Why housing is so expensive - zoning rule are nuts

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,717
47,406
136
It makes no sense to build a high speed rail where half of it traverses barely populated areas in central california in the desert, and not run it up the coast where everyone lives and also is where people love to visit the most - you'd get locals and tourists to flock to that train. They build infrastructure through all sorts of crazy geography in Europe and Japan, but somehow here we can't do it. It's insane. They'll build highways anywhere here,, but fuck mass transit. Completely backwards thinking.
It is completely insane but it's because our laws basically allow a single person who doesn't want a project built to balloon the cost by millions or even billions by financing endless litigation against it. We need to return environmental regulation to the government where it belongs and not with private citizens and random judges.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hal2kilo and Pohemi

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
45,896
32,696
136
I think people often get transit backwards. They should start from the highest value case first and then expand from there. So in this case, make the world's greatest train from LA (population 13 million) to the Bay Area (population 8 million). If that is successful then expand it. Here they are linking Bakersfield (400k) to Merced (90k). This is a recipe for failure.

America generally goes about transit construction in the wrong way. They had to start spending money in the Central Valley by a certain time because that's the way the funding was set up, not that it was preferable at all to do it that way.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pohemi