A lot of strong towns framing uses "financial productivity" defined as tax revenue per unit area, usually acre. Poor neighborhood's houses may be cheap, but are packed much more densely, leading to higher revenue per unit area. less in taxes per lot, but also lower maintenance costs per lot.
I'm not disagreeing with that, but high speed rail from Boston to Miami would be extremely practical. Efficient, fast, convient travel along that corridor reducing dependence on cars for city to city travel. And the area has both the demand and density to support such projects.
And while its impractical now, if it was built to cheapen regional travel in the region it could grow to high use spurning economic development.
I'd love to take a train at a reasonable pace from near to DC to my family in Pittsburgh, or to visit New York.
I might even enjoy a cross country trek to the rockies for skiing on a train, but it's never going to be an option.
Yeah and that's why I'm not advocating for 100 year cars.
I'd be pretty happy with 20 years to, but 10 just feels like planned obsolescence.
I also messed around with the math very loosly, and only accounting for crashes that total a car, they could be expected to go 20 years or more on average.
And that's now with all the terrible driving that happens, especially at night.
With slight deacrease in accident frequncy that number can increase a lot.
So maybe 30 is a bit much for now, but I'd still like an ev that would claim to last 20 yeara.
If you cant get by on 2, you might have less power, but you can get better efficiency. With better efficiency you can have a smaller battery for the same range and reduce some of your increased cost that way.
If its a optical image satellite, it probably doesnt take much to burn on the camera if it's shutter is open.