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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

#491

Post by throwaway2037 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #190
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 Induced demand is a concept that anti-car people use, but I don't think it makes much sense. Imagine a library that only has a few copies of some best selling children's books. There's a very long queue to check out those books. Someone might argue that, "We should buy more copies of the bes…

From my personal experience, growing up, people used the term induced demand in a strictly negative sense to describe road expansion plans. Then I lived in cities as an adult where new metro lines opened. The effect is real! Whole neighborhoods would get much more foot traffic after a new station opens. In this case, most people would describe the induced demand as positive.

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

#492

Post by throwaway2037 »

thefaux wrote: post #204
rufus_foreman wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I believe the argument would be that not creating induced demand will provide market effects to encourage the use of transit Induced demand is a concept that anti-car people use, but I don't think it makes much sense. Imagine a library that only has a few copies of some best selling children's books. There's a very long queue to check out those books. Someone might argue that, "We should buy more copies of the bes…

This is a flawed analogy and I think there is a false dichotomy by framing skepticism around building more highways as inherently anti-car. I'm going to go out on a limb and say most drivers do not enjoy traffic and most residents near busy roadways do not enjoy the effects of traffic on their neighborhood. The question is what is the best policy approach that manages all people's concerns. For me, the question is ho…

Yeah, I agree. Most built up areas in California are horribly planned!

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

#493

Post by detourdog »

slyall wrote: post #374
detourdog wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it so forward thinking as to be unrealistic. I hear what you are saying but my town is more or less in accessible and a suburb to know where. We don't uber and taxi's after dark should be considered ahead of time. We have minimal mass transit system that essentially connects towns together. If we ever get train service from a metropolitan city I could see it. Currently I see the people demanding reduced pa…

If your town has just has 2500 people then it should be 5-10 minutes walk/bike from anywhere to anywhere. No need for a car for most journeys.

The area of the town is around 43 square miles. The houses are not near the grocery stores.

New England towns used to be very neighborhood centric. Our town used to have 14 schools because everyone had to walk to school. Our schools have been centralized and now require busing.

Walkability used to be a thing but no longer. Off street parking is convenient during snow removal.

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

#494

Post by kortilla »

Maarten88 wrote: post #297
s1artibartfast wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax haul for 10 houses are better than a 10 unit complex. The people also want houses opposed to apartments (hence the higher price). This seems to be an ideological conflict where some people are trying to force everyone else into options they dont want- why? The solution seems simple. relax zoning where it exists and let people who want to live in tiny urban apartments do so, and let people who want to live in subu…

> Tax haul for 10 houses are better than a 10 unit complex. I thought is is pretty well established that in US cities, poorer and denser neighborhoods are subsidizing the richer suburbs, tax-wise. Because 10 houses need 10 of everything, paid for by taxes: street pavement, sewer, water, electricity, internet, etc. A 10 unit complex needs only one. It all needs maintenance too, starting some 25 years after being built…

Sewer, water, and electricity hookups are cheap to maintain and are on the burden of the home owner to repair. The initial hookups and construction are absolutely not covered by taxes (this is one of the significant costs you will find out when you build on a plot).

Street pavement is the only thing you mentioned that does cost the tax base, but how much the poor dense area subsidizes the suburbs is completely dependent on the split of funds. In many of the suburban sprawl regions of the western US, the dense urban city (e.g. San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, LA) has a small jurisdiction and the suburbs are in completely different legal cities with their own road budgets.

>cities, poorer and denser neighborhoods are subsidizing the richer suburbs, tax-wise.

Definitely not well established. What you might be thinking of is poor dense neighborhoods subsidizing rural areas that depend heavily on federal or state grants for pretty much all of their infrastructure.

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

#495

Post by Aunche »

rayiner wrote: post #410
pkulak wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Atlanta is barely a city compared to New York or Tokyo. New York City is 8 times denser. Tokyo is even denser if you're just counting the special wards, which is what most people think of as Tokyo. You need trains to alleviate the traffic unless if you want to end up with worse traffic than LA.

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

#496

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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…

One solution would be a large fleet of cheap electric self-driving taxis. With current pace of AI development, that could be just 10-20 years away.

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

#497

Post by tonynator »

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…

[flagged]

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

#498

Post by gonzo41 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #496
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…

One solution would be a large fleet of cheap electric self-driving taxis. With current pace of AI development, that could be just 10-20 years away.

or you know, trains and trams and busses.

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

#499

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #377
bsder wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frequency is also terrible. This is almost completely the issue. If I can count on a bus every 10 minutes, I will take a bus. If I can't just hop off a bus and back on the next because of long time intervals, I won't take a bus because I know something will go wrong and waste a huge chunk of my time. The political problem is that you need to keep a bunch of empty buses running continuously in order to change the be…

I just checked the bus stop near my parents' place in Miami (I'm living in NYC now). The next bus arrives in 14 hours lol. Busses for that stop run hourly between 11am-4pm. I don't get how they think anyone can depend on that. Not only is an hour between busses incredibly frustrating, if I needed to do anything past 4pm, (like I don't know... commute to work?) I would have no way back home until the next day.

I think in such places it makes sense for a municipality to pay for Uber rides for residents, instead of maintaining bus routes.

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

#500

Post by tonynator »

nox101 wrote: post #455
jskrablin wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, you don’t. plain and simple. Tons of people living together share the costs. the few in the suburbs need to pay for their own infra. They’re not now. The cities are subsidizing the suburbs. that’s not fair. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

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