What would an actual tunnel cost in Europe or China?

This specific "tunnel with windows" is $400 m USD quoted in toto for a 675-foot avalanche resistant rock shed.

In Yosemite they're cutting through the edges of hard rock - as opposed to the much softer soils under London and the Thames, and they're making an impact shock resistant structure exposed to daily heating and cooling as opposed to relatively zero shock resistant tunnels with far less of a temperature cycle.

For a Yosemite tunnel the length would be greater and the cutting challenges greater (rock V soil).

Apples, Oranges.

You might be better served looking to European rock shed construction of a similar scale - the civil engineering aspects would be similar.

Scotland, on the other hand, could do with a lot more tunnels (especially on the Rest and Be Thankful route) but it never seems to be considered. The Faroe Islands have so many tunnels that one island is nicknamed the piccolo.

The environmental consultants will drag this out for a decade if they can.

I don't think I would blame the environmental consultants though. This is just how we do things now.

The USD 2B path train stop at WTC became USD 4B+ and nobody went to prison for it. I don't think it should have even been USD 2B. All we needed was a path train stop.

Now that those neighborhoods are occupied by people who go on Hackernews and Bloomberg, they tend not to like having their streets converted into open pit mines, and so constructing subways is ungodly expensive.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/26942437655

I guess I couldn't drive the whole coast in 2023, the last time I bought a car in SoCal.

I planned to do it this summer but was rerouted due to fires.

* (I didn't really laugh, just used the acronym for its disrespectful tone)

The article makes the connection, though obliquely. It seems obvious enough - large parts of the USian West embody fascism in their unnatural relationship with nature. Unsustainable water consumption, roads and "the freedom of the open highway," etc.

And as late-stage capitalism "progresses" it'll all become uninhabitable, replicating the logic of the so-called climate migration crisis within as it is without.

The idea that anything outside 20th-century Italy can't possibly be fascism is certainly fascist, yes. Thank you for demonstrating.

Then I don't think I can help you, no.

Hellooo! *Waves hand.* Can. You. Hear. Me?

(What you're missing is that I'm part of a new generation of Terminator capable of emulating human sarcasm.)

The current set up isn't really that "capitalist", since in this case the state and the taxpayer is going to pay for a rockshelter going to a national park, again owned by the state. That said this is a lot better than what happened to the Aral Sea under Marxist government.

Must've never driven through the Alps I guess. There's something like this every couple km

Built in 1978. We're about to do another on the A83 Rest and Be Thankful (the old road has a very steep section, like 1-in-3 switchbacks, and then a big flat bit at the top that you'd be pretty damn thankful for if you were on foot).

In this Google Streetview pic you can see the catch netting that mostly works, and masses of roadworks where they're reinforcing it further up. It's a total pain in the arse basically every time it rains.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/gvnaFDdtCdkz1hNK9

Maybe the Federal government has never bothered to invest in some aspects of road safety in Yosemite. That’s somewhat embarrassing. I’m surprised this is even an issue in Yosemite given how many other places have had this forever. Far more remote and unpopular highways have addressed this problem.

It is difficult to paint this as anything but incompetence.

"There’s not anything like this in the world"

Dunno, these renderings look like the the things I drive through every year when I go hiking in the Alps.

It looks cool, and I'm sure it's a huge undertaking with lots of engineering involved, but neither the problem nor the solution are unique.

Rock sheds like this can already be found in Big Sur, CA, Rogers Pass, BC, Snoqualmie Pass, WA and other places.

Further, Yosemite isn't necessarily in the most seismically active area of CA - while there are certainly earthquake concerns taken into account, it's not really relevant to the degree you've suggested it is throughout the thread.

Is there a word for the phenomenon that Americans will just always claim something they do is the worlds best / biggest / most unique until essentially proven otherwise.

How would anyone come to the conclusion that this is a new thing unique to California?

If the answer is "Contribute to a state politician's campaign", any tips on which would be the highest leverage?

The joke in the films about Shakespeare sounding better in the original Klingon came from people who claimed Shakespeare was a German. (Colonel Gaddafi claimed Shakespeare was an Arabic called Sheikh Zubair.)

But later I found a footnote that suggested the use of mei here is reflexive, in meiguoren, “people who find themselves to be beautiful” and that makes a lot more sense to me :)

I guess he's never been to Europe?