“Just to meet business-as-usual trends, 115% more copper must be mined in the next 30 years than has been mined historically until now,” the study said.

  • @njordomir
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    246 months ago

    Agreed. I love trains and it frustrates me to see them bungling the implementation. When they try, they always seem to make the same mistakes trying to bring it to my area.

    To see meaningful ridership out here, the train needs to go fast enough to negate the penalty you get at the other end when you have to go from the station to your destination. They wanted to run them at ~55-70mph here, with a few stops between major cities, to parallel a freeway that is 65-75mph. Drive 1 hour (1:10 with parking) or spend 2 hours going to the station, riding a slow train, then going from the station to where you are going? I hate cars, but as someone who only gets a handful of hours to myself after sleep, work, and chores, I’m going to save my time and pick the car. If they ever build the train, as it is planned right now, it’ll just be another commuter train that’s only really used at rush hour when the roads are jammed rather than an all day all week car replacement solution that I can ride to Sunday night dinner at a friends house as easily as a 6am meeting.

    /un-requested rant

      • @njordomir
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        126 months ago

        Interestingly, a similar problem as with bike infrastructure. The infrastructure isn’t useful until a lot of it is built and it connects everywhere (and timetables get shorter for trains). The infrastructure won’t pass public opinion until it’s proven to be useful to people. I will always vote yes on funding these projects even if I think they will bomb because it puts us a little closer to the peak of that hill. Its still frustrating though. We could easily do like we did with the freeways if we just decided it was worth building.

        • @[email protected]
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          fedilink
          46 months ago

          The worse part is, what infrastructure does get built isn’t used because it’s mostly useless, and people use this lack of use as justification for not building more.

        • @[email protected]
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          fedilink
          26 months ago

          My current push is bike infra for kids to get to school, parks, community centers and libraries. Roads aren’t a safe for them and they can’t drive themselves.

        • @NotMyOldRedditName
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          2
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          My city has been pushing through improving the biking infrastructure for a decade now.

          People have been bitching about it from day one. They bitched even more as the first lanes were going in, as they were “useless” and went “nowhere”

          They’ve continued to bitch about it every year, every construction project.

          But now, we have a highly interconnected network of bike lanes (most protected) all around town and they’re getting heavily used.

          People still find reasons to bitch about it like it’s slowing down traffic by narrowing roads or lost parking spots or whatever, but the “it’s not useful” stuff has stopped.

      • @FireRetardant
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        26 months ago

        It has to be competitive with cars for people to switch. Everyone cares about their wallet and their time. Cheaper transit that is faster than cars will attract more ridership.