I've literally never heard this argument before. It's baffling.
I have heard "wind turbines are ugly", which I extremely disagree with (they're huge impressive things), but at least it's sort of justifiable because you might see them. Who the hell is staring at railway tracks?
And who could possibly care about aesthetics when we're talking about something so important? Clean energy is not about which color you paint the bikeshed, it's not about your personal preferences.
I certainly agree that asthetics should come after function here, particularly because we need to try to slow environmental degradation.
On the subject of roads and rail being ugly, I think it may be a degree of normalisation - if you looked at the general opinion of rail and road at the time of invention, you might well find the same reservation about their asthetics as for wind turbines.
(see https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/ind_rev/rs/denaul... and also probably for windmills).
More recently the opposition to HS2 in the UK has produced many arguments about asthetics, mainly due to route location.
TBH I'd prefer to see smartrail systems rather than a rehash of an existing transportation system. Something like:
http://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/2016/
When sacrifices have to be made, aesthetics probably is going to be one of the first things to go. But in this case we're talking about a technology that is an improvement over diesel while still maintaining the aesthetic and safety of the countryside. Just because you consider it a lower priority doesn't mean it shouldn't factor into the equation at all.
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I've literally never heard this argument before. It's baffling.
I have heard "wind turbines are ugly", which I extremely disagree with (they're huge impressive things), but at least it's sort of justifiable because you might see them. Who the hell is staring at railway tracks?
And who could possibly care about aesthetics when we're talking about something so important? Clean energy is not about which color you paint the bikeshed, it's not about your personal preferences.
I certainly agree that asthetics should come after function here, particularly because we need to try to slow environmental degradation. On the subject of roads and rail being ugly, I think it may be a degree of normalisation - if you looked at the general opinion of rail and road at the time of invention, you might well find the same reservation about their asthetics as for wind turbines. (see https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/ind_rev/rs/denaul... and also probably for windmills).
More recently the opposition to HS2 in the UK has produced many arguments about asthetics, mainly due to route location.
TBH I'd prefer to see smartrail systems rather than a rehash of an existing transportation system. Something like: http://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/2016/
When sacrifices have to be made, aesthetics probably is going to be one of the first things to go. But in this case we're talking about a technology that is an improvement over diesel while still maintaining the aesthetic and safety of the countryside. Just because you consider it a lower priority doesn't mean it shouldn't factor into the equation at all.