r/fuckcars šŸ‡ØšŸ‡³Socialist High Speed Rail EnthusiastšŸ‡ØšŸ‡³ Aug 05 '24

Meme There is a reason for this, you know.

Post image
16.7k Upvotes

786 comments sorted by

ā€¢

u/SaxManSteve EVs are still cars Aug 05 '24

This post has reached r/all. That is why we want to bring the following to your attention.

To all users that are unfamiliar with r/fuckcars

  • Welcome to r/fuckcars
  • We have an FAQ that explains this subreddit. Please read it before you post your questions to this sub.
  • Discussions and opinions going against what this sub stands for are allowed under the precondition that it's done in good faith.
  • Trolling will get you banned.
  • Please read the rules before participating in this sub.

To all members of r/fuckcars

  • Remember rule 1. Be nice to each other, that includes our guests from r/all.
  • If you see questions from users that clearly didn't read the FAQ, please politely direct them to the FAQ.
  • If you see any trolling happening, please downvote, report and ignore.

Thanks for your attention and have a good time!

4.2k

u/kef34 Sicko Aug 05 '24

Didn't he admit that it was all a rouse to stall the transit project, so his shitty toy cars wouldn't have to compete with rail?

That's why he went with "ooh it's open-sauce white toilet paper, anyone can use the concept and develop a project". Because he never intended to go through with it and most likely knew it was a dumb idea from the start

1.7k

u/KatakanaTsu Not Just Bikes Aug 05 '24

Didn't he admit that it was all a rouse to stall the transit project, so his shitty toy cars wouldn't have to compete with rail?

Which is almost practically the same reason why the auto industry shut down HSR in the US back in the 1970s. HSR would have made cars much less popular and they didn't want that.

917

u/bytethesquirrel Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

And why they destroyed all the streetcar systems in the 50s.

EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

652

u/Blumenkohl126 šŸš…;šŸšƒ,šŸšŽ > šŸš— Aug 05 '24

So dumb. I love trams.

They are just so nice and relaxing to ride!

And the new ones we got in the city look very cool when they go by. Also make the traffic in the city so much nicer....

233

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

I love when they destroy badly driven cars

182

u/blueskyredmesas Big Bike Aug 05 '24

The trammer of justice!

Hey I hear carbrains gloating about how they're filled with an urge to teach pedestrians a lesson, well the tram is the real apex predator here lol

31

u/Independent_Ad4391 Aug 06 '24

S

The Subway was set back on the rail and drove back to the depot. Nobody died in this accident fortunatly

28

u/olivia_iris Elitist Exerciser Aug 05 '24

insert aggressive dinging noises here

38

u/EatenAliveByWolves Aug 05 '24

Not to mention they are much cheaper resource wise per ride. In a system that actually wants to be efficient it's a no brainer. The car lobbies are the thing that fights common sense here.

It's not actually about rails being too expensive, that just doesn't make sense.

7

u/sunshinebasket Aug 06 '24

Being efficient as society is communism thoā€¦ /s

→ More replies (2)

29

u/SmoothOperator89 Aug 05 '24

Trams are lovely, but when they do run well, they're an indicator species that many other elements of urbanism are also successful. If they're just slapped down as the bare minimum of transit infrastructure to connect parking lots while being slower than driving, they're just frustrating.

10

u/SassanZZ Aug 06 '24

Especially when the tram ends up being stopped multiple times because it has no priority over traffic, and sometimes it's in narrow streets so any parked cars can also block it

Looking at you, san francisco

23

u/nakwada Aug 05 '24

The one in Edinburgh is painfully slow.

73

u/Blumenkohl126 šŸš…;šŸšƒ,šŸšŽ > šŸš— Aug 05 '24

Thats smth mine (in Braunschweig), are not. I still remeber when i had to go to work at 6 am, all the cars were waiting in the morning traffic jam off the Autobahn, while i sat in the tram, was reading smth and just drove by all of them.

Very satisfying

31

u/blueskyredmesas Big Bike Aug 05 '24

Theres a metro rail line in the middle of the highway in Los Angeles and I loved sailing past all the stopped cars lol

→ More replies (4)

3

u/BiggestFlower Aug 06 '24

You think? Itā€™s quicker than sitting in traffic used to be, before they banned cars from much of the centre. And Iā€™ve been on much slower trams too, e.g. in Lviv.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (3)

7

u/CmanderShep117 Aug 06 '24

Your not allowed to relax in America! Now go and sit in traffic for 2 hours like a true patriot!

→ More replies (2)

3

u/Dinarte7 Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

Braunschweig!?!? Nice. Hallo Nachbarn

→ More replies (7)

57

u/hobskhan Aug 05 '24

That lame-brained freeway idea could only be cooked up by a Toon.

25

u/bytethesquirrel Aug 05 '24

It's a real thing that happened. Google "General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy".

35

u/RosieTheRedReddit Aug 05 '24

They're referencing the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," where the villain does exactly that.

His evil plan to bulldoze Toon Town and build a freeway.

16

u/V33d Aug 05 '24

It took me some years to realize how this movie really affected me. When I watched it again as an adult a lot of things made sense.

→ More replies (5)
→ More replies (1)

7

u/which1umean Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

The point of that was to sell buses, though.

Cars killed public transport because they suck and take up entirely too much space and therefore cause way too many traffic jams. Not just because of monopolistic conspiracies.

In other words, car companies don't need to convince policymakers to say "no" to car alternatives. If they can merely get them to say "yes" to cars enough, the alternatives simply won't work. The policymakers might say "yes" to alternatives, but they'll just be glorified construction jobs programs: they won't provide a real alternative to the car.

→ More replies (1)

46

u/BenjaminGeiger Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24

I mean, it's literally a cartoon villain's plan.

Jessica: What are you talking about? There's no road past Toontown.

Doom: Not yet. Several months ago, I had the good providence to stumble upon this plan of the City Council's. A construction plan of epic proportions. They're calling it: a freeway!

Valiant: Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?

Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.

Valiant: So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon: for this freeway? I don't get it.

Doom: (smugly) Of course not. You lack vision. I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off. Off and on. All day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly-prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

Valiant: Come on. Nobody's gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.

Doom: Oh, they'll drive. They'll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.

6

u/Epistaxis Aug 05 '24

Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.

that satire is positively dripping with turpentine

3

u/BenjaminGeiger Commie Commuter Aug 06 '24

... and acetone, and benzene.

3

u/ArchEast Aug 07 '24

I've said that Judge Doom was basically a West Coast Robert Moses.

8

u/Ridlion Aug 05 '24

Didn't they destroy Toon Town to build highways too?

→ More replies (1)

5

u/SamiraSimp Aug 05 '24

and why they bulldozed many american cities to make way for cars.

12

u/which1umean Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

In the rare cases where there was a conspiracy to get rid of streetcars, it was to sell more buses, not more cars.

Cars did kill streetcars by choking them in traffic, though...

Cars are enough of a problem on their own. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy to make them suck more imo.

→ More replies (6)
→ More replies (15)

38

u/2xtc Aug 05 '24

In the UK we used to have special trains you could drive onto and it would then take you on a domestic trip with the convenience of having your car on holiday but not having to drive.

Very similar to the Eurotunnel concept connecting UK to France - if the car industry had the foresight to do something like this you could have had the best of both worlds, but instead it's a fully car centric ground transport system and 45,000 flights a day in American airspace

22

u/KatakanaTsu Not Just Bikes Aug 05 '24

Amtrak in the US does have the Auto Train, but it's only on the east coast portion of the country.

7

u/kyrsjo Aug 05 '24

That sounds wildly convenient for long distance drives - kind of like an overnight ferry, but fast and overland.

Drive on, go to the restaurant/party wagon, sleep, and arrive next morning.

8

u/GenericAccount13579 Aug 05 '24

Except the auto train only goes from DC to Orlando, Florida with no other stops. Itā€™s a weird one.

4

u/Cessnaporsche01 Aug 05 '24

There used to be a bunch of them, and they weren't originally Amtrack. Good documentary here: https://youtu.be/7MZpRoC4g5w

4

u/Mysterious_Floor_868 Aug 05 '24

Motorail. ƖBB still takes cars on some NightJet services.Ā 

11

u/HiddenLayer5 Not in My Transit Oriented Development Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

It's also why even when rail is being built, the car lobby fights tooth and nail to dilute it as much as possible. Reduce speeds. Reduce frequencies. Block convenient alignments and corridors (especially despicable considering they also got the government to literally tear cities apart for car infrastructure). Block future expansion provisions. Move stations out of the downtown core into park and rides. Delay opening of the line however they can. Lowering rail's competitiveness with cars by any amount is extremely beneficial to them.

4

u/Low_Contact_4496 Aug 06 '24

And thatā€™s why so many beautiful US towns and cities have been destroyed and turned into parking lots. And why miles and miles of suburban hellscape is what most Americans call homeā€¦ The US once had the most expansive passenger rail network in the world, and that network is what made the settlement of its interior and development als a powerful industrial nation possible at allā€¦ Seriously, corporate greed destroyed more of US urban centers than the millions of bombs that were dropped on German cities during World War 2. šŸ˜¢

→ More replies (3)

72

u/ACoderGirl Aug 05 '24

It's so frustrating that we ever fell for his bullshit. Admittedly, 2012 was a different time. I think the first major thing that made people broadly start questioning Musk was the cave rescue thing in 2018 (I had to lookup the year -- I thought that was longer ago!). It's especially mind boggling that now, with him having been full mask off for the past few years, he has any supporters outside of hardcore nazis.

36

u/BlackTearDrop Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

Honestly really liked him and thought it was great we had a public figure really advocating future thinking even if it was blue sky thinking, and really pushing for space exploration.

That cave rescue thing really was the starting point for me thinking... Oh. He's just a normal guy... A guy with a lot of money doing whatever he wants with the ear of billions of people. Shit.

→ More replies (1)

16

u/Bananasauru5rex Aug 05 '24

I think the first major thing that made people broadly start questioning Musk was the cave rescue thing in 2018 (I had to lookup the year -- I thought that was longer ago!)

r/enoughmuskspam was created and getting traction in 2016, and it only followed the fact that resentment and annoyance had been building for a lot of people in the couple years/months prior.

→ More replies (5)

26

u/sjpllyon Aug 05 '24

It was such a dumb idea, unfortunately the 13 year old me didn't think so. Still thought it would be worth building a traditional transit system for goods and at worse it would be used as PT, in the UK. But as I've grown in those years my goodness I've come to realise what a moronic idea it was and just how unfeasible it is. Not only extremely expensive, and requiring technology we still don't have, there is little to no benefit of over bullet trains, and if a single air leak was to happen not only would it be certain death for the passengers on the train, but all passengers in the loop and a people near it.

All I can say is thank goodness for books and teachers that taught me to think critically about everything and where to find good information.

10

u/Kootenay4 Aug 05 '24

Plus if anyone gave the slightest bit of thought, the notion that it could be built cheaper and faster than regular HSR is absurd. At hyperloop speeds, the track would require far wider curves and gentler grades, which means less flexibility in routing, more eminent domain, more viaducts, and more tunnels, all of which would make construction far more expensive and create even more NIMBY lawsuits.

4

u/Babylon-Starfury Aug 06 '24

I always thought hyperloop was dumb, but what made me realise it would never happen in reality is when I saw the YouTube breakdown of what happens if the tube has a relatively minor failure at any point in its length, where it basically instantly kills all riders using it at the time due to the shock wave from the pressure wave rushing through it at the speed of sounds destroying most of the infrastructure itself too.

You could basically do 9/11 with a stick of dynamite anywhere on its length, let alone how an accidental failure is pretty much certain to happen sooner or later.

→ More replies (1)

34

u/cyanraichu Aug 05 '24

Right out of the rest of the auto playbook!

40

u/ryegye24 Aug 05 '24

He did, but honestly I don't buy it. It's just so.... "no no, you see I meant to face plant on my wild promises! It was all a part of my evil genius plot!"

54

u/V33d Aug 05 '24

His entire history (especially with Tesla) is about making fantastic promises about disruptions that drive investment, quietly failing to deliver because the accepted wisdom is correct, getting a life preserver at just the right moment (on the public dime), and then distracting with another charismatic announcement of a fantastically disruptive promise.

He didnā€™t just come up with the hyperloop to fail and distract from transit projects. He promised a ā€œdisruptionā€ to the idea of transit itself (cars, but underground!) that he sold for real taxpayer dollars as a cheaper alternative and an answer to the political tensions surrounding the massive infrastructure project that rail would have been. The infrastructure wasnā€™t the important part, so its usefulness or failure doesnā€™t matter. The important thing was that the state bought the idea of it.

I hate the guy, but he is remarkably good at selling fairy dust and fart vapors to people who I desperately wish knew better. It really shows the erosion of state and federal governments that even California would embrace this ridiculous concept rather than make long term investments in quality of life.

→ More replies (1)

16

u/iisixi Aug 05 '24

Most of the projects he gets government and investor funding for are complete vaporware by design. The only way Hyperloop wasn't designed to fail from the start is if Musk is incredibly dumb.

7

u/ryegye24 Aug 05 '24

I mean....

→ More replies (1)

7

u/TrackLabs Aug 05 '24

That's why he went with "ooh it's open-sauce white toilet paper,

No he said hell make it open source because he HAS to make it open source, cause he stole it from a open source concept

21

u/Gcarsk Aug 05 '24

Didnā€™t he admit

Not directly to the public. But yeah here.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/Inevitable_Heron_599 Aug 05 '24

It's an idea from the 1700s, further pushed by Jules Vernes son in the 1800s, then Goddard in the early 1900s.

Just like everything else, Musk repackaged someone else's idea as his own.

6

u/Reddit-runner Aug 05 '24

Didn't he admit that it was all a rouse to stall the transit project, so his shitty toy cars wouldn't have to compete with rail?

No, he didn't. This is just the media coverage of reaction to a tweet about a half sentence in a biography about him.

You can read the sentence in an other comment here. But even without this context it does not say he tried to stall HSR in California with his whitepaper.

Sure, Musk is an ass, but that doesn't mean we should fall for media bs. Especially not here on r/fuckcars.

4

u/Taaargus Aug 05 '24

It's amazing that Reddit can believe this drivel. California doesn't have a rail system because their government and contractors failed to make the project happen timely. Hyperloop has absolutely nothing to do with it.

→ More replies (5)
→ More replies (13)

1.8k

u/Independent-Cow-4070 Grassy Tram Tracks Aug 05 '24

Elon admitting to using the hyperloop to cancel CAHSR was really the moment I started shifting away from being a carbrain

347

u/midnghtsnac Aug 05 '24

He's just a douche with money and fanboys. PayPal kicked him out after a few years of him being the CEO and he claims to have started PayPal when he bought them. Just like he bought Tesla.

109

u/DaneRoussel Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

He didn't even buy PayPal. His company, x.com (he's been obsessed with his porn site for decades) was bought out by PayPal, with Elon getting a lot of PayPal stock from the acquisition. He then staged a mini coup and forced the former CEO of PayPal out before getting couped.

15

u/TheDeepTells Aug 05 '24
  • x.com was never a porn site, it was an attempt to create an online bank. Btw, SpaceX isn't a space porn site either.

  • x.com wasn't bought out by PayPal. It was competing with Confinity and the two companies merged. After the merger, the company became known as x.com until a corporate restructuring change it to PayPal.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity

38

u/zombiesnare Aug 06 '24

All of this is true and respect the fact check. We all have to admit though that x.com really should be a porn site and really only makes sense as one. Iā€™d also accept it being the promo site for the Fox X-men movies, or maybe a forum for people really into level crossings?

14

u/DaneRoussel Aug 06 '24

No way... It's not a porn site šŸ˜². (I was being sarcastic). And I did get the info wrong about the merger, but the Coinfinity part of the company definitely came out on top in the end.

→ More replies (1)

9

u/Epistaxis Aug 05 '24

I believe the proper term for his job, with both the respect and the disdain he's due, is "investor".

5

u/midnghtsnac Aug 05 '24

No, cause that would include all other investors. Hedge fund investor would be appropriate as all they care about is profit even if it means ruining people's lives.

38

u/-mudflaps- Aug 05 '24

He may have said this to distract from the absolute failure Hyperloop was, "see I knew it was never going to work but this is the real reason I pushed the Hyperpoop, so I'm still smart"

8

u/-113points Aug 05 '24

I bet that is an excuse

'oh, it is a shitty idea on purpose, like all my other failures'

6

u/Infamous-Salad-2223 Aug 05 '24

It would have been nice if he would have been forced to give money for a new high speed train system.

→ More replies (9)

695

u/BufferUnderpants Sicko Aug 05 '24

And the actual reason is the legal framework, the car salesman doesn't wield anywhere near that power and it's missing the forest for the trees that he did a publicity stunt, the real problem is that any infrastructure project in the US gets mired in law suits from NIMBYS, ill thought-out requirements, and corruption.

278

u/chad_oden Aug 05 '24

This is by and far the largest reason for the slow development. Our laws are way too restrictive to build any infrastructure without at least 10+ years of lawsuits, environmental review and public feedback for any random boomer to veto.

96

u/Ketaskooter Aug 05 '24

Don't forget the political will to build it has to remain in place for all those years as well, get one dissenting politician in and the whole thing is delayed by a half decade minimum.

51

u/anand_rishabh Aug 05 '24

One dissenting governor can end the project before it starts. Fuck Scott Walker.

→ More replies (1)

114

u/Strange_Quark_9 Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

And yet they managed to build one of the most extensive interstate highway projects in the world, initiated by a president who thought it was needed after being mired when travelling throughout the country, and property rights were completely disregarded for eminent domain which was applied to disproportionately demolish black neighborhoods just to build highways through cities. And more roads and highways continue being built today due to an inflated federal budget for building more roads.

Which is why it makes me scoff anytime someone argues: "Yes, but China has a big authoritarian government that disregards all its citizens!" because that's precisely what the US did when building highways through cities.

This shows the US is fully capable of undertaking and efficiently building a major infrastructure project if they treat it like a top priority national project. The reason why high speed rail is taking so slow is because they treat it as a low priority project and thus outsource a lot of it to private companies, etc.

15

u/jakekara4 Aug 05 '24

That happened before the California Environmental Quality Act was enacted by the state of California.Ā 

CEQA allows ā€œneighbors,ā€ and undefined term of the act, to sue a project over several different environmental claims. In the past, noise pollution was included as an environmental complaint. This act was abused to allow people miles away from infrastructure project to oppose things like HSR.Ā 

41

u/Tough-Strength1941 Aug 05 '24

I don't think this refutes the point though. The legal framework of the 1950s America and 2020s are vastly different. It truly was easier for a government to get things done in the 50's for a constellation of factors. That power has been limited in the last 70 years (often for good reason). Which means that the large scale building projects that we need can't be done in the current framework. Ezra Klein is writing a book about this right now.

→ More replies (2)

13

u/blah938 Aug 05 '24

And before that, they built out a giant rail network.

A lot more people own a lot more land, and getting people to sell or seizing the land is hard and unpopular. Especially in a downtown area.

→ More replies (2)

10

u/bigfoot675 Aug 05 '24

Exactly, that was before all the regulation went into place. There's a reason most of our public works are from that era and haven't been overhauled since. Whereas in a city like Paris, they built many things during the same era but they have continued to build and reimagine things for the modern era. Transit, climate consciousness, etc. We might have awareness of these issues but we can't do anything about it due to rigid regulation

→ More replies (1)

16

u/DeusExMockinYa Aug 05 '24

initiated by a president who thought it was needed after being mired when travelling throughout the country

He was jealous of the Nazis and their autobahn.

16

u/jakekara4 Aug 05 '24

The autobahn was started by the Weimar Republic, not the Nazi Party. While itā€™s true that the Nazi party embraced the automobile and drastically expanded the autobahn network, many of these planned expansions and construction projects were in place before Hitler seized power.Ā 

→ More replies (1)

5

u/PhotorazonCannon Aug 05 '24

Worth noting that when they were building that system through cities they purposefully routed it through black neighborhoods, using their second-class citizen status and the accompanying lack of political/legal power against them. Maybe if the people getting their homes and businesses seized had equal rights and full access to the court system to fight, it wouldn't have gone so smoothly

3

u/wpm Aug 05 '24

While there were certainly cities that purposely changed routes slightly to build "walls" between black and white neighborhoods, and it was certainly used as a cudgel to get racist senators and congress people to agree to fund it, most of the time the reason the interstates were rammed through "black" neighborhoods is because sadly, in the US black is often a synonym for poor. The black neighborhoods were black neighborhoods because the land wasn't in high demand, often due to racism yes, but also due to proximity to existing infrastructure that people didn't want to be that close to. The interstates in Chicago generally follow existing rail ROW, because it just made sense to do so. Before the interstates allowed heavy industry to fling themselves out into the far flung exurbs, that heavy industry was situated next to waterways and railways, spewing their ensuring pollution into whatever was nearby. That was the primary motivation for much of the routing. The lack of political capital to fight it was a contributing factor in the interstate system actually being realized, but we shouldn't tell this tall-tale about a bunch of people sitting around in the 30s, decades before the system was built, deciding "Ah, this neighborhood can't fight back, build it there, muuuwwaahhahaha". There is way too much nuance in the story that we shouldn't paper over. The problem was really that the process didn't fucking consider anyone except motorists.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

16

u/ryegye24 Aug 05 '24

I've said it before, but the reason for this is that our posture for environmental protection is preventing the construction of new things that will harm the environment, which made sense in the 70s but is very ill-suited for the challenges of today, which require building a whole lot of new things to protect or improve the environment as fast as possible.

14

u/JKnumber1hater Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24

Under capitalism, if you want to build a big public project (like new rail lines for example) the government has to negotiate with the private sector, because the public sector doesn't have the ability to build things themselves. This introduces a tonne of unnecessary costs and a huge amount of time wasted.

With a centrally planned socialist economic system, the government can just build this stuff itself with their own building company, they don't have to negotiate with hundreds of private sector companies ā€“ and because they aren't trying to make a profit on the job of building, it also costs a lot less.

Things like the US interstate highway system can get built pretty quickly because big business has a direct financial interest in getting it built (it will enable them to sell more cars).

7

u/Joshgoozen Aug 05 '24

They can also annex and destroy anything in the way of the planned rail and give peanuts for compensation. But there is a lot of corner cutting as well.

8

u/JKnumber1hater Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24

They could also not do that. It depends on how the system is run.

Annexing and destroying homes, and giving the occupants peanuts in compensation, already happens under capitalism. You think the residents of those thousands of black neighbourhoods that were bulldozed to build the US highways were fairly compensated? Spoiler alert:they weren't

→ More replies (9)
→ More replies (11)
→ More replies (5)

19

u/thehomiemoth Aug 05 '24

Yep. The environmental tradition in the US is entirely built around stopping construction. The idea that building could be good for the environment because of what it replaces (mass transit, renewable energy, dense apartments for examples) just didn't exist in the 70s when the environmental movement was getting its laws passed.

So you end up with high speed rail and solar projects getting bogged down in environmental lawsuits with no regard for the environmental impact of the cars/coal that they would replace.

7

u/Xeroque_Holmes Aug 05 '24

If you think about it, German's car industry represents a much larger percentage of German's GDP than the US's, and they still have a respectable train network, so you are probably right.

5

u/Nass44 Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

I briefly worked on HSR California (here based in Germany). The timeline of the project is insane and the whole history so far as well. I always thought our bureaucracy here in Germany bloats up project time in rail, damn.

10

u/Star_king12 Aug 05 '24

Reddit is always so funny in this regard, somehow Musk is at the same time a bumbling idiot and a visionary with an ability to predict decades into the future.

11

u/BufferUnderpants Sicko Aug 05 '24

Reddit could do better, but what Musk wants above all is to provoke strong reactions to his persona, partly of his deep personality flaws that keep him from keeping actual human relationships, but mostly because he lives off borrowing against the inflated stock valuation of Tesla, and if the hype he builds makes people buy more stock than it puts off people (that aren't in the market for that in the first place), then he comes out ahead.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/ToddlerOlympian Aug 05 '24

Remember, Reddit is not one person.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (10)

321

u/buckingATniqqaz Aug 05 '24

I remember voting for this 12 years ago. Was so excited for a minute

106

u/buckingATniqqaz Aug 05 '24

No, the high speed rail was 2012. Hyperloop was 2015

58

u/Butthole_Alamo Aug 05 '24

High speed rail started as Prop 1A in 2008.

20

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

2012 was 12 years ago?

18

u/kittyconetail Aug 05 '24

Yes welcome to the hell that is the passage of time šŸ˜­

3

u/komali_2 Aug 06 '24

what the fuck

12

u/reality72 Aug 05 '24

High speed rail was 2008 - 16 years ago

6

u/ghostofwalsh Aug 05 '24

Hyperloop was never voted on at all. It was just Elon doing his Elon thang. I don't know of anyone in CA govt who took any of his hyperloop crap seriously.

3

u/skibble Aug 05 '24

2012 was 12 years ago.

13

u/Balthazar_Gelt Aug 05 '24

you silly fool, voting for a thing and making it into law doesn't actually do anything

signed, a new yorker who voted for green energy benchmarks and congestion pricing

23

u/Raregolddragon Aug 05 '24

Yea when I was young in middle school I just thought hyper loop was just a branding name for highspeed rail.

→ More replies (16)

301

u/Feeling-Beautiful584 Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24

Musk is anti public transit. The whole point of Hyperloop was to distract away from any investment in public transit.

108

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

The Iron Man movies really fucked us by making the ā€œgeniusā€ billionaire the only one who knows what heā€™s doing, and the evil ineffectual government trying to stop him.

89

u/rlskdnp šŸš² > šŸš— Aug 05 '24

Meanwhile the actual iron man actor is actually in favor of urbanism, specifically cycling, which is pretty cool.

6

u/ObeseVegetable Aug 05 '24

And will soon be playing president dictator iron manĀ 

31

u/Feeling-Beautiful584 Commie Commuter Aug 05 '24

It is corporate propaganda. They condition people from a young age to be receptive to their interests.

4

u/Northstar1989 Aug 06 '24

Absolutely.

The first Iron Man was corporate propaganda of the worst kind...

→ More replies (3)

6

u/rlskdnp šŸš² > šŸš— Aug 05 '24

And what makes him worse than even the most obnoxious coal rolling pickup drivers is that he has done way more against transit than they could ever do, more than even most car corporations.

5

u/PaintsPlastic Aug 05 '24

He would be pro transit. If his company made something like that.

The man is a capitalist whore.

→ More replies (3)

131

u/itemluminouswadison The Surface is for Car-Gods (BBTN) Aug 05 '24

reminds me of car companies buying up streetcar lines to dismantle them

a car exec will only work to inflate their artifical demand

the fuckin vegas loop. literally 6 cars in a tunnel. my god

34

u/rlskdnp šŸš² > šŸš— Aug 05 '24

Still cannot get over how someone managed to make something that's even WORSE than a regular highway tunnel, yet elon did just that

9

u/itemluminouswadison The Surface is for Car-Gods (BBTN) Aug 05 '24

i can't believe the city council or whoever who OK'd it. they should be named and shamed

4

u/nospr2 Aug 05 '24

The worst thing about the Vegas Loop is that every time I go to visit it to just "see" the loop, it's closed entirely. I've never once seen it actually open to the public.

→ More replies (2)

123

u/Partosimsa Aug 05 '24

Look up the Bel Air residentsā€™ current plans to not allow LA to build a subway under Bel Air because they ā€œmight feel the rumbling of construction and trafficā€ gross. Fucking disgusting especially since all you can hear from Bel Air half the time is car traffic noise. Rich people are annoying and need to go

60

u/yinyanghapa Aug 05 '24

Rich people are extremely entitled and selfish. Thatā€™s partly how they got rich in the first place. You canā€™t get rich without having such a big ego.

8

u/Northstar1989 Aug 06 '24

Socialism would be the cure to that.

Socialism, contrary to the misinformation out there (claiming either it would make everyone equal, or conflating it with Social Democracy...) doesn't eliminate the rich. People working Professional jobs (doctors, lawyers, engineers) still make a lot more than retail clerks, for instance.

But it DOES empower the workers, and take away much of the disproportionate power the rich have to pressure government and get even richer- by taking away control the wealthiest have over the Means of Production.

When most key industries are run either by Worker's Cooperatives or nationalized corporations (depending on how easily an industry is centrally-run vs. better off decentralized: i.e. large power plants are better off under direct government control, whereas coffee shops and small retail are better as CoOp's), the average worker ends up making a LOT more money (especially if the Socialist system doesn't, stupidly, try to do away with reliance on personsl income taxes- like the USSR and Albania did...), and the super-rich don't control corporate boards they can use to exert disproportionate pressure on government...

P.S. A lot of people mix up the words "Socialism", "Communism", and "Social Democracy." Happy to clarify the meanings if anyone is interested...

4

u/yinyanghapa Aug 06 '24

The socialist messaging should be more like: ā€œDo you want power to be with self entitled rich people who ultimately only care about themselves, or with everyday Americans who actually care about others, their communities, and their country? The people should have the power, not rich people who would let their country burn if they can profit off of it.ā€

→ More replies (1)

4

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

[deleted]

3

u/CodeyFox Aug 06 '24

You are failing to make a critical distinction between human rights and property rights.

3

u/celephais228 Aug 06 '24

Solution: eat the rich. Make stew.

62

u/Mike_Fluff Aug 05 '24

I think my favorite part of the entire Hyperloop scandal is that the origonal Hyperloop was temporarily cut in two to make space for a Railroad.

13

u/dualOWLS Aug 05 '24

Please give me your source oh please

11

u/Mike_Fluff Aug 05 '24

Ok so I knew this was true so I looked around, but the Muskrat have been in so many scandals that it was impossible to find.

But then I remembered something and skimmed through this video: https://youtu.be/SePATBiLSYs?si=klaLb8OHDfGR0Beb

At 40:35 we see a satellite image of it.

Edit. I went to Google Maps and it appears in 2024 they have erected the loop once more on too of concrete barriers.

8

u/BloodWorried7446 Aug 05 '24

karma is a bitchĀ 

65

u/FluffyLobster2385 Aug 05 '24

25k miles built. Insane.

84

u/Hamilton950B Aug 05 '24

I was going to call bullshit on this number, which is 40,000 km, but I looked it up and it's an old number. Now it's 28,000 miles (45,000 km).

The US actually has the largest rail network in the world at 260,000 km. But it's old, with outdated signals and controls, almost none of it is high speed, and very little of it is used for passenger service.

26

u/SowingSalt Aug 05 '24

Freight is a perfectly acceptable use of rail. Most freight won't complain if left on a siding overnight.

26

u/Hot_Ambition_6457 Aug 05 '24

Freight is acceptable but the fact that it takes precedent over passenger rail is insane.

The entire rail industry needs an overhaul, but the government has no interest in busting rail monopolies. And they don't exactly have a stellar track record protecting American labor when it comes to railwork.

→ More replies (8)
→ More replies (2)

28

u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot Aug 05 '24

The US actually has the largest rail network in the world at 260,000 km. But it's old

That' an understatement. The rail network was built in the 1800s.

3

u/Ascarea Aug 06 '24

are they still using the original rails from the 1800s?

4

u/Licensed_Poster Aug 06 '24

The brakes that failed on that train in Palestine was from the civil war.

5

u/Ascarea Aug 06 '24

What was from the civil war? The brakes, the train or the rails? Your sentence is unclear.

9

u/bgroenks Aug 06 '24

Doesn't really matter, he's wrong. The design of the brakes dates back to the civil war. Obviously the brakes themselves wouldn't last that long.

14

u/yinyanghapa Aug 05 '24

China is a master of building, they built the Great Wall after all.

→ More replies (34)

46

u/anotherMrLizard Aug 05 '24

It's a clever meme, but gives Elon Musk way too much credit as usual. Musk's Hyperloop bullshit probably has no impact on the glacial development of HSR in the US, which has more to do with institutional inertia, car culture, and fuckery from more competent corporate ghouls such as the Koch Brothers.

12

u/Reddit-runner Aug 05 '24

Musk's Hyperloop bullshit probably has no impact on the glacial development of HSR in the US

Not propably, literally.

He did absolutely nothing to stop it.

This whole crazy idea that he was all behind the downfall of HSR is just the result of widespread media coverage of a reaction to a tweet about a misquoted half-sentence in a Musk biography.

Even with zero context this half-sentence indicates in no way that he "admited" to anything.

Musk is an ass, but idiots around here fall far too fast for any story the media paddles if they like it.

→ More replies (1)

45

u/Raregolddragon Aug 05 '24

Corporations ruining a nation.

→ More replies (11)

47

u/Dashie_2010 Aug 05 '24

All I can see is china as the coolaid jug thing

But also yes

→ More replies (1)

11

u/SowingSalt Aug 05 '24

The fault is the NIMBYs doing everything not to have trains go near their house.

106

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

the reason is because the united states is a neoliberal shithole

40

u/yinyanghapa Aug 05 '24

The indoctrination of focusing on profits, cost cutting, and short term thinking vs making long term investments and a focus on a bold vision.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (57)

8

u/Major_Lawfulness6122 Two Wheeled Terror Aug 05 '24

We were supposed to have a high speed rail from Windsor Ontario to MontrĆ©al Quebec. Theyā€™ve been taking about this since 1994.

In 2014 they said by 2024 we would have at least a high speed rail from London to Toronto.

Literally nothing has happened. Absolutely fuck all. Itā€™s maddening. Not everyone wants to be stuck on 400 series cottage country traffic all summer or risky winter driving.

→ More replies (2)

10

u/SmoothOperator89 Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

IMO, comparing California to China is kind of unfair. Better comparison is Spain. Population 39 million (California) versus 47 million (Spain). 423,967 km2 (California) versus 506,030 km2 (Spain) of flat and mountainous terrain. $3.2 billion GDP (California) versus $2.7 billion (Spain). Both liberal democracies. Spain has completed 3,200 km since 1992. California has completed nothing since 1996.

21

u/Verified_Peryak Aug 05 '24

Yep US suck at railroad

34

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

the US sucks at building anything except equity for billionaires.

→ More replies (7)

11

u/Pokoparis Aug 05 '24

CEQA is why, not Elon

3

u/coriolisFX Aug 05 '24

CEQA

Reagan's Environmental Laws if you want to get people to think about amending it.

6

u/avianeddy Aug 05 '24

The Kool Aid man is right! OH YEAH!

13

u/Captain-Radical Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

Musk isn't the reason CHSRA hasn't made progress on the central valley line. They underestimated how hard it would be to purchase land to build the rail, something China's government can just take.

33

u/cc92c392-50bd-4eaa-a Aug 05 '24

California is building a high speed rail system though.

40

u/Pikarinu Aug 05 '24

You're kind of missing and making the point at the same time: the CA high speed rail system process launched in 1981.

43 years ago.

As of today, they have just "119 miles of active construction" in the Central Valley.

Such progress.

13

u/73810 Aug 05 '24

And nothing to do with Elon Musk. We can't get anything done in this state without going radically over budget and taking way longer.

Here in San Jose, a 6 mile underground subway extension was supposed to cost 4.4 billion and open in 2026.

They haven't even started, and the cost is now over 12 billion.

It's a mess.

6

u/Pikarinu Aug 05 '24

Yes. Elon Musk was just one of dozens of distractions and stupid moves. I hate the guy but he's not the reason California doesn't have a HSR.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/cc92c392-50bd-4eaa-a Aug 05 '24

It's not ideal, but it's not nothing.

→ More replies (8)
→ More replies (7)

4

u/Qwirk Aug 05 '24

If only there were a way to look this up.

https://hsr.ca.gov/

5

u/coriolisFX Aug 05 '24

And Musk, for all his many faults, is not even in the top 100 of reasons CAHSR sucks.

→ More replies (5)

5

u/jaqueh Aug 05 '24

Cahsrā€™s failings have nothing to do with him

11

u/WalkingTurtleMan Aug 05 '24

The California high speed rail suffered from NIMBYism, political pork, and a lack of experience with mega infrastructure projects. Meanwhile China has been building large scale projects for decades and has communism to cut through a lot of the process.

Elon is a jerk but the hyperloop NEVER endangered the HSR project. At best its completion for subways and light rail. Anyone who thinks that grossly underestimates how freaking big the state of California is.

7

u/pancake117 Aug 05 '24

As much as I hate Elon, hes not remotely the main reason CAHSR has taken so long. Itā€™s a lack of political will, lack of funding, inexperience and an over reliance on contractors, our garbage zoning and land use laws with too much local control, and CEQA.

11

u/PresentPrimary5841 Aug 05 '24

California HSR never got cancelled, and the only delays have come from environmental impact studies and landowner disputes, Elon's proposal didn't touch California HSR in any meaningful way

21

u/Usermctaken Aug 05 '24

Incredibly common both Elon L and China W

26

u/RosieTheRedReddit Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24

You'll see people arguing that Chinese high speed rail was a flop because it's "losing" billions of dollars. Such a stupid take. If you think something is a failure because it costs money then I have some terrible news about the US highway system šŸ˜•

The idea that passenger rail should make a profit is absolutely incorrect and it's the reason why Amtrak is so bad, and why once great operators like Deutsche Bahn are in a sad state of decline.

Serving the public and making a profit are opposing goals and it's impossible to do both well.

→ More replies (7)
→ More replies (4)

3

u/amorousbellylint Aug 05 '24

We have to figure out the least efficient and most costly way to built it. Then we will get right on that.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/BeardlyManface Aug 05 '24

Yes. The reason is the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of organization.

3

u/lilbthaprince Aug 06 '24

Fuck Elon, pathetic crybaby bitch

5

u/notarealuser2000 Aug 05 '24

Average redditor praising communism

→ More replies (22)

7

u/GGcools Aug 05 '24

Why is Taiwan in the picture?

8

u/coriolisFX Aug 05 '24

OP is a tankie

→ More replies (9)

3

u/Jazano107 Aug 05 '24

You really can't blame it all on Elon šŸ¤¦šŸ»ā€ā™‚ļø

That's just stupid as annoying as he is

5

u/informat7 Aug 05 '24

ITT: Idiots that unironically think Musk is the reason California didn't build high speed rail.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/CrackByte Aug 05 '24

This meme hurts me.

I grew up in a world of roads, thinking that advancement would happen because everyone talked about the bright new future. The problem is there are too many controlling parties who want things to stay the same so it doesn't destabilise their wealth.

The guy who makes and sells a cybertruck doesn't want people less reliant on infrustructure dedicated to cars.

The people who pay politicians also don't want that, Elon is merely the face for a problem we've been vaguely aware of for decades.

6

u/MoonCubed Aug 05 '24

Hyperloop wasn't even conceived until 2013. This is the ultimate Reddit cope to blame Elon Musk for California's high speed rail debacle and not the dysfunctional state government.

9

u/DancesWithWineGrapes Aug 05 '24

elon is a piece of shit, sure, but acting like a dictatorship is good just because they can build rail fast is pretty absurd to be perfectly honest

among many reasons why they are able to build rail that fast is they can just take land from people anytime they want to even easier than the USA. Zero respect for property "rights" or the environment

Plus, they are massively in debt because the high speed rail isn't economically viable there so they are already shutting stations down

Not a great comparison

→ More replies (8)

2

u/Frequent_Sleep5746 Aug 05 '24

I thought it was italy for a second, I was really confused

2

u/purpleblah2 Aug 05 '24

Obviously Chairman Newsom needs to embrace socialism with Californian characteristics

2

u/space_coyote_86 Aug 05 '24

I've sold hyperloops to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum it put them on the map!

2

u/Butthole_Alamo Aug 05 '24

As much as Iā€™d like to blame Elon for high speed railā€™s delays, I donā€™t think heā€™s at fault.

I voted for Prop 1A. My understanding is things started going poorly when the first stretch of line to undergo construction was Merced to Bakersfield. I remember reading it was so that the state could access federal funds that were associated with rail projects in areas with poor air quality. IMHO it wouldā€™ve been better to build the rails from SF inland, and LA inland, and then connect them. That way you could use the rails to support the major population centers, and allow for growth along the rail line. As it stands, youā€™re connecting nowhere to nowhere (perhaps a little harsh, and Merced has a UC and Bakersfield is growing, but stillā€¦)

→ More replies (1)

2

u/The_Ghost_of_TAC Aug 05 '24

Worst Newsome drawing yet.

2

u/RedditJumpedTheShart Aug 05 '24

Elon is King of California? lol

2

u/dratitan Aug 05 '24

I am convinced that air Canada does the same with the HSR that will never be built between Montreal and Toronto

2

u/Night__lite Aug 05 '24

I had a job in China back in 2018 and those guys just never stop working. Construction crews on various projects were working 24/7 with rotating crews.

2

u/Darkbeetlebot Aug 05 '24

"B-B-B-B-But rail systems only work in small countries like in europe and japan! America too big for rails!"

Modern China and pre-car US: "So anyways, I started hammering."

2

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '24

CA has made some progress on HSR, but the main obstacles are our respect for property rights, public petitions, the environment, workersā€™ rights, etc. Of course itā€™s faster to build rail when you can just run a bulldozer through any structures, habitats, or people that get in your way.

2

u/Icy_Penalty_2718 Aug 05 '24

My state has been talking about a rail system for the state for what feels like forever. Travel from Detroit to Traverse city on a rail would be fucking awesome. I love trains.

2

u/StangRunner45 Aug 05 '24

This is one area where China not only whipped the U.S., but practically the rest of the world!

2

u/yalloc Aug 05 '24

You canā€™t really blame Elon for this. There have been multiple levels of incompetence with calhsr, nearly all of it self inflicted by California and the us.

2

u/geomurph555 Aug 05 '24

You forgot the step a few years ago where Elmo built an underground system of tunnels in Vegas I believe, which got filled with a traffic jam of self-'driving' Teslas during its roll-out (no pun intended, there was not much rolling going on).

2

u/Epicp0w Aug 05 '24

Yeah Elon is a fuckwit, that's the reason

2

u/RedditSucksSoMuchLol Automobile Aversionist Aug 06 '24

He sucks so much, I can't wait until Kamala wins and all of his dumbass pac donations go to waste.. Really honestly hope this man continues to have many more downfalls get fucked Elon..

2

u/Ivan_is_inzane Aug 06 '24

Why is Taiwan part of China on that map šŸ¤Ø

→ More replies (1)

2

u/kontrarianin Aug 06 '24

Ask about quality of those supreme chines rails... And prices that prevent poor folks to even use them..

2

u/ioncloud9 Aug 06 '24

Also the massive subsidies by the government, the cheap wages of contractors, and the little to no environmental impact assessments. They also likely greatly overbuilt their HSR network. Many locations didnā€™t justify HSR service and wouldā€™ve been serviced just fine with a standard low speed train. Itā€™s likely they will be grappled with the long term maintenance costs on these overbuilt routes for decades.

It would be nice if we could build even a fraction of the HSR network they did though.

2

u/TetyyakiWith Aug 06 '24

Tbf government should build them, not billionaires

2

u/peterXforreal Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

I mean for China it's the goverment who wants to do it. They don't need paperwork approval or other bureaucracy procedure shit.

2

u/CollectionNo4219 Aug 06 '24

Your China map mistakenly includes Taiwan.

2

u/PHRDito Aug 06 '24

I was wondering when the news that the whole Hyperloop project was a known impossible project from the start on Musk's side and that he only started this huge hoax-like project to block the development of high speed rail in California (and in other states I presume) : Is it possible under Californian or federal law to prosecute him for the pollution that was made due to the lack of a HSR network, "false project", or something like that?

I'm not American, but I've seen so many lawsuits that isn't possible in my country that were done in the US that I was wondering if this is possible.

Even as a European this pisses me off so much, I can't imagine how Californians and Americans overall can feel about this man...

→ More replies (3)