saveourspit
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2016–2021
2:57 · 3.1M views · Aug 14, 2014
The Monorail song scene from The Simpsons, uploaded with a note comparing it to a local Australian development controversy.
HN uses it as a recurring joke whenever hyperloop or grand transit schemes come up.
5 comments from Hacker News
Most parts of Los Angeles are not even dense enough to make rail effective for the investment. Think about it this way. There are about 100 busses in Austin right now. The $7B rail network could easily buy 10,000 new busses, fully-loaded cost of 10-year service life. Or put another way, free bus service for 100% of Austin’s commutes, forever. Maybe block off a special lane for busses and you get pseudo-rail at 1% of the cost. Maybe think about rail when the demand is proven. The pneumatic tire is an amazing invention for flexible human transport. Light rail is almost always a waste of money, and it will probably never even get built, and if it does, it will take forever, and create more traffic than it solves. But if you can credibly suggest otherwise with a single example of a low-density light rail system in any comparable city that got better ROI than busses and bike lanes, I will consider that I may be wrong. this video
Dude. As a European who used to take high speed rail regularly before Corona when I saw this video I felt exactly like the author of this article. France has had high speed rail for over 40 years that is better than this. Do Americans just simply not understand what mass transit is? The goal is to move lots of people quickly between destinations where people want to go. Three things; -lots of people -quickly -desired destinations This demo literally hit none of those marks. Give it a rest. Also this. this video
Typical drivers can do the trip in ~2.5hrs. Mind you that is door to door w/ your actual destination. Depending on regulations (similar to preflight security), this could be a 1 hour trip. If you need to also take a taxi to and from the hyperloop, you're not looking at much time savings. IMO the real value of these options is that you can do something else in the mean time. You can read, you can make calls, you can sleep. Also: Obligatory monorail comment for hyper loop: this video
Heck, friend, Black Tar Sands Crude is the cure for every ill you've got! Back aches, stomach aches, tooth aches, liver spots, bald spots, acne spots, and even your carpet's pet spots, Black Tar Sands Crude will fix them all! Remember the name kids, Black Tar Sands Crude: that's Black Tar Sands Crude, the only bitumen-based-oil unnecessarily pumped through multiple countries that's fit for your family! this video
Every time I see the HyperRail stuff, I just get this little song monoloop'd into my head. It's so strange. Anyone else have that too? EDIT: I found the song!: this video