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I bet they will do a "special track" for them
Build a train you fucken cowards
🚂🚃🚃🚃
You can always trust in the US-americans to do the right thing, after having exhausted every other possible option.
Trouble is, every time you think they've hit rock bottom, they'll find a new depth to sink to.
They should explore eminent domain and build real transit.
But what if there aren't enough minority neighbourhoods to bulldoze?
The farmland between LA and SF isn't minority neighborhoods. But my comment was more an off the cuff dismissal of this ass-backward bus idea than an actual policy opinion. Here's a real policy opinion: Stop making excuses and run the fuckin trains.
There you have your problem: That farmland belongs to rich white people.
Aye, that's a bit of a pickle.
But I find pickles delicious.
Just like the rich!
Forgive my pickle decadence
Land isn't an issue for high speed rail in CA (anymore), so... high speed busses with dedicated lanes is extra silly.
psssst! .... trains....
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!
The American mind is just incapable of comprehending trains
We've been force-fed this line of bullshit about cars being freedom. Public transportation is for freaks and losers. I mean. GM and Standard Oil say so!
We can comprehend just fine. There's a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities. The trouble is that our political and economic systems have become so sclerotic that China has built an entire HSR network since work on this line began, and it won't even be done before 2031.
We can still build highways, because the political and regulatory mechanisms to create them were fine-tuned as the system crystalized into inflexibility.
Frankly, this exact inability of U.S. society to change and adapt to new conditions was the signal indicator of the incipient collapse, for me.
There’s a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities.
Proposition 1A passed in 2008, followed by the awarding of federal stimulus funds in 2010.
The California HSR was a plot point in the second season of True Detective, which began production in January of 2014.
18 years later, the Phase One between San Francisco and Anaheim is still under construction.
If you wanted to build a track for these "high speed buses" it would require special safety features, signalling, barriers etc. that make it look much more like a train track than like a motorway. So you'd gain exactly nothing over building a train track.
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It's funny because 80% of comments about general "Americans" are also falling for the propaganda
Dedicated buslanes are great, but they can cause lumpy tarmac if you run a high frequency, high maintenance costs that could detract from other highway repairs..
Maybe add some long rows of steel reinforcement into the buslane (just to reduce maintenance costs of course), a protective barrier / embankment to stop cars encroaching.
Use E-busses of course, but maybe overhead wires, purely to reduce weight and fire risk.
/jk
I know in reality the curves and grades on a highway are too tight and steep, so you need a new easement.
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Trying to turn I5 into the autobahn with a 140 mph bus lane would result in so much chaos and destruction that honestly I'm all for it.
There is 0 chance that the average American drivers liscense having brain could comprehend this concept.
Most people can't even keep an actually reasonable following distance, or understand the concept of a passing lane.
This is a literally comically stupid idea, its a B movie plot element from an 80s scifi movie.
Fuck it -> Do it for the lols.
This is a literally comically stupid idea, its a B movie plot element from an 80s scifi movie.
physics need not apply
So... that shot actually largely did rely on the laws of physics.
They really did jump a bus.
They just CGI'd out the ramp that got the bus's nose up, and CGI'd out part of the landing zone, to make up a jumped gap that looked more impressive.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NPhNIS69ayQ
This was back before you could just CGI generate an entire scene like this... you had to actually do a lot of it for real.
See if you can spot which exact shots/cuts/parts of shots are real, and which are fake, in that sequence.
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I thought they ate the onion but somehow this appears to be an actual serious study. I can't imagine how uncomfortable a bus going 140mph would be. At that point the engineering required to keep the road in appropriate shape is likely more expensive than just using rails...
Once again, the Onion has predicted the news before it happens..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNixDlRoMvA
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The reason for busses is simple and seems to be ignored by literally everyone.
The private property between SF and LA keeps increasing in price so the costs for the project are in the billions before anything is even built. The signing of the land is in the billions. Now build a rail in Trump's economy and it becomes nearly impossible to succeed at anything rail.
Busses builds an audience that can be used to later justify rail to get buses off the road. Americans hate big trucks on the road but there they are anyway. It's a slow burn turn to morph the car brain into train brain.
The private property between SF and LA keeps increasing in price so the costs for the project are in the billions before anything is even built.
Damn, if only eminent domain existed
Even with eminent domain though you still have to pay market value. Edit: Not that they shouldn't do it. It would still be worth it in the long run
Governments can have a funny way of determining market value based on whether they like you or not.
Just point to a row of buildings and declare "slum clearance". Suddenly, you can get them for a steal.
Ahaha nonono. The problem is that the land is owned by white people. If it were owned by black people, then it would already have been bulldozed.
Weird how cities used eminent domain to bulldoze entire black and Hispanic neighborhoods to build highways yet can’t use eminent domain to get some rich assholes overpriced real estate for this.
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Same reason we can't have it in the UK. We won't just pass a bill to CPO the land off (or take something else off) all the tory cunts at a nominal /cost price instead of market price.
Or even if we do we'll elect tories back in before it can be built, and give them the land back, probably for less than they were already compensated.
I think almost all of our railway routes were set out in 1800s when parliament and financiers went nuts for trains. We're just lucky enough that some low speed rail survived the 50s-90s when they tried to wipe them out totally. Even the carpilled couldn't fly that hard in the face of facts.
Wow, 140MPH! That's ... still 84MPH slower than the fastest trains in Europe, and 127MPH slower than the fastest train in Asia (Shanghai maglev).
These stupid fantasies are still a pale shadow of what the rest of the world has already managed to achieve. Just finish building the fucking train already!
Shanghai maglev
Communism Killed 10 Trillion People, though.
So we have to stick with cars
[Insert image of Chinese EVs]
No, idiot. American cars only.
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There are already rails between LA and SF. Why not use them?
Because it takes 8+ hours.
I was being rhetorical. There is infrastructure that can be developed here.
They're currently building high speed rail, but it's 14 years from opening by current estates.
Was supposed to be done by now, it's been a shitshow, but it seems to have improved in recent years.
A lot of it is commercial rail that nobody wants to disrupt
There is no amount of traffic that would make me consider getting in a robot-controlled 140 mph bus lmao.
recycling the classics
Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan
Everything but rail, huh?
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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