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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

#481

Post by CalRobert »

sien wrote: post #193
Gigachad wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If boomers want to continue driving, they can. Just make them pay for what they use. Work out the real market value for the space and charge for it.

Yep. The same should be done for public transport. In the US Farebox Recovery Ratios of 20% or less are common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_... Only 58% of fuel tax in Australia is spent on any kind of transport including rail. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being... Australians drive a similar amount to the US. From https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/11/13/h…

Similarly, all roads should be tolled.

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

#482

Post by throwaway2037 »

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 double decker buses are beloved.
Ehhh, no. Does anyone prefer buses stuck in traffic over a train? And if the buses are so great, why they build The Elizabeth Line (and dream to build the north-south equivalent)?

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

#483

Post by defrost »

jskrablin wrote: post #434
nox101 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should consider experiencing living in places with good non-automobile transportation. a few off the top of my head. Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, London Poor people in these cities don’t feel disadvantaged for not having a car. I fact most people in these cities don’t have a car regardless of income level lived with a car in California for 20yrs, Lived withou…

I don't want to live in a city. It's noisy, polluted, crowded and I really like my small countryside house with plenty of land around it. Lived in a city for 20 years, got fed up with it, despite all of the alleged 'advantages' it offers. I guess I don't deserve decent infrastructure in your world view?

You can have whatever local infrastructure yourself and your community can afford.

You can have whatever connection to the rest of your state your community and the state can afford and decide upon.

FWiW I've very much been there, I grew up in the most remote corner of a state 3x larger than Texas with a population (then) of under 1 million.

We graded our own airstrip, 150 km of road, maintained our own vehicles and aircraft, fed and managed our horses and camels, loaded and unloaded ships off the mud flats at low tide.

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

#484

Post by throwaway2037 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #261
languagehacker wrote: post #51

I just read Paved Paradise as well as The High Cost of Free Parking. This seems like the current gradual trend towards reversing the hidden subsidy for drivers, first by giving them less affordances at remarkably low prices or for free. A few folks in the comments have mentioned a couple of times that it doesn't make sense to make a policy like this without supporting transit. I believe the argument would be that not…

I believe the argument would be that not creating induced demand will provide market effects to encourage the use of transit, which would then create greater demand for improved transit. How does demand for public transit produce it? I mean public calls for more transit have been loud for many years and US politicians have taken that as opportunity to tax more and produce garbage transit construction project that enr…

Do you consider the DC Metro garbage and its recent Silver Line extension? People in seem quite pleased with their system.

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

#485

Post by CalRobert »

someguydave wrote: post #49
turnsout wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But induced demand shows that traffic will only increase… more lanes means you're waiting more.

That’s because people are waiting too long on other roads! There is a point where traffic will not increase as all the demand has been sated.

But it will increase. People move farther away ("this commute used to be bad but now there's another lane so I can live in a bigger house further out!"), businesses build "enough" parking so things are spread farther apart, and all of this increases the miles driven, thereby increasing traffic.

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

#486

Post by throwaway2037 »

CalRobert wrote: post #481
sien wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The same should be done for public transport. In the US Farebox Recovery Ratios of 20% or less are common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_... Only 58% of fuel tax in Australia is spent on any kind of transport including rail. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being... Australians drive a similar amount to the US. From https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/11/13/h…

Similarly, all roads should be tolled.

Interesting point. Why don't you think this is true in more highly developed countries? Two example come to mind: The "seal" you must buy in Suisse, and most high speed roads in Japan are rolled.

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

#487

Post by tsimionescu »

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…

The bottom line is that it is geometrically impossible to get everyone in a city to work by car. End of story.

You can lament all you want, but the difference in space between a car and an apartment/office building makes the problem you're discussing completely unsolvable.

So, if you really care about making everyone richer, the only question you can ask is how to improve public transit. Anything else is pure make-believe.

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

#488

Post by throwaway2037 »

epolanski wrote: post #354
sien wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The same should be done for public transport. In the US Farebox Recovery Ratios of 20% or less are common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_... Only 58% of fuel tax in Australia is spent on any kind of transport including rail. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being... Australians drive a similar amount to the US. From https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/11/13/h…

The dutch use bikes a lot. Like really a lot.

Most cities in the Nordics as well as Japan. I am always amazed at the crazy weather that people will ride through in Sweden and Finland!

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

#489

Post by tsimionescu »

osigurdson wrote: post #414
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…

Fully agree! Instead of bringing the middle class down, instead lift everyone up. The alternative is pure and irrational evil.

The alternative to good public transit for everyone is bad public transit for the majority and cars for a few.

You don't get to imagine an alternative like "cars for everyone", because it's simply not possible.

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

#490

Post by kortilla »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #280
troyvit wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Yep.[1] The governor is _trying_ to build comprehensive transit in Colorado[2], but between an incompetent transportation district and the difficulties of building public transit infrastructure to serve our metastatic urban sprawl makes public transit difficult to fund over cars.[3] Our state metro areas just re…

All they have to do is restart the old passenger rail system they had in the 40s. It connected the entire front range with salt lake and all the major cities in utah including park city, went down to santa fe in the south, and hit just about all the towns and ski resorts that were around at the time. Even the ones that are a little more annoying to get to today like aspen or telluride. What is even more tempting is t…

That system was slow and doesn’t solve the same problems. It’s competing with long range travel and all of those track routes were far slower than just driving.

The problems that Colorado faces are transportation within urban areas. Driving to salt lake and ski resorts isn’t an issue.

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