Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains...
by stuaxo on Monday December 18, 2017 @06:16AM
(#15950858)
Have a look at Thailand for the effects of way-less effective regulation.
Street furniture and cables all over the pedestrian areas and cars and bikes everywhere else. Huge concrete overpasses, litter and pollution.
Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains...
by sitepodmatt on Monday December 18, 2017 @07:27AM
(#15951162)
In the railway context I believe SRT is government operated including track and trains so they follow a mandate rather then regulation. I took a new train from BKK to Hua Hin a few months ago, quite a pleasant ride to be fair. The cables are a problem, but I suspect it led to faster broadband and FFTH rollout, to give an example I was one of the first True customers and they ran a coaxial cable about 0.25km to the house, it took less than two hours, you couldnt do that if it was underground. Sometimes these things work.
The problem with rails is the same with roads.
Yes, AnCaps/Libertarians/Voluntarists/goldbugs think that "yeah, if the State weren't meddling in the market, people would form a corporation to build a [toll] road/rail", but of course, the same network effects would lead to very fine roads between major population centers and abso-fucking-lutely nothing else, because why would anyone connect a mining town in Wyoming anywhere? The mining company will use big all-terrain vehicles on dirt roads and that's it. Maybe they'll lay a track for the coal itself.
And I'd even argue, that yes, even if rail operates at a net loss according to GAAP, that doesn't mean socially it is a negative. The same applies to broadband.
However, maybe ... maaaybe not everyone should live so far from each other, so infrastructure TCO and commute times and energy use (and GHG emissions) would be lower.