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We need new license plates
By adamg on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 9:12am
Pablo makes the case that the Registry should drop everything and replace all our inanely-mottoed plates (and all those old green-on-white plates still hanging around):
... So, here we are in a state of 6.4 million people, and we have exhausted more than 37 million possible plate combinations (including the 900,000 number-only plates from 100000 to 999999). ...
What? There's no way to apply NAT to license plates? (The preceding bad joke brought to you by the Society of People Who Know Just Enough About DNS to Be Stupid.)
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Comments
What we really need is less cars
Particularly after reading that Globe article on the expansion going on around 128, we definitely need less cars.
wrong
Particularly after reading that Globe article on the expansion going on around 128, we definitely need less cars.
We need a rail system that a)isn't focused purely on getting people in/out of Boston (same problem with the MBTA subway system) and b)operates on lines where passengers have priority over freight.
1)the lines the MBTA/MBCR runs on need to be taken by eminent domain from CSX.
2)The state needs to force the MBTA to mitigate its debts (declaring bankruptcy and re-negotiating the insane pension plan would be a good first step)
3)Build new rail lines that circle Boston, like 495 and 128 do. Interconnect them at existing lines. Cancel that $1BN check to the biotech industry to fund it.
I agree , when mass transit
I agree , when mass transit is conveneint people use it. The problem is we live in a region with a medium sized center that has places of employment spread out over miles and miles with no way to get there without a car.
Curious
I sincerely don't know, but does the MBTA/MBCR have the legal right to use emininent domain? I could be wrong, and correct me if I am, but I thought the MBTA was only semi-governmental, and that MBCR was most assuredly not.
No, but they could, in
No, but they could, in theory, get the state government to do their eminent domain-ing on their behalf.
They never reuse numbers?
Why not just actually do recordkeeping well enough, and re-use numbers that have been out of circulation for X years? I know, I know, that requires accurate records, something that governments are not always known for.
Sweet! I want to NAT my rear plate. I promise the router will return a deterministic number for my address.
Interesting. The RMV charges for Veteran and National Guard plates, but does not charge for any of the medal or purple heart plates.
And that's "fewer cars", BTW.
Well, adding a seventh digit
Well, adding a seventh digit would increase it by a factor of ten, 26 if you use the alphabet or 24 if you lose the "I" and "O" to avoid confusion. Start a whole new series based on a seven digit system and you're golden for a loooong time.
37 million possible plate combinations?
I count a lot more than 37 possible plate combinations. Why not just allow any combination of letters and numbers? If we restrict ourselves to 6 characters, we have 33 options for each (10 digits, 23 letters, no I, O, or Q). 33^6=nearly 1.3 billion.
Which should be enough to last a while.
69 OH 69
Some of them would have to be eliminated for the usual juvenile interest sort of reasons :-)