• Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      Everyone always disparages the cost of public transport but how much does it cost to maintain these highways every year? A few dozen/hundred billion dollars across the country?

      • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        In USA they fund maintenance by developing the sprawl. So they are stuck in this circle where if they don’t develop, they can’t maintain, but developing means more surface to maintain, etc.

      • foggianism@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Also how much supposed leasure time is wasted sitting in all those cars, making the people frustrated, sick and unfulfilled?

      • jenny_ball@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        they’re not really maintained much anymore other than minor stuff. even that costs tons of money and is of minimal benefit for job security of departments doing it. you’ll all be dead before any major development or changes occur. and even if they decided to do something major, the construction of it while you wait for it to be done over the years will make transportation even more unbearable for those years.

    • duderium2@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      China’s mass transit is better. Probably we should just hire the Chinese to construct a national bullet train network in ten years like they did in China. But wait, we can’t do that because that threatens the profits of the bourgeoisie, who are the true rulers of amerikkka. Oh well, enjoy your eight hour commute to make your bosses richer!

        • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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          4 days ago

          China also kinda just forces anyone out who’s in the way. To build any new infrastructure the US ends up getting slowed down to a crawl because of red tape and beurocracy. Land owners have a lot more rights in the US.

          • duderium2@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Unless the landowners are Black or Indigenous. I don’t recall euro-kkkolonizers asking their opinion about colonization either in the seventeenth century or today.

              • Colonel Panic@lemm.ee
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                4 days ago

                I’m not taking sides really, but I just want to point out that the US very much DOES still do shit to bipoc communities regarding infrastructure and construction and housing.

                They will run a new highway right through a neighborhood. And sure, they offer to buy up the land first usually, so that’s nice I guess, but they don’t pay well for it and if you don’t move they just take it anyway. Rail lines run through lower income areas. Highways too. There are “easements” and “imminent domain” legal fuckery that they use against bipoc people mostly too. If it’s a rich neighborhood they go around, if it’s poor people tough luck to them.

                Residential can also get rezoned to commercial and force everyone out.

                There are LOTS of legal and quasi legal things that are done all the time here. But even the legal ones are often ethically/morally wrong.

                So there’s that.

              • duderium2@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                How can you separate one from the other? History doesn’t just begin and end at the convenience of white supremacists. When did the colonization end, for instance? All the euro-kkkolonizers are still here, they just changed their flag and started sending their taxes to DC instead of London.

                • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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                  4 days ago

                  These “euro-kkkolonizers” were all several generations ago. Maybe you want to pretend nothing has changed, but things have gotten significantly better since then.

                  I won’t pretend we don’t still have problems. People of color are still statistically lower income, and they’re still affected by all the same capitalist problems that come with that.

                  The problem is also not the same across the country. Every state has their own top issues.

                  • duderium2@lemmy.world
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                    4 days ago

                    Why were slaveowners compensated after the civil war but not slaves? If colonization ended in the USA, was all the stolen land given back to Native Americans? If not, I guess nazism is still very much a thing in this shithole!