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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

#571

Post by amanaplanacanal »

tonynator wrote: post #497
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…

[flagged]

Of course they do! They are terrific when other people are paying most of the costs.

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

#572

Post by slyall »

detourdog wrote: post #561
slyall wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it isn't really a town except in name. More like a densely settle old farming area. Where I'm from (New Zealand) a 2500 person town would be 1/4 acre suburban sections with wide streets surrounding some shops. eg this place: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcHRLi9HjNiuMsvc6

New England towns are 100s of years old. My town was considered the gateway to the west as it is the last town in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. The town was developed around walking but our modern infrastructure has eliminated the practicalities. My only point is that parking minimums shouldn’t be thought of as universal solution.

If you are talking about Williamstown then even though it is spread out it looks fairly cyclable. At least distance-wise.

There is even a big shared carpark for the built-up area so individual shops don't need to provide parking.

Whereas in North Adams the aerial view shows the (I assume mandated) carparks are pretty empty. I'll bet a few landlords would love to have more buildings and less carparks

Remember when you say "our modern infrastructure has eliminated the practicalities" you pretty much mean everything is designed for cars.

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

#573

Post by amanaplanacanal »

DopplerSmell wrote: post #422
ColonelPhantom wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) ra…

I have seen many public transport systems privatised and worsened over time; since there are many ways to play with funding and quality, you can hide a whole lot of bullshit. Frequency, hours, cleaning, security, ticket price, and maintenance... It can be unclear why a service is declining or who is accountable. That's what I mean by easier to understand. Roads are public in a way that introducing a toll on an existi…

From my experience most people have no understanding of how road maintenance works. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people say they refuse to pay more taxes, after all they won’t even fix the potholes in our roads!

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

#574

Post by amanaplanacanal »

TomK32 wrote: post #527
gcr wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just poor people who don't want to rely on cars but also those too young to have a license, or momentarily too sick or simply too old to drive safely and of course those with suspended licenses for whatever reason. Mobility should be a right for everyone, not just car owners.

Yep. People who can’t drive is big chunk of the population, which people who can drive just don’t see. Estimates are around 30%.

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

#575

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

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.

The next bus is loud, uncomfortable, slow, filled with other people you don't want to share space with, stops every 2 minutes, and doesn't go where you want. The bus is run by a government that doesn't care what you want, and probably is either more expensive than you want, or basically "free".

Transit systems need to be about twice as fast, comfortable and convenient as car options to be competitive, and in the US political and operating environment of the last 100 years, it's not happening. Suburbs broke two major rent-seeking dominances-- urban property owners AND transit unions. Together those actors preserve a terrible experience and the path to a car-free future is doubtful precisely because it would require overcoming those social groups in addition to solving major technical and capital problems.

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

#576

Post by pclmulqdq »

ohmyiv wrote: post #412
fragmede wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculat... doesn't agree with that. It says cost of living in San Diego is almost 40% lower than living in Manhattan. it pulls from ACCRA.

It really depends on where in San Diego the other person lived. A lot of people will say San Diego instead of whatever little city they live in in the area. La Jolla is probably a better comparison to Manhattan Island. The average home price in La Jolla is over $2M, which I think is closer to Manhattan. It still shouldn't be higher than Manhattan, but pretty damn close. San Diego would probably be better compared to…

I would assume that in LA Jolla, that $2 million gets you a medium-sized house. In Manhattan, it buys you a one- or two-bedroom condo with a high condo fee.

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

#577

Post by lumb63 »

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…

It seems to me that most people will not be willing to lower their standard of traveling to the extent required by public transit in most places in the US, even if travel by car becomes very difficult. The gap is simply too wide.

I live in the Boston area and commute by car. My commute by car (despite the recent closure of a lane on the most heavily trafficked road on my commute, for no reason other than to not have it) is between 25 and 45 minutes. The fastest I can pull it off by public transit is an hour, with a long tail up to 1h20m or more in case of shutdowns, etc. I’d gladly take public transit if I could even meet my worst-case commute time consistently, but the worsening of my life by doubling my average commute time far outweighs the benefit of being a little greener and not having to pay attention to driving during my commute.

In other areas of the economy we wouldn’t consider inducing demand for alternative remedies by making the way average person operates worse. It becomes quite dystopian in my opinion. For instance, one could argue that too many people are seeking healthcare rather than pursuing lifestyle changes to improve their health, due to the availability of healthcare, so we should shut down hospitals. Or one could argue that the presence of housing induces demand for housing and so we should stop building new houses while providing no additional place for people to live. That will just create homelessness and/or very expensive housing. Both of these solutions will lower demand, but in a quite painful way for many people.

To me the solution which makes far more sense is to build improved public transit and people will naturally gravitate toward it, reducing demand for roads/cars, AND their quality of life will improve. For instance, if Boston expanded the MBTA with the long-sought-after urban ring project [1], my commute would reduce to perhaps 30-35 minutes by train. At that point it would be an absolute no brainer for me to switch all my commutes to public transit.

This is a rare situation where almost everyone really can win. Easier, cheaper, faster, greener travel. I don’t see why people argue for an approach where the majority of people lose.

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

#578

Post by Jensson »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #274
Jensson wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What am I missing here? That downtown is now a concrete hellscape instead of a pleasant place to be. Your solution ensures that always happens, overall people prefer less infrastructure built for cars, but if it is there of course they will use it.

This just isnt true. Every metro area in the US has highways. Including the dense ones. NYC and Chicago are not concrete hellscapes

You say NYC and Chicago has enough highways to fill demand so there is no congestion? I am fairly certain that isn't true, I've read so much about congestion problems in NYC at least. Adding enough roads to fill all demand leads to concrete hellscapes, that was the point, the guy I responded to thought it was reasonable to add roads until all demand was satisfied.

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

#579

Post by pclmulqdq »

jusssi wrote: post #540
tbrownaw wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be that hard to make it better (for a decent fraction of people) for specific things, like say commuting or nightlife. It would be very hard to make it better for, say, picking up DIY supplies at the hardware store.

The hardware store probably has a delivery service, because not everyone has a van or a pickup for those 2x4s. But if you DIY big stuff often enough for that to be a factor to consider, you're probably not the target group anyway. Just like people who need to drive 800 miles without a stop every other week aren't the target group for current EVs.

Is this a hypothetical future hardware store delivery service that enables a bus? No hardware store I have seen has a delivery service. I do a fair amount of gardening, and while most garden stores (not hardware stores, dedicated stores for landscaping and gardening) have the capability to deliver, it is always a very expensive service ($50-100 for a trip of less than 5 miles).

Most cars can fit a few 8' 2x4s as well as several bags of bulk dirt, and what hardware stores often have is a cutting service that lets you make those 2x4s shorter for transit. None of those would fit on a bus.

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

#580

Post by Jensson »

basil-rash wrote: post #376
Jensson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think public transit is full of drunkards? Its mostly tired people getting to or from work, those doesn't harass a lot of people. When its late and its a lot of drunks on public transit sure, but not on normal commutes. Columns I've read from women getting harassed its mostly about dance floors at clubs, not commute trains, when people aren't drunk they mostly keep their hands to themselves.

Where do you live and what is your background that you think the only way a man might harass a woman is if he is drunk?

That is true everywhere, drunk or affected men are overwhelmingly more likely to harass women than sober men are. Subways here in Europe are full of pretty women, they don't go out of their way to take a car any more than men are, when I count gender on subways there are usually more women than men.

When was the last time you saw women avoid grocery stores because they are afraid of getting harassed? Well used public transit is that level, it isn't something women worry much about compared to many other much larger threats. There is no reason at all for public transit to be worse in terms of harassment than grocery stores are, its just that USA choose to let their public transit become shit.

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