Didn't advocate for "more highways" -- I totally get it. More offering that maybe these problems shouldn't be viewed as a purely zero-sum game, where cities get all the benefit at the expense of the larger region due to a form of geographic tyranny. (Or at least, perhaps we shouldn't pretend that externalities don't exist through studies that largely look at quality-of-life factors in the hub.)
You can see some of these same dynamics playing out in SF with the decommissioning of the 'Great Highway' on the west side, which led to a recent recall of the local council member. Why does the majority vote of a city of 800k people get to unilaterally dictate the transportation options for a region upwards of 7MM?
One thing that irks me about these schemes is that they often ignore cities role as regional hubs -- i.e. many cities became cities because they serve as geographical gateways interlocking the surrounding region. They are happy to take the benefits of being at the hub, but (increasingly) adopt a nativistic dialogue with the rest of the spokes.
I get that no one likes highways running through their communities, but when you decommission historical arteries while aggressively adopting anti-car transportation policies throughout the rest of the hub, it's somewhat inevitable that the network get snarled.
Maybe congestion pricing is the way to go -- it can certainly work for major European cities built inland, and surrounded by ring roads. For NYC / SF (surrounded by water), I'm less convinced. Sure, I'll 'just take public transport' to go downtown, but the options significantly diminish if I want to travel from North Bay to South Bay to see my parents, or Jersey to South Brooklyn to visit my inlaws.
One of things I've loved about HN was the quality of comments. Whether broad or arcane, you had experts the world over who would tear the topic apart with data and a healthy dose of cynicism. I frequently learned more from the debate and critique than I did from the "news" itself.
I don't know what is it about AI and current state of tech, but the discourse as of late has really taken a nosedive. I'm not saying that any of this conjecture won't happen, but the acceleration towards fervor and fear mongering on the subject is bordering on religiosity - seriously, it makes crypto bros look good.
And yeah -- looks like some cool new tech from OpenAI, and excited when I can actually dig in. Would also love it if I could hire their marketing department.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/CompareTwoWeeks.aspx
(*Technically slivers of the state in the far north/south were 'abnormally dry' in 2024, a small difference from 2026)