I was also thinking strapped to the ceiling would be the safest

Then people see this and go “see no one uses the train so why should my tax dollars go to fund it”

Imagine if we let drivers have 1 day per week to use the highway, suddenly they might not think their taxs are worth it for the service they are getting.

Everything is driving distance and simultaneously, America is “too big” for high speed rail

Given they are suspended over water, it may actually be better to not have the harness. If the whole thing were to tip the harness could get tangled and keep someone trapped under water.

Road budgets and projects go way over all the time and the vast majority of those projects still go through.

His excuses for what is causing congestion are statistically wrong, he blames the solutions to congestion as the causes.

The province has hinted at planing some other transit projects so lets cancel new projects that would work better in unison.

He explicitly states that new solutions cannot slow down private automobiles, despite them be unfairly catered to for decades while every other transportation method is left underfunded, unreliable, and is already much slower than private automobiles.

He then has the audacity to claim this will lead to amore inclusive solution when he is explicitly excluding cyclists from safe infrastructure.

But public transport is COMMUNISM. Someone needs to be profiting!

What the hell is up with your trains where it takes 55 minutes to go 20kms?

Bikes do not contribute to congestion and most places actually experience less congestion when a bike lane is built (cause thats 1 less person that needs to be in a car). I’m so sick of the “we can’t build bike lanes, transit, sidewalks etc because it causes congestion” excuse.

Public transit is a service, and should be funded like a public service rather than for profit. A downside i can see to this would be a city refusing to upgrade or fund their own transit, letting Uber fill the gap and letting uber decide the pricing, which will eventually result in much higher pricing than a publicly funded system.

Publicly funded systems can also take advantage of city planning, like where specific stops can be, requiring certain developments to build a bus stop, and providing bus rapid transit lanes & priority signals to ensure buses remain on schedule.

The savings might even be so significant you won’t even have to find a way to replace the lost revenue.

The new infrastructure might make the route safer and more pedestrain or cyclists may start using the route, which could delay drivers by entire seconds. A clear and deliberate attack on the drivers freedom of mobility and rights to exclussively have all infrastructure catered to them.

If designed properly, a good deal of sand could be recollected in the stormwater infrastructure and be reused. Some would still escape but i guess its better than the current mix of salt and sand that doesn’t get reused.

The freeze thaw cycles that damage the road are mostly caused by the surface underneath the road freezing, thawing, and shfiting, not caused by the freezing and thawing on top of the road. The heated road could actually cause more damage if the melt water is able to infiltrate under the road and cause more damage.

Seems like they are only installing the heat under the roadway, so walkable may not be the best word unless we expect pedestrains to share a lane with cars in the winter.

Many cities will carry their snow away and let it melt naturally in the spring, helping keep local waterways high during the spring run off.

Building water will often go to sanitary sewers, which has a lot more treatment involved than going to storm sewers, so comparing road melt to a buildings water use isn’t a perfect comparison.

As for repairs, a pothole can easily be patched on the surface relatively quickly by a road crew. A damaged pipe may need additional work such as cutting around the damage, depressurizing the entire system, and replacing the compromised section of pipe followed by a larger patch than needed for a pothole.

Its usually a result of shifting ground underneath the street that causes cracks. The street should be deisigned to prevent regular temperature changes from causing damages, expansion joints for example. If anything this could actually increase the rate of cracking if the melt water infiltrates underneath and contributes to freeze/thaw damages.

The warm melt water also messes up the environment. It can cause egg and insect hatches to happen early before an abundance of spring food is available. The snow melting immediately after falling could also impact natural melt cycles that more gradually add water to the streams, creeks, and rivers

The downsides, the same weather that makes the snow and frost also causes shifts in the ground during freeze thaw cycles, causing damage to the road and heating pipes. The warm melt water also enters waterways and cause shifts in seasonal temperatures, messing with fish and insect hatching times causing them to potentially hatch too early for the spring food they rely on.

See the thing is, this could be just about any road in any city in north america. We refuse to build real places, just lanes and parking lots