People who have never been to L.A. really have no idea how insanely huge it is. Driving to my apartment from the start of city (before you even get to L.A. county) and having the city just keep going and going and going for two hours and not because of traffic jams is something you have to experience to truly understand.
Taking the idea further, it is notable that the entire population of California is smaller than that of Tokyo.
Tokyo is also unfathomable large, but the most astonishing thing is the amount of people. Tokyo has about 10 times the population of L.A. on an area of the same size. Of course there's traffic jams too, but not as bad as in L.A., because the metro system is a lot more efficient than the highways. During rush hour each train carrying thousands of people depart from each station every 2-3 minutes. You have to see it to believe it.
I was in Tokio last year and it's really amazing. I have never seen such perfect efficiency and punctuality, and I'm German! A huge factor though is that all the people follow the rules and are mindful of everybody else. Nobody standing in the way, nobody pushing or shoving other people. Also, despite being a mindboggingly huge metropolis, there seem to be hardly any traffic jams. The world could learn a lot from Japan concerning transport.
One of the big reasons we can’t have nice things in the US. High speed rail, for instance. There’s just plain old NIMBY, to start. Concern over property values. Then eminent domain. Then the lawyers drag it through courts over whatever argument because billable hours. We haven’t even looked at what expensive safeguards are necessary because every idiot will try to get around the rail crossing restrictions or do shit to the tracks thanks to “me first” and a complete lack of social responsibility like Japan displays in this context. Then every fool politician will try to starve it of funds because good public transportation costs money, and we can’t have evil taxes happening when you should buy a car or pay for an airline ticket. Hundreds of millions spent and we can’t even get started thanks to people just placing their wallets and special interests first.
Have no fear, Elon Musk will solve traffic with his magical tunnels
If you come to Taiwan, we are exactly the same.
There is no reason to push and shove and stand in front of the door to get in before letting people out if there is a train every 3 min. Seen the same in Singapore. You arrive at the station, see your train is already there but you dont care. You dont run you dont rush because it doesn't matter. You just take the next one
I've had the same experience in Copenhagen. Their metro is fully automated, and the schedule is published as "one train every x minutes during rush hour, every y minutes otherwise", which is very nice. You just turn up at the station knowing you'll only have to wait that many minutes. The automation takes it to the next level as well, because the trains run on this schedule through the night.
Even though Tokio is absolutely massive, it's just a nice place to be. Not loud or overly crowded (apart from the tourist spots). Its clean and you feel safe. You also don't feel like you'll get scammed on every corner
It sure is a good thing that land elects presidents.
Don't forget Senators too!
How else would the slave-owning states have the slavery powers they so needed?!?
Land electing presidents is bad, but Senator's have a purpose. The better solution for the legislative house is uncapping the House so places like California are properly represented
It's also a good thing those shitty presidential candidates come from major population states too. Trump has never lived Nebraska and Harris didn't grow up in northern Minnesota.They both come from states where the real power and money reside.
LA seems to have so much amazing culture but it is drowning in an addiction to cars perhaps worse than almost any other US city and it totally turns me off from going. edit, I didn't mean this as a dig at the average person in LA I literally mean the city itself
I have flown over the endless sprawl and traffic jams on approach to LAX and like vomits in trash can nope. It looks like 1000% the kind of city where it takes at least an hour to get somewhere no matter how close on paper it is.
It is a phenomena of a place, and easily creates and does more to make the world better than all of those rural conservative states combined I just wish it wasn't a car hellscape so I actually desired to visit.
It seems like LA has been making serious progress on becoming more walkable, so I am excited to see where it goes though!
Holy hell the urban sprawl is insane
Just grid for hundreds of miles around
It's nothing specific to LA, it's what any city with that population and a car centered infrastructure turns into.
I know that's probably what you meant, just wanted to add a bit o' clarity.
as an expert on the topic of los angeles (i spent 3 days there, many years ago), i can confirm that it is exactly the kind of city where every drive takes 1 hour. if you have to get on the highway to go somewhere, you better cancel your plans for the evening because your new plan is to sit in traffic forever.
LA does not have a bigger population than Georgia, and probably not Michigan and a few others. Map is bs.
Still, a shitload of people in trouble rn
California, Texas, Florida , New York , Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio , Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan are the ten states that aren't less populated than LA county, to save anyone else who's curious from needing to look it up.
Yeah it looks like NJ makes it in by the skin of its teeth and over that the top 10 most populous states all have more people in them than LA County — of which Michigan is one.
Can we talk about the fact that Wyoming shouldn't even be a state based on their miniscule population.
In a global warming world it'll be prime real estate in a couple of generations though
[slaps car] "this thing will hold so many... climate refugees!"
Except for the whole lack of water problem they've got.
If the Pacific gets warmer, it will eventually increase rainfall coming into the US west. Probably around the same time Wyoming becomes prime real estate.
Not a meteorologist but my understanding of the climate there, is that it is desert or close to it because of the topology. Very very windy where it isn't mountains.
And because I cannot try and know, this indicates it's going in the wrong direction.
Having "interacted" with people there, they don't deserve to be a state.
Map is missing a few based on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
It's one of the 33 megacities in the world, so it makes sense.
Which population numbers are you using for this graph? Census data for 2020 has LA county at 10.01 million and NC and Georgia at 10.45 and 10.73 million respectively. (for the second link, click on the Table 1 PDF. I didn't want to link to a PDF directly). 2023 numbers seem to have LA county trending down while those states are trending up.
It's still a staggering visual to compare population densities. I just thought the claim was a bit suspect regarding my state.
rare ohio victory
You know, this would be much more accurately captioned as a map of how a president could win with as little of the popular vote as possible. Lowest possible score is 21%.
For the map enthused!
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