A great idea. And they tried to do it only 110 years ago. The Pasadena CycleWay.

Say it ain't so, Joe!

Well...there IS life outside of BikeForums you know.

"It's a bad "fix", but I'm now in favor of building the biggest possible freeways so that we can ride our bikes in peace on the surface roads"

Sad to say I tend to agree with your position. Makes more sense than spending more than half our transportation money on public transit projects that are only ridden by 5%-15% of the public. Not building roads didn't help much in our state. We greatly increased our population while only building 10 miles of new State Highway in 10 years.

it's not a bad fix - it's not a fix at all.

Ya mean like life on Mars?

No - follow Denver's lead. We've voted to expand rail to all corners of the metro area. The recent much needed highway expansion included rail and transit solutions within the freeway corridor, and added bus connections to remote buildings of the southeast office parks. Of course not everyone uses it but it works. The rail lines run smoothly in all weather. The freeway looks sleek and sexy with new flyovers and has combined exits into old neigbhorhoods, eliminating a bit a street traffic and highway backups. Commuters ride it with their bikes, it's easy to get between the SW and SE burbs and downtown, and it's always packed during rush hour. That equals success

Pics here and here and here

You just don't get optimism like that any more.

Wait, yes, you do:

Then you can move next door to the Trans Texas Corridor
https://ttc.keeptexasmoving.com/about/

This will dwarf event the largest part of the 401.

Sometimes I just have to wonder... how we could have been so utterly shortsighted in the way we laid out infrastructure in this country. I am beginning to wonder if it is just human nature - not that that would be an excuse!

The proper solution is to build affordable and appropriate housing that is close to the jobs so people don't have to drive 70 miles just to get to work. And I mean something that people would actually like to live in, not the dreary Proletariat Worker housing proposed by the Bauhaus.

Isn't it possible that it's backwards to house people close to their jobs, rather than create jobs close to their homes? I mean, sure, you could do it either way, but your way says something about the attitude of the primacy of work vs. life.

c'mon all, be honest...

as a country, we want what we got and we got what we want. to this day, the average person is willing, or even wants, to commute a long way, for whatever reason. lots of my coworkers can live close, and relocated from elsewhare to have their job here, and there's lots of nice palces very clsoe to work, but they want to live at least 20-25 miles away "to get some distance from work".

I can't argue with that, cause it's illogical

Are you sure that "to get some distance from work" isnt' just some poor rationalization? I guess for some it is nice not to be close enough to work to be easily on call to come in.
They sold our building and we are consolidating back down to Irving and most people I know are very excited because it is shortening their commute because they original bought their house when they worked in Irving before they moved us here. My wife's commute is 1.4 miles to the office but one hundred feed out of our driveway to her patrol area and she loves it.

I can see how people don't mind the commute. Unless I sat down and analyzed it back when I had a 2 1/2+ hour commute each way it was just part of life. I rode an hour to the train into NYC and then walked across town to work. That was my entire week for 2+ years. Couldn't find another job though at >50% of the pay and I certainly couldn't afford to live in NYC.

I fear that Trans Texas Corridor 50 year+ project.

Any neighborhood that does not have matching numbers of jobs and residences should be taxed to pay for public transit. Parking spaces should also be taxed to pay for public transit.

hehe - they are. we're taxed, and roads are built with the tax money.
i belive the interstates are built with Fed money under some weird justification in the Defense Dept, and the rest are state/local. Smile when you pay sales, property, and state income tax: it goes to pave roads.

not in this case... these are professionals who are married to their work anyway, come in on weekends, etc.

for some i can understand it, cause they travel a a lot. they live 1/2 way between work & the airport. Makes more sense.

The only problem with that reasoning is that "we" aren't some kind of monolithic body of gerbils who all want the same thing. We got what a few powerful people wanted, a few more clever people figured out how to market, rather more were convinced to vote for and many more to roll over and accept. It doesn't mean that "we" wanted it.

That says something too, about the nature of work as an onerous burden that eats your life rather than something we can take pride and satisfaction in.

I have a dream of a community that's based on a few simple principles:

1. Work within your community.
2. By preference, share and reuse rather than consume
3. School is not for children, work is not for adults -- both are for everyone.

...which I could expand on, but this isn't really the place. But you know, it does get my back up when people talk about how changing from a car-centric society is impossible. First of all, it's only impossible if you accept certain premises that are not inherently part of the human condition, and second, the change is inevitable. There isn't enough petroleum in the world for things to continue as they are. It is going to come to an end some day. On that day, the ones who said it was impossible to live any other way are going to collapse into little jellylike bags of protoplasm over the sheer impossibility of it, and the rest of us will keep on functioning.