These look like underground, single vehicle tunnels. It got me wondering why tunnels instead of building above ground. It looks like 1) tunnels are much less expensive in dense areas than above-ground roads, and 2) more tunnels can be added as needed by digging deeper (so the company says).
This is cool. I have no idea if they'll solve traffic jams or succeed as a business. There are many issues to solve (ventilation, safety exits, traffic from accidents and exit queuing, etc.). But, having lived in LA and seen how traffic alters livability of a region, I love that they're trying.
My state has been infected by California copy cat syndrome and it’s destroying our cities. Every shitty California policy gets adopted here a couple years later and now we can’t build anything, Pay more taxes and have more crime. The supposed benefits never come through.
Look up California clean air regulations, and how they have radiated around the world and made every single city cleaner and healthier. That's bad? You want to go back to breathing lead and other heavy metals and carcinogens in your exhaust?
The problem is, like any good government agency, they don’t stop when they’ve succeeded fixing their original problem. What started with catalytic converters and OBD-2 is now preventing me from buying sub-freezing temperature windshield wiper fluid, and my BBQ lighter fluid is so watered down I have to use 2x to get it to do anything useful.
Yeah, because those things are toxic and poisoning you, your children, and our environment.
Now that those have been banned, companies will work to meet the market demand that you are noting, they will develop alternatives that are good, but also not poisoning us, and sell that. It will only be a minor inconvenience for you.
This is the exact same thing that happened with whale oil, leaded gas, leaded glass, sulfur diesel, ddt, on and on.
In each of those cases people were complaining like you, in each of those cases life went on and we figured out how to cope with the new, safer, less toxic, reality.
> Yeah, because those things are toxic and poisoning you, your children, and our environment. ... This is the exact same thing that happened with whale oil, leaded gas, leaded glass, sulfur diesel, ddt, on and on.
You don't know what you're talking about, but you feel like you do. Methanol, ethanol, and isopropyl alcohol are all legitimate ingredients for the examples I gave. You're making equivalence between burning leaded gas, and a desire to spray my windows with volatile alcohol.
Are you planning on banning isopropyl alcohol for medical use? Removing my ability to by vodka? Stopping my ability to use my camp stove?
One day it's stopping toxic waste getting poured into the watershed, the next it's a desire to stop research on safe nuclear power, and ban gas stoves for interior cooking use.
and cyanide poison has water in it, that doesn't make it good.
Just because Isopropyl is an ingredient in some product that is banned for other ingredients doesn't mean they will ban Isopropyl, your argument makes no sense
> ...preventing me from buying sub-freezing temperature windshield wiper fluid
Actually you can buy and use that stuff in California, you just can't buy it in the valleys (which are warmer BTW) because the emissions cause smog. But in the sierras, where it's a safety issue and the topographic features are different, its available in every service station and car parts store. It's in in my gf's car right now.
The same sensible attitude works in reverse: some states ban studded winter tires because they rip up the roads. California allows them from November-April (longer in very snowy years) because they are safer in snow (and annoying as hell, especially in dry conditions, so you never encounter them at low altitude).
You're missing the point: I don't live in the Sierras. I live on the coast, and I drive to the mountains.
What do I do with the windshield wiper fluid that is in my car, before I go to a freezing area? Do I waste it all by overusing it on the drive up? Do I set calendars to make sure I cycle my windshield wiper fluid, so that I'm low enough by the time I get to the mountains, I can buy sub freezing fluid, that my remaining fluid won't freeze?
What I end up doing is making my own blend on the coast because (thankfully) I know how, but it's a ridiculous limitation of California environmentalism.
Wow, must be difficult being you. I just add some to my fluid reservoir when I get up there.
And I benefit from the clear skies down in the valley when I am here. In the 60s you couldn’t see the mountains from Mountain View. Now you can again, and people have fewer breathing problems.
If that’s “California Environmentalism” well, it seems pretty good to me.
It was the suppression of volatile vapors, the smog being photocatalytic hydrocarbons as you point out. Catalytic converters were indeed a big deal, as were the vapor barriers on fuel pumps.
But that witches’ brew of smog was (is) a mixture of all sorts of volatiles from many sources (e.g. paint shops and factories).
There’s by definition no one solution to diffuse fugitive emissions, and I’m glad the various AQMDs and CARB are working on it. I’m also glad they are organized in a decentralized fashion, so that different districts can have different rules and programs.
Oh and the ECUs (and their O2 sensors) came in after a lot of the work had been accomplished back in the carburetor days, but things are a lot cleaner today because they continued.
Yes, what a bizarre comment! I'm not some nutter who goes out to learn how to make fire with sticks in the woods, but I can certainly readily light a barbecue with matches and kindling.
there is some kind of international phenomena about halting house building and raising the prices, to bury capital. People on YNews from Australia to Hungary have mentioned it. So, yes, that one thing is problematic and is not unique to California
Reminds me of this quote "There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle." - Marc Andreessen / Jim Barksdale
Are there businesses built explicitly on unbundling? I think there are examples of unconscious unbundling (picking the best individual components of a service/stack) but the goal is never to unbundle. Then a business comes along whose sole purpose is to bundle, but with that comes bloat. And then the cycle continues.
partially a conflation of terms, here: while the article discusses vertical integration, the main thing people think of for "businesses built explicitly on unbundling" is horizontal unbundling—picking a niche that is solved OK by a wider solution, then solving that really really well. The textbook example is for random startups to unbundle Craiglist[1].
This reminds me of Thumbtack. Their customers, local service providers, are incentivized to move transactions off-platform to avoid paying commission fees (and taxes in many cases). However, those customers are willing to pay to connect to relevant leads, which seems to have worked out well for Thumbtack.
I'm a long time happy user. The site is fast, simple, and always seemed trustworthy in a market with seedy actors. You've helped me name multiple projects and companies - thank you!
I concur - it's really snappy and a great place to start if you're looking for a domain. Although it's not 100% accurate, I understand the technical limitations and frankly, I can't think of a better alternative.
