- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Probably, but my point is that we are already something like thirty years ahead of the OTL Soviet Union on metros, having fully funded every system the OTL Soviet Union ever built before its collapse, and some that it didn't. Many of those systems won't open until the mid- to late 1960s, but historically many of them didn't open until the mid- to late 1980s. Or even later!
Given that in other areas (such as airports) we have very real problems on our hands, or relatively time-critical tasks (such as the renovations to Moscow and Leningrad, where prestige demands a reasonably quick completion of the project)...
There is a good argument for just stopping with the metros, even if they are not finished. Do it later when we've solved some of the actually urgent problems. These are cities that got by during the entire Soviet era from start to finish with buses and trams; they'll be okay.
Quite frankly, it's debateable whether we should have even bothered starting Secondary Metro Lines Stage 5 in the first place, and putting more dice into it right now as we notice all the other Infrastructure projects we've neglected for years seems to me like a mistake.
I'm just going to repeat what I said before.
The road network we have consists almost entirely of two lane roads (as in, one each way) with no median divider. For primary thoroughfares in large metropolitan areas and for medium-speed travel between cities (including bus traffic), that is just not enough.
I honestly think that having wider major thoroughfares and limited access freeways in built-up areas is important too. It grants a lot more flexibility in how those roads are used and how likely they are to be entirely blocked by problems, and helps keep the road network as a whole from gridlocking despite heavy reliance on mass transit.
I'm 100% in favor of continuing to fund expanded mass transit at an appropriate level of effort (e.g. the bus factories, those are important).
But there are valid reasons why nearly every country in the world has freeways and wide roads in certain places, especially in and around major urban areas. Two-lane roads simply are not enough for all applications and all places no matter how hard you push the mass transit button.
Again, I feel like we're letting ourselves neglect transportation modalities that are "yucky" within the specific context of so many of us being 21st century Americans or non-Americans reacting to the excesses of 20th century American history. People built freeways for a reason. We're hamstringing our economy if we let our desire to solve global warming in the 1960-era USSR force us to leave the Union full of narrow roads that don't match actual legitimate non-bullshit need. That's how you get, for example:
1) Locals nicknaming the road "Suicide Alley" because of the constant problem of head-on collisions with both vehicles going 80 km/h or more,
2) Traffic getting backed up for a kilometer behind someone's tractor or beat-up old jalopy simply because there's no passing lane worthy of the name,
3) 900 vehicles an hour all trying to go down the same traffic lane along the same two-lane road that passes through a residential neighborhood where children play, because that road is by far the shortest way from Point A to Point B despite the low speed limits and traffic control features. Cue a lot of kids getting hit by cars.
Arguably, but at this point we're basically just saying "oh, a little more overinvestment to finish off the job started by the previous overinvestment." I'm not a big fan of that approach when I can help it.
Ultimately, I favor pushing the hybrid boards soon because I think the modularity will help us create an actual industry with interlocking products that work together and that it's worth the bother to publish Union-wide software for, as opposed to a culture of every computer being its own unique bespoke rig programmed by a particular geek working out of an office in the basement.
EXACTLY. Moscow needs a ring road, and frankly this is probably something we should do alongside the modernization of the city, precisely so that we don't have tons of vehicles that are trying to get from points 50 km north of Moscow to points 50 km south of Moscow trying to drive straight through downtown.
Because that's the kind of thing that creates major traffic jams in the urban area, especially since we don't want to tear down huge swathes of Moscow's city center to build freeways through the middle of it.
Yeah, the closest we're going to see to suburbs within the next generation is:
"You live in a relatively low-rise apartment building in what used to be a farming village 20-30 kilometers outside the city you work in, where there isn't as much constant noise and you have some green space that isn't a carefully landscaped public park within walking distance. There are constant bus/tram/light rail connections to the urban center, and you use them."
There's not gonna be tons and tons of single-family tract housing. It's just not going to happen.
Basically, I think the USSR has already reached or passed the point, in the game's timeline, where it's already built up a heavy infrastructural bias towards making suburban tract housing impossible, probably as great or greater than the real life bias the US built up to make suburban tract housing happen in the first place.
Continuing to double down on this bias is going to stop helping us and start hurting us, much as continuing to double down on the distorting effects of the pro-suburb infrastructure bias has hurt the United States but in other directions.
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