lexande

Depending how much you want to stretch the definition of "freeway" you could make a case for the Brooklyn Bridge Railway in 1883.

https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll2/id/20581/

The Cahuenga Pass Freeway (today US101) in Los Angeles opened in 1940 with Pacific Electric trolley tracks in the median.

The Ontario Line number is just as insane.

You can also increase productivity by using small (automated or partially remote controlled) robots instead of a human driving a car around.

<3 my Deutschlandticket.

Carrying more than NER+Acela is a pretty low bar. "Meeting capacity" is a function of price, they would carry more people if they ran more trains with lower prices.

Philly seems like such a bad example for this because you can always just take NJT for $31 (or even $21 via River Line). There's no such consistently-available slow-and-cheap rail option to Bordeaux; there's Ouigo but it will typically be sold out if you're booking last minute.

They run like one train an hour to Bordeaux most of the day. Even to Lyon Part-Dieu there are hour-long gaps in the schedule (partly because they dilute frequency with lots of nonstop & branching trains because... they think they're an airline).

What specifically do you think Germany should be doing differently?

Traditionally a newspaper I think.

They don't just charge, they generally ask for dues of like 1% of aftertax income (i.e. hundreds of euros a year for most members). Whereas e.g. the UK parties charge to join but much less, between £15 and £75/year.

Though also since it's on a wide straight arterial it should have been mostly elevated anyway.

Both ends of the Eglinton line are transfers to radial rail lines.

The Ringbahn seems pretty intensely used. Moscow built a fully-underground bigger-than-Ringbahn circumferential in the past decade, and Paris has one under construction.

Being too slow is a separate problem from being too circumferential. If they'd built a radial that way it would also be too slow.

I agree the regulatory objection seems weak, though "circuitous" and "worse downtown access than the existing route" and "tram-like grade crossing density such that you probably need to build an el despite existing ROW" all seem stronger.

Tokyo Skyliner is the only example I thought of that seems clearly worth it and even that line has more local than express trains I believe.

New-build express trains to airports that already have rail service seem like pretty weak projects almost everywhere honestly. How about spending the money speeding up the E and K lines (e.g. by building grade separations along Flower St)?

In fairness the area inside the Ring in Berlin isn't particularly smaller than the area south of Eglinton in Toronto. mapfrappe.com/outlines?sho...

I believe refinancing is also cheaper in the US, so you aren't "locked in" and can switch to a lower rate if rates drop.

Risk of rent increases making rent unaffordable is also pretty low!

Fixed rate for how long? I tried to Google some UK mortgage rates now and the longest I saw was 10 year fixed. whereas the norm in the US is 30 year fixed.

Also "5x leverage" means relative to downpayment, i.e. 20% downpayment and 80% loan-to-value.

Loan-to-income is another matter but in most cities where I've lived "people shouldn't buy a house worth more than 5x their income" implies "most people shouldn't buy a house".

Actually aren't there even more risks like this in the UK since fixed-rate mortgages are so much rarer there, so even if you own a house and keep your job you can end up losing your house if mortgage interest rates rise faster than your salary? Interest rates are usually more volatile than rents.

In US/UK society as it actually exists I think most households should eventually have quite a lot invested in stocks, mostly though not entirely inside pension & similar (401k, IRA, ISA, etc) accounts; this is by far their best hope of maintaning their standard of living in retirement.

US/UK society as it actually exists is lacking in both the alternatives to homeownership and the alternatives to stock ownership that one might hope would be more common in a more ideal society.

Not for everybody but for very many people I definitely agree. However your original comment seemed to be talking more abstractly about what sort of investments would be common/encouraged in a theoretical more-ideal society.

So if the local industry crashes, you are likely to lose your job at the same time the price of your house crashes, & then be unable to afford to move. Whereas if you rented & invested into stocks you can at least afford a security deposit & jobsearch time somewhere else with more jobs.

Price to rent ratios vary wildly between different cities; in some US cities buying a house costs like five years of rent and in some it costs like 50, depending mostly on how the local economy is doing & expected to do.

It's true that everyone is naturally short housing & exposed to the risk of rent increases until they buy some, but I'd prefer if there were ways of covering this short that kept people's assets more diversified & permitted more specialization in building management/maintenance.

Giving a large fraction of the electorate a vested interest in housing becoming increasingly unaffordable seems not great politically, and a 5x leveraged bet on a single undiversified piece of real estate is pretty high risk.