MEversbergII

You could very well be correct, but that's true for any plan really.

M.

Dahon.Steve

My three solutions were "Free Market" ideas that had potential if they were legal. However, a solution to this problem, will have to come from the free market. The key is to get more money in the hands of Millennials so they can make expensive purchases. Traditional marketing methods have proven ineffective so the long term solution is finding a way millennials can economically buy expensive cars.

I suppose the government can spend billions (raise taxes) to help young adults buy new cars but then the prices go up each year and so must the subsidy. Also, the Cash for Klunkers program went through 1 billion dollars in a single month. This is completely unaffordable for the long and short term.

I guess we're over thinking this because there is no goverment or free market solution to this problem.

loky1179

Another thing that may impact the attitudes of Millennials is simply the state of our road system. The interstate highway system was built over a long period starting in the 1950s; it was proclaimed to be complete in 1992. The attitude during those times was that we were improving our road system.

Now, however, we have a generation that has grown up with a road system that is essentially entirely built out. There aren't going to be "new" roads that are going to fix our transportation problems.

The changes this generation has seen is more and more traffic on those existing roads. This makes automobile trips less and less attractive, as traffic becomes worse.

There are plenty of places in the Minneapolis area where traffic comes to a standstill on a daily basis. But the idea that we are going to "expand" these roads to accommodate that traffic is simply not an option. It is too expensive, and ultimately doesn't solve the problem.

People today correctly see that automobile transport in metropolitan areas is only going to get worse over time. It makes sense to try and avoid this.

Roody

Ironically, the congestion problem could self-correct: if enough people quit driving because of traffic, the congestion would no longer be a problem. Would the people then start driving again and re-create the problem?

Personally, I would prefer to experiment with less car capacity in selected high congestion areas. Convert some car lanes to bike lanes and light rail tracks. I think this might reduce congestion if enough people switch from cars to bikes and transit for at least some trips.

MEversbergII

I can't say I've ever lived in a place where traffic gets really bad, but my area does have it's problems. As the base here gets more involved in stuff, they bring in new personnel. Some of these guys commute from out of county, some from out of state and some live somewhere around the county. On the way in, traffic can get a bit dicey, but it gets worse at the evening rush hour.

The biggest artery could conceivably be expanded in the "outbound" direction, but you'd have to remove sidewalks and could potentially find yourselves rather close to extant buildings. Also, a good stretch of it drops off into a gully just beyond the sidewalk - you'd have to do all kinds of work to level it out I'm sure.

The inbound route is probably next to impossible to expand; you'd have to knock down businesses. In theory there's a new route coming in that runs parallel to this extant roadway but looking at satalite photos of the area, I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. The plan will be linking several existing residential roads which, unless they're planning tunnels or brides, would require a number of houses and part of a corporate office to be knocked down.

The other road, which I live on, can't expand either. Primarily because you'd have to knock down basically ALL the businesses (this road, and really the town was "laid down" in the 40's & 50's) along a three mile stretch. This is everything from convenience stores to corporate offices. They redid the sidewalks and put in medians a number of years back but unfortunately can't lay any bike lanes (still fighting for more markings, though). This area is supposed to be redone up as a more walkable neighborhood, so I doubt any expansion work will be done there.

I figure it'll get worse until something causes a collapse, probably a lot of angry workers.

Now, this redevelopment plan is supposed to include a parking garage just outside the base. I don't fully understand what it is for, though. There's lots of empty parking spaces not very far from where they're building it (in a plaza that used to be pretty key, but has long since stopped being as such). Further, the buses here aren't great and likely wont be improving. There's also no rail, though there has been support for linking this area to existing hubs further north (which will have it's own special hell, similar to expanding the roads).

M.

Rowan

The old bicyclist saying "One Less Car on the Road" has yet to really translate into reality. There are now more cars on Hobart's roads than there ever were, yet there are more people riding to and from work than there ever were. And the population has only increased by 1000 in the past year or so.

The issue with your second point is that there has to be a preparation to provide the alternative service. The rail system in Melbourne has been swamped with people who are using it much more as a commuting tool, but there is little room for increasing the capacity of the system without hugely significant infrastructure investment either in rolling stock or expansion of lines.

And right now, despite the efforts of some in government, infrastructure is a pretty difficult thing to get up and going. The costs are really high, so investment either means higher taxes or trying to find private finance in a field that has not performed particularly well (companies running toll roads and rail line going bust, for example).

So, here are the options. Leave people sitting in their cars complaining almost in silence about the delays as they inch forward at peak hour; or have them swamp existing services and complain loudly about trains and trams that don't run on time and are overcrowded; or invest trillions of dollars in expanding current public transport options only to see the traffic situation on the road remain unchanged because new drivers will fill the spaces.

As a by the by, the Metro here that runs bus services, is now considering deleting some bus routes and services in and around the city simply because the buses run empty most of the time.

contango 

The thing is the free market needs the freedom to hire and fire based on changing circumstances. Nobody is going to buy or lease an expensive car unless they have confidence they'll have a job for long enough to make the repayments on it. To say you can have a job as long as you agree to lease a car within the first six months doesn't change that, unless you've got some way of guaranteeing job security. The free market can't do that and if you're going to guarantee someone a secure job through central government diktat you might as well just buy them the car to prop the industry.

The bottom line is that unless we want to live in a society that is based on total redistribution and centralised management we have to accept that things go in cycles.

contango 

In the UK some cities are introducing "park and ride" schemes, where you drive to the outskirts and park, then ride the bus into town.

They seem to work reasonably well, but if you're disabled or needing to carry anything particularly heavy or bulky they start to fall down.

The biggest issue with public transport is that if you do need to carry anything heavy or bulky you're pretty much on your own. Few public transport systems have the capacity to deal with it.

Walter S

It would be interesting to figure out what the impact would be, if the only people driving in the city were disabled people or people with heavy bulk items. I'd venture to say, a truly dramatic change for the better. 90% of the cars off the road?

contango 

It would certainly be interesting to see. Of course "heavy" and "bulky" are very subjective terms, and in fairness to the bus companies it's difficult to provide storage for luggage without leaving the seating unusable. It would certainly be good to get a lot of the cars off the road, but I don't think 90% is accurate. A lot of traffic in UK towns is passing through rather than stopping. We always have issues where towns choke with through traffic and people want Something To Be Done, but when a bypass is proposed the eco warriors and NIMBYs are up in arms because they are unhappy about the route.

A small village near where I grew up was complaining about the number of heavy lorries using the main trunk route that runs roughly north-south through the village. So a bypass was proposed to the east of the village. Needless to say the local landowners didn't want a bypass to the east, so another proposal appeared to run the bypass to the west. The landowners to the west disliked that idea. So quite what solution people expected was unclear, other than the usual Fix My Problems and Let Someone Else Deal With It.

B. Carfree

San Francisco, the second most densely-packed city in the U.S., has had a different experience. Traffic density has gone down in spite of population increases in both The City and it's metro area as a result of the nascent bike boomlet of the last decade and an increase in mass transit. (Some of that mass transit increase is private buses for the tech sector (mostly Millennials) who ride from SF to Silicon Valley.)
Downtown traffic seems worse, but studies show it moves faster - SFGate

Smallwheels

I've read a few posts that mention the free market. I love the free market. It is a great concept. It doesn't exist. I can't buy a small (tiny) house because government regulations prevent it. That props up the real estate industry.

I can't live in an RV on the streets or in a driveway. I can't live in a shed behind somebody's house. I can't pitch a tent and live in it on public property. There is a woman in Florida who was given an eviction notice because she didn't have a water line connected to it. She decided to live without it and the government tried to steal her house. The government probably would prevent me from building my own house without electricity. Somehow that would violate some other code.

I've read news stories that some local governments fine people for turning their front yards into vegetable gardens.

I can't buy a tiny inexpensive car because regulations protect the big industries. It is legal for me to buy and ride a motorcycle. So the safety argument just doesn't work.

I can't buy certain vitamin products because they are banned. The government protects the drug industry.

There is no free market. For as long as there have been politicians who take money from business owners the free market has not existed. I didn't really know that for a really long time. When I was wise enough to observe the truth I understood why the nation is in such trouble. There are millions upon millions of people who aren't this wise. They still believe there is a free market system in the USA. They still trust government. They still believe that their votes count and that they really do have choices at the voting booth.

There are really only a couple of real ways to vote these days. You can not spend your money on certain things, and you can move. Some might say that the free market will provide things that people really want to buy. That would be true if competition were allowed to exist.

I honestly would like to try traveling around the country and living in a tent. I can't afford it because I would be forced to stay in expensive campgrounds. There aren't enough safe water sources for me to survive such a lifestyle without being connected to cities. Camping legally near roads would be impossible.

There are a lot of examples of limitations to the free market that could explain why there are fewer young people buying cars and even driving cars. Electronic communication devices and home entertainment devices certainly play a part in this situation. If there were a free market you can bet cars and insurance would cost much less than they do today.

tandempower

I didn't say "car companies" but rather "automotive economic interests" are undermining carfree developments. It's not that there's some kind of active conspiracy going on. It's just a cultural attitude that goes something like, "every time any individual shifts from driving and/or owning a personal motor-vehicle to taking transit or a bicycle, automotive businesses lose money, jobs, etc." As if the purpose of human transit was to provide revenue and income to these businesses instead of the reverse. I think it is also inherent in the attitude of 'stop-loss' toward auto-makers that everyone should buy motor-vehicles because it creates jobs and GDP growth to do so. It's all very narrow, short-sighted economic thinking but it seems to resonate more than the longer-term perspective that economic reforms that leave less people driving would ultimately make for a better and more prosperous economy. I'm not exactly sure what combination of factors leads to this staunch oppositionality toward reducing personal motor-vehicle usage but it's not that hard to generalize it as being the product of "automotive economic interests," since that term could include everything from the mentality that automotive spending is good because it stimulates spending-driven GDP growth to the idea that everyone driving around in cars makes for more shopping and more commerce because people spend less time getting around and more at their destinations, etc etc. Transit and even cycling are associated with lower levels of affluence in this mindset so they resist it as some kind of societal transition toward communism/socialism/impoverishment. Maybe they just personally feel more important when they're driving in a car than if they would walk or ride a bike. Whatever the case, there seems to be a widespread mental block against seeing that a shift away from ubiquitous driving would be good for everyone, including those who continue to drive, including the economy, etc. I think the cognitive framework most responsible for this way of thinking is economic interest but I know there is some purely cultural logic at work as well.

Roody

About the lady with no water, what did she do with her, ahem, waste? There really are good reasons for some of the regulations you mentioned!

As for tent camping, the national forests and state forests do have primitive campsites that cost less than the bigger campgrounds in parks. I have camped at sites that were totally private and located in awesome areas. Some of them you hike to and some you can drive to.

Weatherby

The lack of free market sets interest rates artificially low and the quest of the McMansion in the suburbs ruins our once tranquil cycling roads as these disgusting employed individuals then commute BY CAR to the free phone zones, soon to be free car zone or should that be car-free zones.

mrtuttle04

If the millennials are single and live in the city that might be true. HOwever, when they get married and move to the suburbs, they will be buying two vehicals, one for them to drive to work and and the other an SUV for ther spouse to drive around the children.

Smallwheels

It has been a few weeks since I read the story. A woman decided she didn't want to be connected to the water service or electric service. She canceled them. Somehow a local news crew did a story about the lady who wasn't connected to the grid and showed it on the news. A day or so later a public employee came to give notice to her that she was living in an unsafe house.

Eventually this got to court. The battle was about international regulations that decided what consisted of a safe dwelling. Since these regulations weren't actually created in the USA she won her case but the judge ordered her to reconnect to the water supply. His order had no basis in law. How can a judge rule that the international regulations have no force yet order the lady to connect to the water supply? Something is fishy about this.

It was later found that the lady was using the toilet in her house. I suppose she was using the rain water she captured. Florida has a lot of that. She had been doing this for about a year. The government fined her $35,000 or something like that because she wasn't paying for the sewage service. Is anybody's water bill or sewage bill $35,000 per year?

This lady started living off the grid to save money because for some reason she needed to do it. I don't recall why. She just wanted to save money. An attorney took her case pro bono because he felt she was being treated unfairly. I hope he is still helping her.
================

I've read about camping on public Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. It is still free but in the last year the government has reinterpreted the regulation about maximum stay times. It is written that anybody can stay for 14 days and must relocate after that time. This meant that one could stay on BLM land indefinitely just as long as one would move every 14 days. Now they are interpreting this as one must prove that one has a permanent dwelling somewhere else or they consider you squatting on BLM land and will not allow more than 14 days camping time in total. They will fine anybody they believe is using BLM land as their permanent residence. This means that anybody camping on BLM land must tell the rangers that they have a home somewhere else if they are ever asked, whether it is true or not. Otherwise they will be fined and possibly arrested

Campgrounds aren't always within a reasonable distance of where I would want to be. If I traveled via bicycle I certainly couldn't always make the distance to the next one within a day and at the same time stop at places I wanted to see. Doing this in a car would make it easier but the same thing would apply. This is why I'm intending to do this in a van. There are other ways to do this but the van is the most logical so far.

The housing industry is also noticing that there are fewer buyers that are young. Regulations that prevent small affordable dwellings and smaller apartment sizes are also to blame for this.

Spld cyclist

Just a pet peeve of mine. "Free market" as an economic term does NOT mean "free from government regulation," even though a lot of people use it that way.

It means a market that is free to follow the law of supply and demand, which can occur when:

- There are many buyers and sellers of a product.

- Buyers and sellers have complete and correct information about the prices being charged for the product.

- No seller is big enough to set the price for the whole market.

- No buyer is big enough to set the price for the whole market.

- Products are homogeneous. (i.e. competing products are similar enough to be interchangeable).

There are other conditions, but these are the bigger ones.

Looking at the list, it's easy to see that there aren't a whole lot of products that operate in true free markets, but the law of supply and demand works tolerably well for a lot of things.

Sometimes government regulations make markets *more* free, like antitrust regulations that prevent or break up monopolies.

I get your point that government regulations impact our choices, it's just that "free market" isn't the right term for what you're describing.

Spld cyclist

Mortgage rates are actually set by the market. The Federal Reserve has encouraged low mortgage rates by lowering the "floor." They make it cheaper for banks to borrow money in the short term, which allows banks to offer mortgages at lower rates and still make money. Beyond that, each bank is free to charge what they want for mortgage rates. However, if a bank set a 10% rate for prime borrowers, they wouldn't get any business because all the borrowers would go to banks charging 4.5% or less. If banks weren't going to make money at 4.5%, they wouldn't offer loans at that price. They would love to charge more, but by charging more they don't get as many customers. That's the market working.

Some borrowers will do the opposite thing you described anyway. They will use a lower interest rate and buy a more expensive property near a city center, meaning that they will live closer to work and use the roads less. But real estate is market-driven, so city sellers will charge a little more for their properties. Then suburban sellers will charge a little more for their properties. But demand is still low by historical standards, so the market doesn't allow prices to go up as much as either group of sellers would wish.

When the Fed tightens up on credit some day, interest rates will go up and real estate prices will go down, all thanks to markets.

Edit: Oops, Weatherby, I'm not trying to pick on you today - I just saw your message and it interested me....

ro-monster

Why do you assume they actually will get married and move to the suburbs? Now that it's rare for one person to earn enough to support a family without a second income, there's little practical incentive to marry -- it was, after all, a method to ensure that the mother and offspring would be provided for in the days when women were discouraged from earning money. And there has for many years been a trend toward people marrying later in life. The model of the nuclear family in the suburbs that American society pictures as normal is a short-term anomaly, if you look at the composition of households over a larger historical timeline. Technology is changing the structure of the economy and culture, so it seems illogical to suppose that the patterns of the past 2 or 3 generations will simply continue as they were.

Roody

Probably the fact that millennials are driving less is a trivial footnote. The big story is that they're not having babies.

mrtuttle04

This is not an argument over marriage or what a household will look like in 20 years. Regardless if they get married or not most people move out of the city and after they have children and even if they still live in the city they buy a car if it is economically feasible. If someone does not have children, they may never own a car but there family will be extinct after one generation.

Spld cyclist

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Is the "white flight" tide still pushing people out of the cities, or has it turned? In recent decades, young people moving into cities were swimming against the tide. There was an expectation that they would return to the suburbs. But we may be seeing a change where a lot of people who have a choice may choose to stay.

In my case, the only thing that would have pushed us out of the center city was schools. We bought a house before we had kids in a nice neighborhood in a city that has more than its fair share of problems. It's really quite a good place to live and it was far more affordable and closer to work, meaning that I could bike to work in nice weather and take the bus in bad. The lower price relative to the suburbs meant that only one of us had to work when our kids were little. It was really the best choice for us, but we dreaded the school situation. Luckily, we won the "charter school lottery" and we're happy to stay. We know others here who feel the same way - don't want to move, but feel they need to for the schools. I think making city schools work again is the biggest piece missing that will make the tide turn and make the middle class return to the city for the advantages it has. Of course, fixing the schools is the hard part....

mrtuttle04

This is a bike forum and not the appropriate place for this comment. I suggest you take your ranting to the political forum.

Roody

That's rich, since you're the one who started this side conversation. You seem to be a new moderator, maybe you haven't finished reading the handbook.