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In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

nytimes.com

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#401

Post by gcr »

mrangle wrote: post #378

Hardly anyone commenting, let alone policymakers with lifelong privilege and who are career incentivized to stay within a certain perspective, has significant if any experience taking the bus. I took the urban bus to and from school for years: at least 1.5 hours each way. Often two, with at least one transfer. Outside of the city center, reliance on buses is a massive poverty tax in terms of reduced quality of life.…

My dad lived in a Colorado suburb and took the bus to work. He saw firsthand how the bus deteriorates when bad policy doesn’t fund public transportation. When he retired in his sixties, he was running on the order of 50 miles a week or so for his morning commute.

Our governor adopted budget cuts that forced the public busses to run private ads, then called them an “eyesore.” People—especially poor people or families that don’t want to rely on cars — need reliable public transportation!

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#402

Post by DopplerSmell »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #392
mrangle wrote: post #378

Hardly anyone commenting, let alone policymakers with lifelong privilege and who are career incentivized to stay within a certain perspective, has significant if any experience taking the bus. I took the urban bus to and from school for years: at least 1.5 hours each way. Often two, with at least one transfer. Outside of the city center, reliance on buses is a massive poverty tax in terms of reduced quality of life.…

Are you open to the possibility that your particular experience with buses is not what all buses are or must be like? This is also sounds like an underfunded and sparse bus system. You can do buses right or you can do them poorly, same with anything. If you have a dense enough network that most people don't have to transfer, or enough frequency it doesn't matter, it makes a huge difference. Public transportation (and…

The biggest problem with public transport is usually the public.

Segregated services for commuters are great, but catching a bus to shop/recreation/restaurants is miserable and restrictive.

As as aside, developing mass transit always has the problem of being at the whim of the next political goal (subsidised bus routes especially). Roads are physical easy to understand, so less subject to political vs.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#405

Post by ColonelPhantom »

mrangle wrote: post #393
mtalantikite wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has never had a license and admittedly doesn’t know much about car costs, aren’t they expensive? Like how much is a car payment plus insurance every month? And then gas and maintenance? It seems like requiring car ownership to survive is also not great. But yeah I’m sorry your commute was so bad. No one should need to spend two hours on a bus commuting to school, that sounds like a failure of local pub…

Public transportation isn't exactly cheap when used every day. Then factor in your time and frustration. Nothing is as expensive as your time. Cars are amazing at their current cost, comparatively. And as I said, we should work on making them cheaper. Toward an ultimate goal of making everyone "richer". Which begins with reducing hidden poverty taxes like unavoidable multi-hour public transportation commutes. My ulti…

> Nothing is as expensive as your time.

Then public transport should be way cheaper than driving, as on transit you have some downtime where you can scroll through your phone, listen to some music, or perhaps even crack open your laptop if you're on a proper train. Driving requires constant attention, so you can't relax or do anything else in the meantime.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#406

Post by ColonelPhantom »

DopplerSmell wrote: post #402
Cheer2171 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you open to the possibility that your particular experience with buses is not what all buses are or must be like? This is also sounds like an underfunded and sparse bus system. You can do buses right or you can do them poorly, same with anything. If you have a dense enough network that most people don't have to transfer, or enough frequency it doesn't matter, it makes a huge difference. Public transportation (and…

The biggest problem with public transport is usually the public. Segregated services for commuters are great, but catching a bus to shop/recreation/restaurants is miserable and restrictive. As as aside, developing mass transit always has the problem of being at the whim of the next political goal (subsidised bus routes especially). Roads are physical easy to understand, so less subject to political vs.

> Roads are physical easy to understand

???

Yes, roads require less 'active upkeep', an austerity government might stop funding transit but they will not close roads. However, this is more of a feature of the supposed 'independence' of car transport, not 'easy to understand'.

In addition, defunding transit would be a lot harder and weirder if it is in a form that requires actual infrastructure (metro, train, tram) rather than some stops and a schedule (bus). That's one potential reason to trust bus transit projects less.

Do keep in mind that roads aren't free after construction either; they typically require pretty significant upkeep (especially things like repaving, but also e.g. traffic signals).

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#407

Post by pkulak »

mrangle wrote: post #378

Hardly anyone commenting, let alone policymakers with lifelong privilege and who are career incentivized to stay within a certain perspective, has significant if any experience taking the bus. I took the urban bus to and from school for years: at least 1.5 hours each way. Often two, with at least one transfer. Outside of the city center, reliance on buses is a massive poverty tax in terms of reduced quality of life.…

> That means cheaper and faster automotive transportation.

That is… extremely silly. You can’t make an inherently expensive activity cheap because you’d like it to be. Cars take up so much space that’s expensive to build and maintain. They crash into things and people constantly. The pollute the air, and they are extremely expensive to own and repair, with a total lifetime measured in a couple decades, if you’re lucky. That’s not getting cheap. It’s like saying that single family homes in Manhattan should be cheap, then everything will be better. Cars and mansions don’t fit in cities. They can’t be cheap!

Trains, my friend. We need trains. Busses first, but eventually trains.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#408

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #405
mrangle wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transportation isn't exactly cheap when used every day. Then factor in your time and frustration. Nothing is as expensive as your time. Cars are amazing at their current cost, comparatively. And as I said, we should work on making them cheaper. Toward an ultimate goal of making everyone "richer". Which begins with reducing hidden poverty taxes like unavoidable multi-hour public transportation commutes. My ulti…

> Nothing is as expensive as your time. Then public transport should be way cheaper than driving, as on transit you have some downtime where you can scroll through your phone, listen to some music, or perhaps even crack open your laptop if you're on a proper train. Driving requires constant attention, so you can't relax or do anything else in the meantime.

Scrolling through your phone is not exactly quality time. In general the time spent on any form of commuting is a net cost to be minimized.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#409

Post by osigurdson »

mrangle wrote: post #378

Hardly anyone commenting, let alone policymakers with lifelong privilege and who are career incentivized to stay within a certain perspective, has significant if any experience taking the bus. I took the urban bus to and from school for years: at least 1.5 hours each way. Often two, with at least one transfer. Outside of the city center, reliance on buses is a massive poverty tax in terms of reduced quality of life.…

>> No one who actually cares about society will be working to make it mirror the patterns of poverty

Great comment! This is an incredible way to put it.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#410

Post by rayiner »

pkulak wrote: post #407
mrangle wrote: post #378

Hardly anyone commenting, let alone policymakers with lifelong privilege and who are career incentivized to stay within a certain perspective, has significant if any experience taking the bus. I took the urban bus to and from school for years: at least 1.5 hours each way. Often two, with at least one transfer. Outside of the city center, reliance on buses is a massive poverty tax in terms of reduced quality of life.…

> That means cheaper and faster automotive transportation. That is… extremely silly. You can’t make an inherently expensive activity cheap because you’d like it to be. Cars take up so much space that’s expensive to build and maintain. They crash into things and people constantly. The pollute the air, and they are extremely expensive to own and repair, with a total lifetime measured in a couple decades, if you’re luck…

Cars fit in cities just fine. Just got back from Atlanta. Much nicer and cleaner and cheaper than New York City. The only problem is the pollution, which is fixed by EVs. The other stuff, like a few tens of thousands of deaths in car crashes a year, is vastly outweighed by the time saved by everyone else compared to even an excellent public transit system.

Trains are not the solution. Even the best train systems are much slower than point to point car transportation. When I go to Tokyo on business, I take Ubers, not the (excellent) train system, because cars are faster and more convenient. In Japan, 80% of households have a car. In Tokyo prefecture, there are about 40 cars per 100 households. In Osaka it’s 65 per 100.

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