• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Highways are a symptom, not a cause. My point is that the reliance on personal cars creates these issues of traffic where massive highways like

    It would be wonderful if our systems were separated so we could see direct cause and effect to make easy data driven objective decisions. Sadly that’s rarely the case. Confounding variables abound.

    You’re looking at this interchange and presenting its existence solely to passenger cars, further, passenger cars for whom they could be replaced with mass transit systems. That’s two very large logical leaps. Houston is a very large industrial city and that interchange likely serves a massive number of commercial vehicles transporting goods and services not only in the city of Houston but as a thoroughfare to other cities. Additionally, it is likely carrying a percentage of passengers in cars that can’t be served by mass transit.

    My point isn’t ‘transportation bad’, but ‘Jesus fucking Christ public transportation in this country is fucked and leaves us with massive, gaping inefficiencies like this’.

    Even if you’re aware of both of the confounding variables I listed above, your meme ignores them. Your audience views your message as either naive and uninformed or worse maliciously ignoring inconvenient factors that don’t support your narrative. I don’t believe either of those of you, but other that don’t take the time to talk to you might.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I’m not trying to invalidate your point and I’m not here to speak to the rest of your post. I just like to bitch about our mass transit system.

        Your points are very valid. I’d much prefer a stronger mass transit systems. Some cities are better than others. Others, like mine, have no light rail/metro rail at all, and I think that’s insane.