Whatever it takes for the betterment of everyone and the Earth... Cars currently seem like an unsustainable illusion... like the dirt under the rug...
Speaking of death-rates, seeing as you seem up on that, are you aware of the inter/national statistics of those involving vehicles?
I might be ok with that if Amy were somehow involved.
The real radicals know that it is now how you travel, but ALL travel is bad, unless by walking only. That is supposed to be healthy. Transit buses do not save fuel compared to cars. Thus transit is a lifestyle not an environmental issue. So you are not into sustainability, but lifestyle. A lifestyle few enjoy.
I think you're wrong on both counts. For many, transit is "transportation of last resort". It is what you use if you cannot afford any other means of transportation whether it be a poor person in a poor area of Rochester or a fairly well-to-do Manhattan-ite who still can't afford a car.
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Transit may well be the method of last resort for a few people. But of course individuals cannot fulfill that need now as a result of the anti-jitney laws. In rural areas, such laws are routinely ignored, but not in some cities. But in NYC there are the dollar cars, illegal, but popular. That is the solution, but made illegal by greedy transit operators.
Even many of the so-called middle class of Westchester or LI can't afford to take a car into Manhattan, even if they can afford to take it to the train station.
Ideally, everyone would have their own water-permeable, substainable route into work for their chauffeur driven, CO2 powered vehicle. But alas, that's not the case. I think few people want to take transit, but many people need to.
Your problem, George, is that you have never gotten past the concept of disjointness and into the whole non-disjoint world of reality. You view transit as solely a transportation issue (with maybe a tinge of environmentalism). But in reality, its much more than that. It is a social program. It is a political issue. It is a anti-poverty program/ issue.
There's a business based in Quebec, called Allo Stop. It networks drivers going places with a few available seats in their cars together with interested passengers. I used to use the service quite a bit and, despite some problems with the odd driver, I was happy to pay the price which was much cheaper than the Greyhound bus and usually more comfortable and convenient too.
Apparently the bus companies put legal pressure on Allo Stop and they had to stop business, at least in Ontario. Unsure if that's been reversed.
Transportation will change, George-- hopefully for the better.
Incidentally, I was awoken this morning by the SOUND of a motorized pressure-washer. For a more liveable urbansphere, there will need to be a lot less NOISE too.
NOISE may be one of those UNDERRATED urban CONCERNS.
(I also prefer sail boats over motor boats.)
What brings you to urban planning, by the way?
No George, you continue to miss points. The point of the final examples is that there are no "right" answers.
There are expensive answers to everything which always require high taxes and no flexibility.
It depends on the individual. Let me give you another example, if you can handle it. Many people think electric cars are "the solution" because they don't pollute. Sure, if all cars/trucks/trains were electric, you might get pristine air in Manhattan. Many would view that as a good thing. But electric cars don't just pull electricity out of the air (unless they are lightening powered). So the externality is more pollution in Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate NY. It might mean more dead lake in the Adirondacks. So, are electric cars good? It depends on where you live. If you have a kid with asthma in NYC, they might be a great idea. If you like trout fishing in the Adirondacks, they might not be.
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Electric cars do allow cities to export dirty air to rural locations. That is what the subways do now. NYC does NOT use fewer BTUs per person than average because of transit. They do it by having people live in spaces with lower square footage than a single-wide trailer and with rents and charges in the millions for a 1 room apartment. But that is the lifestyle pushed by pro-transit people. Remember the people here who said that 800 square feet for a family was very ample? Yes, there are strong correlates of transit and my point is that most of the outcomes would be considered negative by most people most of the time.
As I have pointed out millions of times, car pooling is designed to fail and has nothing to do with jitneys. Car pooling is a fake solution pushed by pro-transit operators because they know it cannot work. It has failed nicely, just as designed.
Warm Worm wrote in news:gb3onq$v4o$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:
Woof ;)
messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@n38g2000prl.googlegroups.co m...
Yes, designed to fail so transit becomes the only alternative.
Agreed about the real estate, at least out here in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Much of it is ridiculously unaffordable and/or unliveable. I'd like to see solutions, but how do we agree on what the problems or their causes are?
As a related side-note, we seem to have an ostensibly-increasing, or at least increasingly-visible number of security guards in and around town slinking around like cockroaches at bedtime. Security from whom or from what? Members of our own communities? Why should that be, (given a healthy community)? What? It's not healthy? Oh ok. "Good solution".
;)
BTW, I stuck my head briefly inside a candy shop yesterday, and on a box, they had a frontal pic of a woman's lower half wearing only this skimpy "g-string" composed solely of those little round candies on strings. You know the ones I mean? (Maybe I should go back and take a photo.) After all that candy, though, I would probably be would put off the main course.
It's an urban planning thing which relates to the neglect of important beaver habitat in favor of "candy".
As I said, such arrangements in North America are generally illegal and trnsit companies try to stop all arrangements which make the use of the private care more efficient. In the past, also, car companies think this is great because it sells more cars. But in the end the SLUG system in DC is not too different. It works, but is only semi-legal.
Here is a census report from New York City:
"Even with gas prices more than doubling from 2000 to 2007, the proportion of commuters driving to work alone in 2007 - 76 percent - remained the same as when the decade began."
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