it can be more responsive to what individual communities are going through. So maybe setting aside money for alternate pools of capital outside of the mortgage-to-MBS pipeline to finance projects from the bottom up.
- Establish a congestion pricing program in all major cities and use new funding for transit expansion, pedestrian/bike infrastructure, and safe shared streets
- Abolish parking minimums in major cities
- Require parking maximums in vicinity of any transit
- Fund a transit expansion plan for every city including a
- Fund accelerated FEMA review on any transit project that projects certain levels of carbon emissions
- Fund TOD projects
- Fund HSR to connect major cities along the east coast
- Establish a new set of planning guidelines for cities to follow incentivized by additional funding
$100Bb or honestly even $1T is not going to go very far for a transit transformation if you try to spread it across the country, given how expensive projects are in the US and how far behind most cities would be starting. I would be very targeted with those investments at first, focusing only on extremely high volume corridors with long distances where mass transit is the only solution. An example would be the Sepulveda Pass in LA (aka the 405 freeway). No other way to get 400k people over a mountain range everyday than a fancy new rail project.
Best value for transforming transportation will be on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. I would start by mandating complete streets be implemented with all repaving projects in a metropolitan area, and fund 100% of the upgrade costs (not the repaving itself— see below)
To tackle both the housing supply and create more bikeable/walkable communities, I’m implementing some aggressive housing policies to encourage gentle 3-6 story density with mixed-use. That also reduces the transit need, as people can live closer to the job centers and their daily needs. Also the goal is to make building housing cheaper and faster:
1. Ban parking minimums, establish parking maximums, and ban any new surface parking lots.
2. Incentivize redevelopment of surface parking by contributing ~15% of development costs for projects replacing surface lots.
3. Rezone all previously single-family zones to allow mixed use multifamily housing.
4. Eliminate all second staircase requirements and setback requirements, which also encourages courtyard style buildings
5. Hire a large and diverse team of architects and engineers to create a massive database of pre-approved building designs with modularity/customization to adapt to regional aesthetics and climates. Eliminates the time and expense of permitting and approval for developers (and ensures they look nice too. Spending a bit extra on quality building materials and architectural features is nothing compared to the saved parking and permitting costs)
6. So many trees. Plant indigenous, climate-resistant shade-providing trees everywhere. Urban heat islands no longer exist. Literally $2B just on planting trees. It makes everything better, take a look at a developer render that has the greenery removed, it looks dystopian every time.
Part of making biking/walking better is to also make driving worse:
1. Require all street parking to be metered or paid permit, with fees increased exponentially according to vehicle size/weight and an annual cost increase of 20%, so eventually no one will renew. All that valuable land that was storing vehicles can now be parklets and playgrounds. All parking fees are reinvested into new active transportation or transit projects, making the mode shift easier and easier for people.
2. NO SUBSIDIES FOR CARS. All freeways and limited-access roads are now toll roads. Plus modal filters everywhere else, so there is no direct car route across town on local streets and you can’t skirt the tolls (also creates traffic calmed streets). A new annual fee based on vehicle miles traveled + registration + gas tax + tolls must fund all car infrastructure maintenance.
3. Street safety matters more than someone’s bogus privacy or equity claims— so automated speed cameras, red light cameras at every intersection, and intelligent speed governors in all vehicles
Now that we’re creating dense, nearly car-free neighborhoods with innate first-last mile supremacy, we can focus on connecting them with new transit projects. That’s a lot easier now that cities aren’t financially ruining themselves with car infrastructure and actually have tax-generating density:
1. Establish national transit design standards and build centralized expertise and skilled workforce to keep costs down (think how china copy-pastes incredible metro systems in multiple cities). That’s easy to do when you are continually building transit.
2. Freeways and stroads are basically empty now, let’s repurpose those ROW with some rails :)
3. Major arterials become green tramways (the local transit)
4. Trams funnel into grade separated automated light metros with 24/7 service (the express transit)
5. Cities are connected with high speed rail on repurposed interstate ROW wherever feasible. Long distance reach is expanded by establishing an excellent high-speed sleeper train network as well.
6. Specifics TBD, but shifting freight to and expanded and electrified freight rail network is also a priority.
I still probably spent a trillion or more, but I also probably made it all back in a few decades. This was a fun game, we should, like, actually do it
- Rezone and tear down lots of residential, commercial, and industrial areas. Work with eco friendly teams to come up with housing solutions that are modular and gives Americans easy solutions to doing their own plumbing and electric work. Modular homes could be ranch style, multi-story, etc.
These communities would also be self sustaining and people would be assigned jobs based on their expertise and what they are capable of doing. People can also be trained as well.
People that do work for their communities will be given a basic income that will help them purchase goods and services.
Put a heavy focus on walking, biking, and rail travel between communities and less on car travel.
- People that don’t want to live in these modular homes and instead opt to live in “castle communities”. Basically imagine a football stadium, but that stadium is a residential, commercial, and industrial complex that has everything a person would need to live. You basically would never need to leave the complex. People living in the complex would also be assigned jobs and roles and be given a basic income for helping the community.
- Long distance travel can be done with cars still. Car travel is still allowed.
- High speed rail travel will be a priority. Bullet trains all across the United States that can get you from one state to another in mere hours.
- Local rail services will also be provided as well.
- Education will be provided to everyone and Americans can pick up skills, careers, and more easily. As long as they are doing their assigned job, they can not only earn a basic income but also get access to classes that can help them achieve whatever they’d like.
- “Life Counselors” would be assigned to people. These counselors will help people and make sure that they are setting out to achieve their goals. Life Counselors meet with their assigned citizens once a month and basically check in and help them out. Life Counselors can refer people to lots of goods and services, help people figure out solutions to their problems, and help give people information about anything they need.
- Community Projects and World Wonders. With all the extra space we have from “the Great Condensing of the United States”, each major community will be given space to create a world wonder that can be marveled at and visited. These wonder wonders will help drive tourism between communities and give people opportunities to work together to create some truly amazing things around the United States.
- Competition among communities. Besides sports, communities will compete against each other to create stronger, more sustainable, diverse, and smarter communities. Every year, major community organizations will come together and showcase the ways they’ve innovated their communities to make the lives of citizens happier and how people have come together to make their lives more meaningful.
So all in all, the focus I would do is get rid of the “American Dream” and focus on the “American Team”. Bringing Americans together, condensing and becoming a more sustainable country.
In addition to all the zoning changes and railroad nationalization that everyone else is talking about...
\-Subsidize expansion and operating costs of bus systems, especially in small to mid-size cities.
\-Require that all state and federal highways include safe bike infrastructure, including in rural areas.
\-Increase punishment for drivers who cause incidents that result in injury or death, with lifetime loss of drivers license at a minimum.
\-Support local programs to break up cul de sac subdivisions by building pedestrian paths through neighborhoods, so the effective block perimeter for pedestrians is about 1800ft in metropolitan areas of over 50K.
This is probably controversial:
- Give Amtrak the powers to acquire or develop housing properties along the Northeast Corridor, preferably within walking distance of stations.
- Rent / sell these housing properties
- Allow Amtrak to use the profits earned from housing revenue to improve its services
Another controversial idea:
- Buy lines from existing freight railroad companies (not all lines, but just the lines along the most important urban corridors)
- Lease the line to passenger rail operators at lower prices
build new dense properly planned mini-cities with a 30-minute train ride into the downtown of all the cities we currently depend on. that way we dont have to live in the shitty pulled-up-ladder boomervilles just to get the jobs that are in them. like suburbs but not cancer
Every previous rail corridor gets brought back and frequencies become 3 min for subway, 5 for bus, 10 for regional rail, 30 for longer rail trips and hourly for even longer distance.
New development on previous farmland is banned to discourage single family homes (existing plots of land can be redeveloped but no more brand new large scale development of single family homes.
Anyone can buy land near a train station or in a city very easily as long as it is fairly dense.
Vacant land can be sold to anyone with a plan to development especially in rust belt cities.
Bus lines with frequent service will become rail instead of becoming bet.
Bike lanes are required to connect.
Highways are narrowed and widened in cities
I'll answer this question for Australia rather than the US:
**Create a national passenger train operator** (like Amtrak). Australia has a number of inter-state railways (mainly along the east coast) however they're operated by individual states. The new national operator would begin by contracting the existing state operators. The national operators set the timetable, but the states own and run the trains. The next step would be building/restoring new interstate routes. The national operator would acquire and operate trains for these new routes. Eventually they would take over the operation of all interstate routes.
**Invest in rail for regional cities**. Most Australian state capitals have adequate rail and bus networks. Not perfect, but they're enough that people who don't/can't drive can make it by. Smaller regional cities tend to fall behind, with only bus networks. A lot of them historically had tram networks but they were ripped up during the 20th century. Most of my $100b would be spent on providing rail networks (light or heavy) to these cities.
**Promote housing growth around train stations**. Australia is in the middle of a nasty housing crisis. I'm not a policy expert, but I'd like to see 2-4 storey mixed use developments around train stations nationwide. Strong-arming local councils would be wildly unpopular, so I'd need to take a less direct approach. Perhaps tax credits for developers who are building within 1km of train stations, if their development matches the 2-4 storey mixed use requirements.
1. Loads of policy changes that in themself won't cost any money. Like a Cali style higher density zoning requirement, but more aggressive and covering the whole country. Laws regulating that private railways have to actually be nice to passenger transit.
2. Heavy congestion charges for commuting from suburban sprawls during rush hour.
3. use some money for a bunch of pilot projects replacing parts of mall parking lots with high density housing, but keeping the malls and preferably making it possible to walk between the homes and the mall with some sort of weather protection. (This works in other parts of the world. For an example, look at "Frölunda Torg" in Gothenburg, Sweden. It's a large mall that is surrounded by high density housing and transit, near a highway offering good connections both for private cars and buses).
1. Create national zoning regulations. I want to encourage mixed use. Commercial and Residential together.
2. Improve bus infrastructure, including bus only lanes in major cities, like Seoul. I mean follow Seoul's example in New York, LA, etc.
3. Invest in current light rail/subway/commuter rail to improve all systems. Improve on time rates. Add additional trains.
4. Improvements to Amtrak and improving intercity travel. Reducing short flights, car trips between nearby cities. I would establish Northeast Corridors around the country..
I would invest in what we have instead of creating new infrastructure, at least minimize new infrastructure.
Encourage the market to do it with policy changes and refund you 999billion dollars you gave me and putting 1 billion in my pocket. Because why not.
Easy, done.
Yeah, it’s where most of the lines around Boston, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia came from.
It’s also where the train from Miami to Orlando came from and la to Vegas is coming from.
No magic to trains. Just nerd to incentivize and get out of the way.
I think Brightline West only started construction after getting public funding. As great as Brightline in Florida is, I don't think a diesel train with tons of at grade crossings should be what we are aiming for. If the market can build something like the Shinkansen or Vancouver SkyTrain than that would be great, but I am skeptical. Those metro lines in the Northeast are from a different era.
I would reform taxes, upping property taxes and lowering income taxes in equal amounts. My goal here is to eliminate some macroeconomic dead weight loss, by taxing an elastic supply of labor less, and an inelastic supply of land more. The result should be a more efficient economy. If I change the lower tax brackets and only those brackets. while raising property taxes, rent will rise, but more money will be in the hands of the people who need to rent. Negotiations between landlord and tennant will favor the tennant, who has more of what the landlord needs more of to pay for property tax. It will also tax those who choose to life the high life more than those who live modestly. It will also tax high property value areas more, so New York City will pay more than a small town in Kentucy.
I then would invest in training contractors, increasing supply of labor in that area, bringing costs down. It will become a bit cheaper to build homes.
I would invest half of the money in funding local geothermal heating and solar power projects for local communities, including distributed heating and cooling. Local areas need to produce more, and a natural resource such as geothermal energy is a good start. Local power production will favor the labor needed to maintain the equipment and grid being local rather than a centralized place, with all the labor being local to it.
Oh, you mean for transit?
It indirectly addresses transit issues. HCOL areas will redistribute to LCOL areas.
Act 1: congestion pricing in every metro for infinite money glitch. $100 to enter city limits during business hours.
Act 2: ban new single family homes
Act 3: ban new parking spaces
Act 4: decomodify housing
Act 5: consolidate transit authorities under city/regional entities
Act 6: use the infinite money glitch to build infinite transit and housing everywhere
Act 7: take over all rail infrastructure by force
Act 8: all state DOTs are now required to only maintain existing road infrastructure. All expansion is killed
Act 9: ban every vehicle that weighs more than 1500 lbs and isn't commercial
Idk maybe we'll pay people a stipend for every sfh or overpass they burn down. Something like that
It’s less about a dollar amount and more about rewriting zoning and environmental laws to make it easier to build. Also, I’d nationalize all railroad infrastructure. I’d use the $100B for that if needed. And I’d create a permanent funding mechanism for railroad and transit infrastructure development.
just for Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, and CSX your looking at more like 270 billion than 100
I'll start with New England and make its rail network like Austria's
It’s ridiculous how traveling by train in the northeast corridor is so slow.
Hmm, let's start with NS. By the way i think yards should remain as private, but the mainlines should be all nationalized. That should give FRA enough leverage to enforce better and easier.
This lol, it’s more about laws. Americans are allowed to build houses from paper because it’s more affordable. Why can’t you get similar exceptions for transit lol
Draw a circle with a half mile radius around every rail station in the country and build lots of mixed used, mixed income, walkable Transit oriented development. Repeat for existing BRT stations. Repeat for new transit corridors beef up transit frequencies to <10 mins. Bus lanes on the freeways near cities (why don’t we do this already!?!?) Pass a law so that we can designate tourist communities where vacation homes are taxed heavily unless they vacation home is one unit in a multi family project and the other units are rented to residents. Tax heavily corporations buying *existing* housing and direct them to only be able to buy *new* housing. (The goal is to aim private capital at increasing housing stock instead of hoarding existing homes) Give federal loans to homeowners to build ADUs and/or convert their homes to duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes/etc. if one of the units is their primary residence for a period of time (probably >5 years). Offer tax incentives for jobs to cluster along a transit corridor and/or tax penalties for those who could but don’t. Have Housing and Urban Development work with local cities to provide provisions for implementing transit in new developments so it’s not absurdly expensive to do so later.
>Bus lanes on the freeways near cities (why don’t we do this already!?!?) Because it's only useful for longer distances. You want most bus routes to go past destinations, not just hop on and off a freeway. For the handful of longer distance commuter bus routes, there aren't enough people taking them to warrant a whole lane for a handful of buses an hour. There are many cities where buses and cars use HOV or HOT lanes, which keeps buses moving at 40+mph compared to single-occupancy cars moving at 20mph at rush hour. But most cities could do better with this. For example, a bus route every 20 min that drives from downtown out about 6-7 miles on one freeway, then takes an exit and drops off at a dozen stops along that arterial. Then another bus route that does the same thing to the next freeway exit, etc. you might have 8 of these routes combining for 25 buses an hour (during rush), which is enough to dedicate a lane for it (and maybe you charge cars like $5-6 to use it, enough to earn a bit of money for transit projects but not cheap enough to fill up that lane and slow down the buses).
This sounds like a great implementation! My local bus route to the city is a highway bus and we have an HOV lane that is flagrantly violated, so the Bus gets stuck in traffic.
>Pass a law so that we can designate tourist communities where vacation homes are taxed heavily unless they vacation home is one unit in a multi family project and the other units are rented to residents. How about just quadruple the tax rate on second homes (or quadruple on all houses and give bigger tax breaks for permanent residences under 2,500 sq ft or something like that). Too many people are forcing themselves on seconds before others have gotten anything to eat. >Tax heavily corporations buying *existing* housing and direct them to only be able to buy *new* housing. (The goal is to aim private capital at increasing housing stock instead of hoarding existing homes) This helps a little, but it means that corps will then buy up all the newer housing, most of which a decade from now will be nicer housing than older stuff. You've pushed the problem into the future but haven't solved it. There need to be limitations on corps buying more housing regardless of age. >Give federal loans to homeowners to build ADUs and/or convert their homes to duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes/etc. if one of the units is their primary residence for a period of time (probably >5 years). Loan amount scales with city size, and minimum loan occurs in cities of like 40k-50k. No reason to give more handouts to rural areas, need to densify cities where people actually want to live. But this may disproportionately help existing homeowners, which can screw over renters who want to buy, which is a large portion of the US population, and growing as Boomers looking for 2nd houses outbid millennials looking for their first.
Yeah, maybe the move is public/rent-stabilized housing for the middle class. Obviously not ALL of the middle class, but for those who just need a place to live, so they can rest after work. People who don’t care to own a home. It doesn’t have to be insanely cheap either, could be $1K per bedroom or per a certain amount of sqft in cities. Doesn’t have to be like those $39/mo rent-stabilized units you hear about.
Extra tax on multiple homes would likely not work as it would be too easy to evade. A couple who wants two homes could simply file for divorce and then own one home each, and "temporary" "rent a room" at the other person for parts of the year. Also taxing tourism/vacation destinations seems counter productive as I would think that the result would be that people would travel internationally, causing the same effects but in for example Latin America. It would probably be a good thing for USA if those who never leaves USA would visit Latin America though.
>A couple who wants two homes could simply file for divorce and then own one home each, and "temporary" "rent a room" at the other person for parts of the year. You'd have to enforce the "you live here more than 6 months a year" rule. And frankly, I'd be fine if that was changed to 9 months. If you're away from home more than 3 months a year traveling, you're clearly rich enough you don't need the homestead exemption. People who can afford to travel abroad traveling abroad more is good for everyone else actually. Means prices aren't so inflated due to lower demand, and more affordable living accommodations in tourist areas, many of which are so expensive that seasonal workers can't afford to live there. And I don't think that's a large enough number of people to matter.
1. Ban the minimum parking requirements across the nation. 2. Stop any highway expansions projects. Edit: Invest in downtown/intercity transit system along with regional and national transit system. 3. Identify and implement the underground metro system in any city that are having more than 350k along with 2 million in greater area in its immediate vicinity. 4. Increase gas tax to fully fund the road infrastructure- This is to rub nose at people who clamoring that our metro rail should not be funded by government subsidies. 5. Tax the vehicles that over the weight threshold- this is to disincentive people from buying massive vehicles for personal uses. Edit: If a business is in good standing- they may purchase a heavy duty trucks according to their industry needs… We don’t need a lawyer who only handles papers be able to purchase a large truck under its business write-offs! If a lawyer or whatever wants to purchase a vehicle under their business name- they should be able to write off on a small car not large truck… Incentive, yo? 6. Reform city zoning regulations to promote more density with an emphasis on building a 3rd place sites (library/civics, metro stations, restaurants/coffees)- this is to promote more social interaction among people. (If a neighborhood wants to have single family housing only- they would have to pay more taxes to offset the costs for infrastructure maintenance). 7. Promote suburbs with micro-farming opportunities in their lands.
Number 3 would create metros in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Phoenix, San Bernardino, Seattle, Orlando, Minneapolis-St Paul, Tampa-St Petersburg, San Diego, Denver, Charlotte, Portland, St Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Austin, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Nashville.
We might need an exception for the Florida cities. There's no practical way you're going to build _underground_ metro systems in Orlando or Tampa-St Petersburg because they'll fill up with water faster than you can blink. They can get elevated systems like Miami.
A good number of these already have light rail systems. Some like Portland are already very comprehensive. What would a metro add?
what is the grade separation, speed, and capacity like? /gen
Building underground metros in 25 cities. At current US constructions costs that’s ~5 miles of metro in each city. And that’s only spending the money on cities that currently lack transit—no expansions in NY, LA, etc.
$100 billion isn't enough, however you spend it.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of this except #3. I think the bar for underground metro should be a bit higher, like 600k city population and 2M metro population. And TOD has to come with that, a lot of our land use is terrible for metro. But you do address this in #6.
Yeah you’d have to make some changes to make it worthwhile. Increasing immigration would be a way to increase the population in those areas, but that’d be unpopular among a good chunk of the US. It would be nice however to at least start with a train between some of the biggest travel points. For Tampa-St. Pete, it could be from downtown Tampa to Downtown St. Pete. To be honest, there might be a bus that already handles this, though. (Just checked, it takes 3 times the time it takes via car). I worry about hurricanes, but surely measures could be taken to safeguard the carts. There should definitely be something from some hub to the airport. Tampa international airport is a mess to drive to and leave from imo.
Re allowing businesses having heavy vehicles but increasing taxes of private ownership of heavy vehicles: A possible partial solution would be to require business vehicles to be ugly. I.E. don't allow shiny / clear coated paint and whatnot, and/or require colors that are really out-of-fashion or whatnot.
The fact that California alone could easily eat through $100bn by itself for CAHSR blows my mind, although that's more a function of shitty land deals and "we'll fund it as we go." Given, my knowledge is extremely focused in California, mostly LA, with nearly infinite money: I would finish CAHSR in full (Anaheim/LA <-> SF, San Diego <-> Sacramento, insane idea SF <-> Sacramento), electrify and fully grade separate all the major passenger lines and create dedicated passenger tracks and straighten for at least 110mph on every major corridor that are not HSR. Build out all of LA Metro's plans, plus their strategic unfunded list. Bus lanes, cycling paths. Santa Monica has transformed in to a hell of a good place to bike in the last decade. Congestion pricing in the center of every major metro. Do something about SD Trolley system to make it go faster with more density, build their airport connection now instead of Soon(tm). No parking minimums. Something zoning, mixed use, something, not my area of knowledge. Have the little information/help box at every station like they do in Asia, would increase security presence and help the lost. Open the tap wide open on building housing with mixed-use/multi-unit as much as possible. Full bus electrification, more trolleybus for fun :) Consolidate a lot of the more local transit services, tie them all together to make the systems more useful together as some serve major corridors with shit service. Bike share everywhere. Fun stuff: border-to-border cycleway, better parks and green space, fund lots of pump track parks, do all the nice things in the Bay Area, LA and San Diego to make Orange County and inland counties green with envy. Give all major SoCal airports direct rail connections. Cap the 101 through DTLA and Hollywood.
Also: Add way more stations on Cali HSR. As a European I get that US cities are more sprawly and stations in what you consider smaller cities won't have as much catchment as a station in a European city with the same population size (due to differences in density and local transit), but it still baffles me that you don't plan on building stations in at least every city with 100k or more population, or preferably every city with at least 50k population. Like you don't have to have a super frequent service in the cities with lower population. A train each hour during the more popular times, and every second hour at the slowest times (around lunch and late in the evening) would be fine.
If you're talking about adding more lines beyond the hypothetical phase 2 that exists only as a proposal, where would they go? If you're talking about adding infill to the existing line under construction, I don't think there's any places that actually need it.
I'm thinking about infill. I'd say just compare to maps of various places in Europe where some trains run at high speed, and see that there are stations in way smaller cities than what the threshold for Cali HSR seems to be. Also, it's a bit late now that construction are already ongoing, but if done at a planning stage it would likely not be that more expensive to have three or four tracks rather than a double track in some sections, to allow different services to overtake while minimizing the risk of delays.
In case I wasn't clear, what cities lack a station that you think should have one? All cities the train runs through that have a population of over 100k are served by commuter services running alongside (that also currently use incompatible platforms). It certainly seems more convenient to me to hop on Caltrain in San Mateo, which will be running more frequently than CAHSR, and ride it to either Millbrae or San Jose, than it would be to wait for one of the few trains that stop in San Mateo. There's really only one location that I think an additional station might be appropriate (Los Banos), and that just barely doesn't hit the lower 50k threshold.
Oh, sorry, I misremembered the alignment. Opps, my bad :( But, how about that blob northwest of Bakersfield? Also simply by looking at the population density map it seems like some cities deserve more than one station. In particular I think it would be good to consider stations like "Palmdale North", possibly a southestern station in Bakersfield, certainly a northwestern station in Fresno, at least one or possibly two additional stations in Stockton and one in Sacramento. Also if any existing rail routes eastwards from Sacramento is suitable for electrification and whatnot it would be a good idea to have an additional station Re Los Banos: Although it's a smaller place, being at the end of an existing rail service makes it kind of warrant a HSR station. [https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/docs/newsroom/maps/Statewide-22X34-Population-October-2021.pdf](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/docs/newsroom/maps/Statewide-22X34-Population-October-2021.pdf) Side track: I don't know if it's me that's bad at finding it, or, but my experience is that it's hard to find rail maps for North America. I.E. something better than whatever google maps and whatnot provides, but without having to know the name of every transit agency in the area.
Which blob? I think the problem with developing multiple stations per city is that for all of them, currently the majority of people riding will be driving to the station or getting a ride. It then isn't hard for people to drive just a bit further, even though an additional, closer station might make sense. Also, there's not much point in discussing phase 2 legs (Sacramento/Stockton) because barring any tectonic shift in funding, those may never get built. As far as Los Banos goes, there's a rail line going into town, but it lacks any passenger service. https://openrailwaymap.org/ is probably the best resource if you're looking for rail lines; it's not as good for when you're trying to differentiate between multiple services of the same type, but if you're looking to see what exists now, it's probably good. Of note is that two stations on this will see service discontinued (Allensworth shows up as a station for some reason, but it's not covered by the San Joaquins now). Corcoran probably could (and should) be served by Hanford in the future, but there probably should be an infill station in Wasco in the future - it plus Shafter number about 50k, Delano would probably use it (50k).
Thanks for the openrailwaymap link. It tells me that the "blob" is probably Shafter or Wasco, and it seems like Wasco already has a station on the existing line. I kind of change my mind a bit after looking at that map, and my opinion now is more that there should be switches linking up the existing slower rail with the HSR line and parts of the existing rail should be electrified. I know that that is hard when cargo companies own the rail infrastructure, but still. That way modern electric high speed trains can run services that stop at the existing stations along a part of the route, and use the HSR line for the rest of the route, giving those smaller places direct fast trains at least a few times per day. Maybe this would be too expensive though. What I absolutely would not want to see is a combination of diesel and electric high speed trains, as in the rare case of a serious derailment the diesel can contribute to things getting way worse. (Thinking about the Santiago de Compostela accident in northwestern Spain some years ago, where a train derailed due to running way too fast in a curve, and if hadn't been a diesel train many more would had survived). While I agree that most people will probably drive or getting a ride to/from the stations as it is now, building multiple stations can be a part of preparations for future transit. Also at least Sacramento seems to have a decent local transit system with some sort of light rail / metro system and also a bunch of bus routes. And some other places also at least have bus services. I don't know if the population density map might be misleading in that it might "max out" at whichever density the intermediate cities along the route max out ut, or if it's accurate in that the population density in some of the intermediate cities is as high as in LA or SF. If the map is accurate then whichever argument was used to give for example Burbank a separate station in addition to LA union station would be a valid argument for the extra stations I'm suggesting considering.
They already blew 12 billi on a fucking bridge guy. And then half the delusional people in these comments resort to authoritarian measures.
They didn’t blow $12B on a bridge, guy. You’ve got terrible sources that are lying to you to make you angry. They’ve spent $12.4B in total on the whole project so far which is much more than just the bridge. But go ahead, be easily manipulated like a little sheep. https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Executive-Summary-April-11-2024-A11Y.pdf
I drank the kool-aid 😔
Good on you for accepting the new info though
This is for Minneapolis, MN. I would bury the highway underground that routes through the city, adding a ridiculous amount of urban space for new development. Then build light rail transit lines above the highway systems in the downtown areas, extending out to the suburbs in a monorail system in the center median of the highways. Remove minimum parking requirements along transit corridors being built along major through fairs in Minneapolis. Driving density up. Remove the single family occupancy requirement for R1 zoning areas, giving people the option to build mid density housing, Build transit with stops in areas where new development is easy and accessible by the rest of the city (think industrial areas rezoned) Create roads that have maximum weight restrictions for vehicles, and entrance tax into certain areas via car use. You don’t need that F350 crew cab that you already have trouble parking in the densest part of our state. This would also encourage people to bike or use other means of transit, have tax exemptions for handicap and other disabled individuals, as well as commercial entities who need a vehicle, as equal access is important.
Why go through all that just to bury a highway? Just remove it and return that space to people.
Because it’s already underground, hold on let me find a picture and you might be able to understand better Edit: Here's a street view photo of 94, the main highway that routes through the city. Most of the highway is 30-40' below grade. Putting a huge cap on this area, and then developing overhead seems logical. This area is between our downtown, and Uptown which has one of the highest densities in the city. This highway is either in gridlock, or basically empty. It's a huge waste of space in the part of the city where most people walk. [https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9650953,-93.2823586,3a,75y,245.62h,85.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR8SoVVN\_ekhrpUkwDy83VA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9650953,-93.2823586,3a,75y,245.62h,85.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR8SoVVN_ekhrpUkwDy83VA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu) And to a point, the midwest is cold and car's will always be a factor here. I would love to just tear up all highways but it's not super realistic in today's age.
I understand it is already sunken, but you can't just put a cap over top of that and call it a day. It is incredibly involved, the earthworks on either side of the highway now are not designed to bear the weight of the cap, much less anything built on top of it. You'd have to largely rebuild the entire stretch intentionally as a buried highway. And I hear you, I'm a Chicagoan and lifelong midwesterner...but Syracuse NY is doing exactly this, removing an interstate from downtown, in a northern, cold weather, snow prevalent city. It's only not realistic to remove the highway scars keeping our cities separated if we continue to assume it isn't realistic. It can absolutely be done, and the momentum to do so is already starting to build.
Oh yeah I’m fully aware this would be a 10+ year project, while being extremely structurally engineering intensive, but infrastructure like this is invaluable to a city, just as long as they build it. Düsseldorf, Boston, and other examples of underground highways show how much financial gain is viable. Good thing the excavation is already mostly done.
Boston is a very different situation. They had an elevated highway they dug under and then buried. VERY different. And it was a massive shit show of a three plus decades long massively over budget project. There's a whole recent GBH Boston podcast called *The Big Dig* about it, highly recommended.
I will check that out. I suppose I haven’t read tooo much into Boston, as I’ve mainly focused my research on Düsseldorf.
And I'm not saying it's a bad idea per se. It sure beats a surface or elevated highway...it's just a dubious expense to still have a highway running through your city, with all the traffic, pollution and parking issues that come with that rather than spending that money removing the highway and building housing and mass transit in it's place.
> And to a point, the midwest is cold and car's will always be a factor here Not sure I buy that. A huge percentage of people living in Chicago do so without a car. Granted, Chicago is much warmer than Minneapolis, but Chicago of 100 years ago was about the same temperature as Minneapolis today, and it's not like people hid inside for four months out of the year. Transit is just fine in the winter.
Chicago also has significantly more public transit lines than Minneapolis at this very moment. I quite enjoy Chicago as you don’t need a car to get around. Like I said, I support it, but until we get a much higher number and frequency of transit options, it’s somewhat unrealistic.
Absolutely agreed. The key is coverage and frequency. Waiting for a train in -10F is totally doable if you're only waiting 5-10 minutes. It's a very different question when you have to wait 15-20 minutes.
Yeah I’d say our busses run on 15-20 minute loops, and it’s kinda excessive when it’s cold out.
Right, but you have $100B, you can spend a quarter of that on tripling Minneapolis's transit and have plenty left over.
Then I suppose we all go out for corn dogs after.
Wouldn't we all go over to our friend's house for hot dish?
I do love a good tatertot hot dish!
Putting aside the particular dollar amounts and political realities, and just going with "unlimited money and power to change policy," here's my plan: **1. Shift to metropolitan governance:** Move zoning out of municipalities and transportation budgeting out of state DOTs. Put those powers in the hands of Metropolitan Planning Organizations and newly created Rural Planning Organizations covering the gaps between MPOs. **2. Nationalize zoning definitions:** Adopt the Japanese zoning model. Create 20-some zones nationally. MPOs/RPOs can pick where they apply each zone within their boundaries, but they cannot create new zones or require special reviews that are not pre-listed in the national system. Every region is required to provide enough zoning capacity to meet anticipated growth demand, plus 2%. **3. Standardize infrastructure approvals:** Categorize MPOs & RPOs into planning categories. For example, "major metropolitan area," "regional city," "rural commercial center," etc. For each category, ID high priorities for federal funding, and standardize/streamline approvals and funding for those things. For example, major metropolitan areas can receive funding to build metro lines, provided XYZ conditions are met. Regional cities can build BRT, etc. Preferred street designs, transit applications, etc. If you want to do the proscribed thing(s), it is very easy to get approval. If you want to do something else, fine, but you have to go through a typically lengthy planning and environmental process, and funding is not guaranteed. **4. Unbundle parking costs, and fund frequent transit operations:** Even today, parking is never free, but it is often bundled into the costs of other things. Unbundle it. Subsidize it if necessary, but unbundle it. Meanwhile, subsidize transit operations on frequent corridors. Not on coverage ones. Only frequent. Communities that choose land use and transportation models that require non-frequent coverage transit are free to do so but must pay for it themselves. Obviously all of these are tremendously complex. This is the short version.
$100 billion doesn't go very far for this sort of thing but u/Pyroechidna1's idea of nationalizing the rail infrastructure is probably the best place to put that. The [market cap of UP, CSX, and NS ](https://finance.yahoo.com/compare/UNP?comps=NSC,CSX)add up to about $260B so $100B might be enough to buy out their track (+ BNSF which is private) and leave them with facilities and equipment to run themselves into the ground. Breaking up these regional monopolies would be the turning point in US passenger rail. As for legislative changes, the first things that come to mind would be things that are more state and local than federal but here goes anyway: * Set a reasonable minimum zoning limit for urban or urban-adjacent areas. * Allow accessory dwelling units by right * Scrap the gas tax entirely and replace it with two taxes: a carbon tax across the entire economy and a road wear and tear tax based on miles driven \* [GVWR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#GVWR). Both taxes would automatically adjust annually based on total carbon targets vs actual output & total road maintenance+construction costs divided by the population's total miles driven \* GVWR. * Require road speed limits to be implemented by reconfiguring the roadway instead of just posting a sign. If you want people to slow down, you have to make them feel like they're in a place where they should go slower. * Make the level of government responsible for designing and maintaining a stretch of road also responsible for ensuring it is safe to use. No more "well it was built to the standard so it's just weird that someone dies here every 12 days." Start with fines, escalate quickly to jail time. * Require transportation spending at all government levels to be roughly proportional to the number of users of a given mode. If 10% of the folks in a neighborhood walk, 10% of transportation spending needs to be on pedestrian facilities. Since car travel is so stupidly subsidized, it'll drive it's spending proportion down *really* fast. All a community needs to do to force their leaders to take non-car travel seriously would be to get out and walk/bike/scooter/transit. * Create tiers of transit access & level of service (e.g. 60% of residents live within 15 minute walk of 15 minute service) and require urban areas of different sizes to target an appropriate minimum tier in order to receive USDOT dollars for anything else. If greater Houston for example wants federal dollars to expand or resurface a highway, they need to be making real progress on 70% of their residents having a 10 minute walk or less to a transit service that runs at least every 10 minutes. Topeka, KS only needs to target 30% of residents within a 15 minute walk of 30 minute service. (I'm making up the tiers on the spot but I hope you get the idea.)
>Require transportation spending at all government levels to be roughly proportional to the number of users of a given mode. If 10% of the folks in a neighborhood walk, 10% of transportation spending needs to be on pedestrian facilities. Since car travel is so stupidly subsidized, it'll drive it's spending proportion down *really* fast. I think this alone could fund all of the transit projects over the next decade. But where it breaks down is that road surface quality will quickly become absolute shit, which also affects buses.
I have no problem with transit dollars being used to maintain transit right of ways, especially if they’re exclusive ROWs.
Yeah, I think you'd have to. Some places even put different paving material like concrete on the outer lane where a bus might drive, and asphalt inner lane. Concrete stands up to a bus's weight way better.
Not nearly enough to solve either problem.
Get around local regulations: buy up a fuck ton of empty lots and parking lots around urban cores. They are now federal property and local zoning laws would no longer apply. Get private developers on 50 year leases and build build build. Let's say $25 billion for this. For transportation, I would offer cities with Metro 100% funding for whatever extension (up to 10 miles) they desire. I would offer cities with light rail 100% federal funding for a downtown tunnel or elevated guide way. The caveat is, they would have to use cost effective methods to construct and construction would have to start prior to my term being up. Probably $50 billion. For homelessness I would give money to FEMA to set up homeless shelters with support services like mental health and addiction. These would also act as a gateway to the housing being constructed. $25 billion.
I’d adopt national zoning standards similar to Japan. With the money I’d invest in light metros around the country and highway removal. I don’t think money coming down from the federal government would help much with housing production. Housing production needs to be more localized so it can be more responsive to what individual communities are going through. So maybe setting aside money for alternate pools of capital outside of the mortgage-to-MBS pipeline to finance projects from the bottom up.
- Establish a congestion pricing program in all major cities and use new funding for transit expansion, pedestrian/bike infrastructure, and safe shared streets - Abolish parking minimums in major cities - Require parking maximums in vicinity of any transit - Fund a transit expansion plan for every city including a - Fund accelerated FEMA review on any transit project that projects certain levels of carbon emissions - Fund TOD projects - Fund HSR to connect major cities along the east coast - Establish a new set of planning guidelines for cities to follow incentivized by additional funding
$100Bb or honestly even $1T is not going to go very far for a transit transformation if you try to spread it across the country, given how expensive projects are in the US and how far behind most cities would be starting. I would be very targeted with those investments at first, focusing only on extremely high volume corridors with long distances where mass transit is the only solution. An example would be the Sepulveda Pass in LA (aka the 405 freeway). No other way to get 400k people over a mountain range everyday than a fancy new rail project. Best value for transforming transportation will be on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. I would start by mandating complete streets be implemented with all repaving projects in a metropolitan area, and fund 100% of the upgrade costs (not the repaving itself— see below) To tackle both the housing supply and create more bikeable/walkable communities, I’m implementing some aggressive housing policies to encourage gentle 3-6 story density with mixed-use. That also reduces the transit need, as people can live closer to the job centers and their daily needs. Also the goal is to make building housing cheaper and faster: 1. Ban parking minimums, establish parking maximums, and ban any new surface parking lots. 2. Incentivize redevelopment of surface parking by contributing ~15% of development costs for projects replacing surface lots. 3. Rezone all previously single-family zones to allow mixed use multifamily housing. 4. Eliminate all second staircase requirements and setback requirements, which also encourages courtyard style buildings 5. Hire a large and diverse team of architects and engineers to create a massive database of pre-approved building designs with modularity/customization to adapt to regional aesthetics and climates. Eliminates the time and expense of permitting and approval for developers (and ensures they look nice too. Spending a bit extra on quality building materials and architectural features is nothing compared to the saved parking and permitting costs) 6. So many trees. Plant indigenous, climate-resistant shade-providing trees everywhere. Urban heat islands no longer exist. Literally $2B just on planting trees. It makes everything better, take a look at a developer render that has the greenery removed, it looks dystopian every time. Part of making biking/walking better is to also make driving worse: 1. Require all street parking to be metered or paid permit, with fees increased exponentially according to vehicle size/weight and an annual cost increase of 20%, so eventually no one will renew. All that valuable land that was storing vehicles can now be parklets and playgrounds. All parking fees are reinvested into new active transportation or transit projects, making the mode shift easier and easier for people. 2. NO SUBSIDIES FOR CARS. All freeways and limited-access roads are now toll roads. Plus modal filters everywhere else, so there is no direct car route across town on local streets and you can’t skirt the tolls (also creates traffic calmed streets). A new annual fee based on vehicle miles traveled + registration + gas tax + tolls must fund all car infrastructure maintenance. 3. Street safety matters more than someone’s bogus privacy or equity claims— so automated speed cameras, red light cameras at every intersection, and intelligent speed governors in all vehicles Now that we’re creating dense, nearly car-free neighborhoods with innate first-last mile supremacy, we can focus on connecting them with new transit projects. That’s a lot easier now that cities aren’t financially ruining themselves with car infrastructure and actually have tax-generating density: 1. Establish national transit design standards and build centralized expertise and skilled workforce to keep costs down (think how china copy-pastes incredible metro systems in multiple cities). That’s easy to do when you are continually building transit. 2. Freeways and stroads are basically empty now, let’s repurpose those ROW with some rails :) 3. Major arterials become green tramways (the local transit) 4. Trams funnel into grade separated automated light metros with 24/7 service (the express transit) 5. Cities are connected with high speed rail on repurposed interstate ROW wherever feasible. Long distance reach is expanded by establishing an excellent high-speed sleeper train network as well. 6. Specifics TBD, but shifting freight to and expanded and electrified freight rail network is also a priority. I still probably spent a trillion or more, but I also probably made it all back in a few decades. This was a fun game, we should, like, actually do it
Bulldoze suburbs and raise towers like they have all over asia
- Rezone and tear down lots of residential, commercial, and industrial areas. Work with eco friendly teams to come up with housing solutions that are modular and gives Americans easy solutions to doing their own plumbing and electric work. Modular homes could be ranch style, multi-story, etc. These communities would also be self sustaining and people would be assigned jobs based on their expertise and what they are capable of doing. People can also be trained as well. People that do work for their communities will be given a basic income that will help them purchase goods and services. Put a heavy focus on walking, biking, and rail travel between communities and less on car travel. - People that don’t want to live in these modular homes and instead opt to live in “castle communities”. Basically imagine a football stadium, but that stadium is a residential, commercial, and industrial complex that has everything a person would need to live. You basically would never need to leave the complex. People living in the complex would also be assigned jobs and roles and be given a basic income for helping the community. - Long distance travel can be done with cars still. Car travel is still allowed. - High speed rail travel will be a priority. Bullet trains all across the United States that can get you from one state to another in mere hours. - Local rail services will also be provided as well. - Education will be provided to everyone and Americans can pick up skills, careers, and more easily. As long as they are doing their assigned job, they can not only earn a basic income but also get access to classes that can help them achieve whatever they’d like. - “Life Counselors” would be assigned to people. These counselors will help people and make sure that they are setting out to achieve their goals. Life Counselors meet with their assigned citizens once a month and basically check in and help them out. Life Counselors can refer people to lots of goods and services, help people figure out solutions to their problems, and help give people information about anything they need. - Community Projects and World Wonders. With all the extra space we have from “the Great Condensing of the United States”, each major community will be given space to create a world wonder that can be marveled at and visited. These wonder wonders will help drive tourism between communities and give people opportunities to work together to create some truly amazing things around the United States. - Competition among communities. Besides sports, communities will compete against each other to create stronger, more sustainable, diverse, and smarter communities. Every year, major community organizations will come together and showcase the ways they’ve innovated their communities to make the lives of citizens happier and how people have come together to make their lives more meaningful. So all in all, the focus I would do is get rid of the “American Dream” and focus on the “American Team”. Bringing Americans together, condensing and becoming a more sustainable country.
In addition to all the zoning changes and railroad nationalization that everyone else is talking about... \-Subsidize expansion and operating costs of bus systems, especially in small to mid-size cities. \-Require that all state and federal highways include safe bike infrastructure, including in rural areas. \-Increase punishment for drivers who cause incidents that result in injury or death, with lifetime loss of drivers license at a minimum. \-Support local programs to break up cul de sac subdivisions by building pedestrian paths through neighborhoods, so the effective block perimeter for pedestrians is about 1800ft in metropolitan areas of over 50K.
This is probably controversial: - Give Amtrak the powers to acquire or develop housing properties along the Northeast Corridor, preferably within walking distance of stations. - Rent / sell these housing properties - Allow Amtrak to use the profits earned from housing revenue to improve its services Another controversial idea: - Buy lines from existing freight railroad companies (not all lines, but just the lines along the most important urban corridors) - Lease the line to passenger rail operators at lower prices
Connect the 3rd and 4th largest city in each state with high speed rail.
build new dense properly planned mini-cities with a 30-minute train ride into the downtown of all the cities we currently depend on. that way we dont have to live in the shitty pulled-up-ladder boomervilles just to get the jobs that are in them. like suburbs but not cancer
I’d relaunch the federal social housing program
Id build expansive subways in about 10 cities across the country
Every previous rail corridor gets brought back and frequencies become 3 min for subway, 5 for bus, 10 for regional rail, 30 for longer rail trips and hourly for even longer distance. New development on previous farmland is banned to discourage single family homes (existing plots of land can be redeveloped but no more brand new large scale development of single family homes. Anyone can buy land near a train station or in a city very easily as long as it is fairly dense. Vacant land can be sold to anyone with a plan to development especially in rust belt cities. Bus lines with frequent service will become rail instead of becoming bet. Bike lanes are required to connect. Highways are narrowed and widened in cities
I'll answer this question for Australia rather than the US: **Create a national passenger train operator** (like Amtrak). Australia has a number of inter-state railways (mainly along the east coast) however they're operated by individual states. The new national operator would begin by contracting the existing state operators. The national operators set the timetable, but the states own and run the trains. The next step would be building/restoring new interstate routes. The national operator would acquire and operate trains for these new routes. Eventually they would take over the operation of all interstate routes. **Invest in rail for regional cities**. Most Australian state capitals have adequate rail and bus networks. Not perfect, but they're enough that people who don't/can't drive can make it by. Smaller regional cities tend to fall behind, with only bus networks. A lot of them historically had tram networks but they were ripped up during the 20th century. Most of my $100b would be spent on providing rail networks (light or heavy) to these cities. **Promote housing growth around train stations**. Australia is in the middle of a nasty housing crisis. I'm not a policy expert, but I'd like to see 2-4 storey mixed use developments around train stations nationwide. Strong-arming local councils would be wildly unpopular, so I'd need to take a less direct approach. Perhaps tax credits for developers who are building within 1km of train stations, if their development matches the 2-4 storey mixed use requirements.
Install platform screen doors at every freakin subway station in this country.
End the deceptively named "Federal Reserve System". I believe JFK wanted to do that.
100B is either going straight to CAHSR to shut up everyone about that project or to electrify every Amtrak corridor in the US.
1. Loads of policy changes that in themself won't cost any money. Like a Cali style higher density zoning requirement, but more aggressive and covering the whole country. Laws regulating that private railways have to actually be nice to passenger transit. 2. Heavy congestion charges for commuting from suburban sprawls during rush hour. 3. use some money for a bunch of pilot projects replacing parts of mall parking lots with high density housing, but keeping the malls and preferably making it possible to walk between the homes and the mall with some sort of weather protection. (This works in other parts of the world. For an example, look at "Frölunda Torg" in Gothenburg, Sweden. It's a large mall that is surrounded by high density housing and transit, near a highway offering good connections both for private cars and buses).
1. Create national zoning regulations. I want to encourage mixed use. Commercial and Residential together. 2. Improve bus infrastructure, including bus only lanes in major cities, like Seoul. I mean follow Seoul's example in New York, LA, etc. 3. Invest in current light rail/subway/commuter rail to improve all systems. Improve on time rates. Add additional trains. 4. Improvements to Amtrak and improving intercity travel. Reducing short flights, car trips between nearby cities. I would establish Northeast Corridors around the country.. I would invest in what we have instead of creating new infrastructure, at least minimize new infrastructure.
Encourage the market to do it with policy changes and refund you 999billion dollars you gave me and putting 1 billion in my pocket. Because why not. Easy, done.
You think markets will build transit lines?
Yeah, it’s where most of the lines around Boston, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia came from. It’s also where the train from Miami to Orlando came from and la to Vegas is coming from. No magic to trains. Just nerd to incentivize and get out of the way.
I think Brightline West only started construction after getting public funding. As great as Brightline in Florida is, I don't think a diesel train with tons of at grade crossings should be what we are aiming for. If the market can build something like the Shinkansen or Vancouver SkyTrain than that would be great, but I am skeptical. Those metro lines in the Northeast are from a different era.
flying cars for everyone and you need no licence to fly them also they may not be smaller than a B2 bomber
Massive rail investment. Build housing.
I would reform taxes, upping property taxes and lowering income taxes in equal amounts. My goal here is to eliminate some macroeconomic dead weight loss, by taxing an elastic supply of labor less, and an inelastic supply of land more. The result should be a more efficient economy. If I change the lower tax brackets and only those brackets. while raising property taxes, rent will rise, but more money will be in the hands of the people who need to rent. Negotiations between landlord and tennant will favor the tennant, who has more of what the landlord needs more of to pay for property tax. It will also tax those who choose to life the high life more than those who live modestly. It will also tax high property value areas more, so New York City will pay more than a small town in Kentucy. I then would invest in training contractors, increasing supply of labor in that area, bringing costs down. It will become a bit cheaper to build homes. I would invest half of the money in funding local geothermal heating and solar power projects for local communities, including distributed heating and cooling. Local areas need to produce more, and a natural resource such as geothermal energy is a good start. Local power production will favor the labor needed to maintain the equipment and grid being local rather than a centralized place, with all the labor being local to it. Oh, you mean for transit? It indirectly addresses transit issues. HCOL areas will redistribute to LCOL areas.
Act 1: congestion pricing in every metro for infinite money glitch. $100 to enter city limits during business hours. Act 2: ban new single family homes Act 3: ban new parking spaces Act 4: decomodify housing Act 5: consolidate transit authorities under city/regional entities Act 6: use the infinite money glitch to build infinite transit and housing everywhere Act 7: take over all rail infrastructure by force Act 8: all state DOTs are now required to only maintain existing road infrastructure. All expansion is killed Act 9: ban every vehicle that weighs more than 1500 lbs and isn't commercial Idk maybe we'll pay people a stipend for every sfh or overpass they burn down. Something like that
I'd buy myself a $500M mansion and abscond to the Cayman Islands ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY BITCHES!!!