I love the BANANA acronym, which stands for "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything".
This isn’t about declaring the project a hazard to the environment, this is skipping the process to determine if it is or isn’t a net good.
I don't understand how any pollution would be removed, just because it's now in tunnels doesn't equal it being gone.
Wouldn't it just be blasted back out through the ventilation system? Or were there plans to build some kind of "pollution scrubbing" into those?
seriously, how would that work?
any expansion of road capacity in LA is immediately used up and oversaturated. if you build it they will come. if you free roads up by providing an alternative like Musk's tunnel system, someone else will still come and fill the roads back up, because, "hey, traffic is moving again."
LA deserves better public transit.
Which is an increase in quality of life for those who would have otherwise forgone those trips. Either way it's a win.
Whether it's a big enough win to be worth the cost is a perpetual debate with projects like this.
Generally the person themselves should be the one to tell. Other systems have not worked out so well.
Where is the environmental assessment on NIMBY-ism I wonder? :/
Of course, if you choose not to follow the rules and processes for development...it's very difficult.
Elon's learning the hard way that not following the rules can make his pet projects difficult or even impossible.
On the other hand not letting anybody do what they want when they feel like it is important if you want to maintain a working society so it's a very tricky balance to maintain. It's probably reasonable for Californian residents not to let anybody dig holes willy-nilly underneath their cities.
That being said the article is pretty thin on details. They mention "a review of its potential environment impact" but don't explain what the problem was exactly, so it's hard for me to form an educated opinion on this particular case.
>If you drive people away, more will replace them
There is no data to support this hypothesis, however, in this case. The facts are California housing is expensive, and there are not enough jobs at those wages to support the expensive houses.
Another way of interpreting "The median home price is California is $379,000" is "people are willing to pay, on average, $379,000 for a home in California."
The home prices are the data to support my hypothesis. If there wasn't demand for houses then prices would fall. Demand for houses means people want to move there. If there were a net migration out of the state, prices would be dropping.
This is true in general, but it isn't as immediate as you are making it out to be and doesn't give you any insight into how long it takes for the price to correct itself. The migration trends are 1-2 years old at this point. If my hypothesis is correct, expect to see your pricing drops soon (towards the middle to end of next big moving season, typically May 15 to August 31st), but only to a certain level and then it will make more sense for the builder to go under and let the banks take the hit.
California is experiencing a net outward migration of people, but from the parts of California where there are already too many people, so all those people leaving has had minimal effect on the price of housing in LA or SF.
California is a really nice place to live; great weather, great coast lines, great food, great people, etc. Most people don't live there on accident.
Fun example of this is John Wayne airport in Orange County pilots do a special takooff involving cutting power to engines to reduce noise for Newport Beach neighborhood below dating back to a lawsuit from the 80s.
I wonder if they do this at other airports located in of near cities such as LGA.
I have some mildly related personal experience as well. The glider club I belong to started getting noise complaints from people living near the airport. On a busy day, our tow plane might make 25 takeoffs. We often took the same path every time, repeatedly annoying the same people. We started varying our routes and also replaced the propellor with a quieter one and everybody was happy.
"In 1990, Congress, fearing that many localities could eventually hamstring the growth of aviation by implementing their own patchwork of noise restrictions, passed the Airport Noise and Capacity Act which outlawed curfews at airports. John Wayne was grandfathered in, however, due to the original lawsuit being filed in 1985."
https://www.avgeekery.com/whats-rollercoaster-takeoffs-orang...