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Why isn't LA repaving streets?

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Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#151

Post by scoofy »

harrall wrote: post #147
scoofy wrote: post #70

I have been a Strong Towns follower/member for about 6 years. I really don't think people realize the world of pain we're signing up for by not actually fixing the underlying problem of lack of density and walk-ability and their effect on the municipal budgets of American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns I know municipal finance is about as exciting socks for Christmas, but if the Strong Towns thesi…

Not true. California is doing a ton of things to create housing — just look at the many state bills that have passed in a span of 2-3 years: https://cayimby.org/legislation/?_filter_by_status=signed Sure, some cities are resisting or having trouble but even the state is overriding them with state policies. It’s just going to take time between passing bills, incentives lining up, and getting money for building homes.…

Scott Wiener is my state senator. My point is exactly that many California cities are being forced to allow density, instead of just coming to that conclusion because it's a responsible one.

They don't want it, even if they need it. They're kicking and screaming and doing anything they can to stop it, while at the same time their city budgets are in the toilet. The only thing that's actually driving this reform is that housing prices are out of control, so you have a large demographics of people fighting to increase density.

Where this is not happening is everywhere else (think: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona). Those areas don't have the same demand for density, but they still have the same long-term structural deficit problems.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#152

Post by IncreasePosts »

Freedom2 wrote: post #54
atleastoptimal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People buy SUV's because they want to avoid being injured in crashes (at the detriment of the other driver)

Yet per capita, US vehicle occupants are more likely to be injured in general while on the road than Europeans. Perhaps the driving standards are just far too different.

Is that just because Americans spend a lot more time in their cars than Europeans do?

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#153

Post by amluto »

scoofy wrote: post #143
doug_durham wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use the phrase "trivially fix". If your definition of "trivially" means several decades with the investment of billions of dollars, then perhaps. There are no "trivial fixes" in city infrastructure. Re-zoning only works if there are developers who want to redevelop the land. For existing neighborhoods this means buying dozens of SFH from people who don't want to move. This drives the price of any development up m…

When I say "trivially fix" I mean that, if the City/State wanted to fix the problem, they could. >Re-zoning only works if there are developers who want to redevelop the land. Developers very obviously want to redevelop the vast majority of LA. The marginal cost of a housing unit is vastly higher than the cost of building that unit. To raise long-term tax revenues, LA could not just legalize redevelopment. They could…

> The marginal cost of a housing unit is vastly higher than the cost of building that unit.

The cost of building a housing unit is rather out of control in LA right now, due to a number of factors. Some of those factors involve permitting, but some involve complexities of complying with building regulation, and there is also insufficient availability of contractors and insufficient availability of labor.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#154

Post by throwaway-11-1 »

harrall wrote: post #147
scoofy wrote: post #70

I have been a Strong Towns follower/member for about 6 years. I really don't think people realize the world of pain we're signing up for by not actually fixing the underlying problem of lack of density and walk-ability and their effect on the municipal budgets of American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns I know municipal finance is about as exciting socks for Christmas, but if the Strong Towns thesi…

Not true. California is doing a ton of things to create housing — just look at the many state bills that have passed in a span of 2-3 years: https://cayimby.org/legislation/?_filter_by_status=signed Sure, some cities are resisting or having trouble but even the state is overriding them with state policies. It’s just going to take time between passing bills, incentives lining up, and getting money for building homes.…

I've been shocked by how much my rural / politically red city (pop ~80k) here in California has moved on this issue over the last 5 years. Doubled the allowed meters per lot, super relaxed ADU rules and city + developer funded 5 over 1's in the renovated city center for some impressive density. Also all the new construction for restaurants or whatever in the area requires adding apartments above. Not to mention a massive initiative for safe bike paths from the commercial areas to the park trails. They also bought some longtime closed hotels and converted them to housing for homeless. Really big stuff and huge quality of life improvements.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#155

Post by socalgal2 »

scoofy wrote: post #70

I have been a Strong Towns follower/member for about 6 years. I really don't think people realize the world of pain we're signing up for by not actually fixing the underlying problem of lack of density and walk-ability and their effect on the municipal budgets of American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns I know municipal finance is about as exciting socks for Christmas, but if the Strong Towns thesi…

I'm of multiple minds about this. I like high density. I like a car-less lifestyle of the last 30 years I lived without a car.

That said, currently I live in West LA. Traffic is atrocious! Doubling or tripling density will make it even worse, probably exponentially worse. Adding non-car transit options just isn't in the cards in any reasonable time frame because of all the people that block construction and because the USA, like most countries, refuses to setup a win-win situation for transit (like Japan) and instead continues to insist it be government based and therefore most likely to go over budget during construction and then under budgeted during operation.

At the same time, I wish our entire coast was 30-50 story high-rises. It's ridiculous to me that only a few elites get to view the ocean from their homes on the coast and everyone else is shut out because no one is allowed to build the high-rises.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#156

Post by watwut »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #118
Freedom2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet per capita, US vehicle occupants are more likely to be injured in general while on the road than Europeans. Perhaps the driving standards are just far too different.

Per capita isn’t meaningful, try per mile.

In a discussion about city design, per capita matters.

That being said, EU is generally safer per km too.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#157

Post by djoldman »

mschuster91 wrote: post #126
djoldman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's not how they do it in Chicago. In Chicago, they concrete form the curb on site. https://blackhawkpaving.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Concr...

Oh good god. I can see that cracking all the way to Germany. Concrete surfaces need stress relief.

They put expansion gaps at regular intervals.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#158

Post by hnav »

slaw wrote: post #87
el_nahual wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people that don't watch the video (I don't even know if this is in the video): road wear is a function of axle weight to the fourth power . [0] That means a 6,000lb escalade creates 3x the road wear than a 4,500 wagoneer from 1990. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

one garbage truck - 40,000 pounds wears road 2000x than escalade.

I only need the garbage truck to do a run for me and a couple hundred others once a week. My Escalade is transporting me and maybe 1 other person on average 7 days a week.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#159

Post by scoofy »

amluto wrote: post #150
scoofy wrote: post #70

I have been a Strong Towns follower/member for about 6 years. I really don't think people realize the world of pain we're signing up for by not actually fixing the underlying problem of lack of density and walk-ability and their effect on the municipal budgets of American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns I know municipal finance is about as exciting socks for Christmas, but if the Strong Towns thesi…

> lack of density One interesting question: what is "density"? Is it number of people per road-mile? Number of households? Structures? Sales tax revenue? Property tax revenue? Property value per road mile? LA has somewhat insane property values right now, and by the metric of millions of dollars of residential value per road-mile, I think one might imagine the density to be sufficient to afford decent streets. Of cou…

The Strong Towns argument is effectively talking about density as tax-revenue per road mile liability, and trying to keep that positive. Areas with high liabilities (sewer, water, buried electric, fiber, etc.) need to have higher tax-revenue per mile (more people, more businesses, etc) to support that infrastructure.

There are other ways around this though. If you force your citizens to maintain their own septic and well water (or even small-pipe potable water), and have unsurfaced roads, then you can do with much less revenue-per-road mile.

The point is that the federal government usually pays for the infrastructure up from (as an "investment"), but when that subsidized infrastructure is a net money-loser in the long run, cities growing actually makes the problem worse.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#160

Post by watwut »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #152
Freedom2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet per capita, US vehicle occupants are more likely to be injured in general while on the road than Europeans. Perhaps the driving standards are just far too different.

Is that just because Americans spend a lot more time in their cars than Europeans do?

No, per km Europeans are safer. Road design is safer, cars are safer.
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