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Sprawl-free vs. car-free

Old 06-26-14, 05:42 AM
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Originally Posted by Roody
Who tries to cross? I guess somebody who wants to get to the other side.is that not allowed in your free travel world?

As for overpasses, look again at the highway you supposedly just checked on Google Maps. There is not a pedestrian overpass within three miles of the Lansing Mall. There are also very few sidewalks.

A little girl was killed near there while walking to school on a high speed road that lacked sidewalks. She was hit by a police car. The officer was exonerated because there was no way she could have avoided hitting the girl. This was because there was no sidewalk so the girl walked 1/2 mile from her home to school in the gutter of the highway.

Some people might call that an acceptable loss of life, since no motorists were impeded.

Was that little girl deprived of her right to travel freely? If sidewalks and bike lanes were put on that highway, and a slower speed limit were enforced, motorists might have to add a couple minutes to their commute time. Would that deprive them of their right to travel freely?
Just curious-not up for a fight this am-but what was next to the gutter?
Could the child have walked NEXT to the road?

And the parents guardians of the child ?? They knew their child was walking home in the gutter of a highway?
There must be a bit more to this ?

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Old 06-26-14, 06:11 AM
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Originally Posted by phoebeisis
Just curious-not up for a fight this am-but what was next to the gutter?
Could the child have walked NEXT to the road?

Last year I made a bad choice-niece's wedding was in quarter-
Son and I went to wedding-parked in paid parking-
but I didn't want to stay for hours at reception-so put the bike in the back of the car(ride home would be 10-11 miles-maybe an hour).
Stupidly I decided to take the shortest route home)once I got to the edge of NOLA (4.5 miles vs maybe 5.5 miles miles
Earhart Expressway- 50 mph limit-but most folks do 65mph-side of road was bulldozer tracked high grass and debris-long miserable un-nerving ride
And I had 2 alternate routes- much slower traffic- and but wider shoulders-BUT unlimited access 1960'S SUBURBAN MAIN DRAGS- and an extra mile.

I added the above to show I understand how a child could make a poor choice on where to walk-
Was there an area -next to the road-but with poor footing , high grass, sloping downward ?
I'm not yet up to a fight this am.
So could she have walked along side the road? Was it at an overpass with no shoulder at all ?
I don't know what was next to the road. I believe this accident happened in the warm weather. For four or five months of the year we have snow. When the plows clear the roads, the snow is thrown to the side of the road. There is a berm of icy snow on the sides of the road that is two to five feet high. Nobody can walk in it or on it.

This township is pure sprawl and they care about nothing but cars. Like I said earlier, they opted out of the regional bus system, so they have no buses. My son's mother in law works at a GM facility out there. It's located at the corner of two highways, of course with no sidewalks or bike lanes. There is absolutely no way she could get to work without a car. To tell the truth, even riding in a car is pretty frightening in this township.

Unfortunately, these circumstances exist in every state and in some parts in or around almost every city. It's so prevalent that we are accustomed to it. People don't even notice it's there, or like a couple posters on this thread, they are in denial. People visit from other countries and they can't figure out how we let things get so bad.
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Old 06-26-14, 06:22 AM
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Originally Posted by Roody
My son's mother in law works at a GM facility out there. It's located at the corner of two highways, of course with no sidewalks or bike lanes.
Highway 96? According to Google Maps it has beautiful wide shoulders. I'd definitely ride there.

Are bicycles not allowed on that highway?
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Old 06-26-14, 06:29 AM
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Roody
Thanks for the reply.
Geez-I forget -snow-
Not a factor in that accident-but a huge deal for much of the country.
Sure most cities-NOLA-have 4-6 1940's-1960's era main drags leading in/out of them-
and the drags are in suburbia-
Unlimited access roads-old motels, gas stations strip malls- lots of redlights cross streets-they are usually lowish speeds 35-45 mph-with shoulders(glass strewn)-but they are high alertness rides-not one bit fun. I had two I could have taken -would have been better choices than the high speed road I chose.

So older big cities-London/Paris/Berlin for example- they don't have this sort of suburbia set up ?
No or very few sidewalks on roads leading out/in to the big city?
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Old 06-26-14, 06:47 AM
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Originally Posted by phoebeisis
So older big cities-London/Paris/Berlin for example- they don't have this sort of suburbia set up ?
No or very few sidewalks on roads leading out/in to the big city?
No. Suburbs in Europe, Canada, and Australia tend to be a bit more small towns which have been swallowed up by the main centre. They are a more or less a collection of small towns all joined together. They've got a shopping area somewhere roughly in the middle of each suburb where you can get your groceries, mail letters, visit your doctor, take a book out of the library, and go to church.

In Australia, the word "suburb" just means "neighbourhood". Rowan and I live in a lovely little suburb 4 km from the CBD which is also a suburb, and we're looking at moving to one of the suburbs a little further out. Some of the things we like about our current suburb are how close two shopping areas are (about 2 km and 2.5 km away) and there we can get anything we want ... groceries, hardware, clothes, jewellery, household goods. There is a library nearby, medical centres, post office, and a delicious little bakery. As we consider a move, we have observed the same things in the new suburbs as well.

That's not saying a version of the US-style suburbs don't exist in Europe, Canada and Australia, but not the extent that they do in the US.

Also Europe has an excellent transportation system.


As for sidewalks on roads leading out/into the big city ... ummm ... not sure what you're talking about there.

Last edited by Machka; 06-26-14 at 06:53 AM.
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Old 06-26-14, 07:04 AM
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Originally Posted by Machka
And thank goodness certain people here are powerless to implement their ideas. Whew!!
Somebody is going to be making decisions about what kind of roads or bike facilities or whatever are built, and where, and how they are designed, and who can use them, and how they are funded. Why not us?
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Old 06-26-14, 07:08 AM
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Originally Posted by cooker
Somebody is going to be making decisions about what kind of roads or bike facilities or whatever are built, and where, and how they are designed, and who can use them, and how they are funded. Why not us?
Some people have good ideas ... some don't. So very glad that the ones who are expressing the rather frightening ideas here are powerless.
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Old 06-26-14, 07:17 AM
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Originally Posted by Machka
Some people have good ideas ... some don't. So very glad that the ones who are expressing the rather frightening ideas here are powerless.
+1

Originally Posted by Roody
I'm telling you, there are no alternate routes. My house is a few steps from Saginaw Hwy. just east of M.L. King. There is no alternate route that I can take to get to Lansing Mall. I have to ride/walk on the five to seven lane highway with no sidewalk or bus lane.

You might live in some sprawlless utopia, although I doubt it. This is very common in America. Almost every urban area has a "strip" with one to dozens of miles of lateral development along it. Are you really saying that this kind of sprawl (strip development) does not exist in SE Minnesota? Are there no areas where even seasoned cyclists fear to go? Hint--walmarts usually sprout in these areas.
I'll have to take your word for it being an inaccessible island of consumerism.

Maybe I do live in a utopia. The roads around here are either lightly traveled by car, have wide shoulders, have bike lanes, or have trails running parallel. Probably why the Twin Cities is ranked so high in being cycle friendly. I'm surprised you haven't moved here yet.
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Old 06-26-14, 07:40 AM
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Originally Posted by RPK79
+1



I'll have to take your word for it being an inaccessible island of consumerism.

Maybe I do live in a utopia. The roads around here are either lightly traveled by car, have wide shoulders, have bike lanes, or have trails running parallel. Probably why the Twin Cities is ranked so high in being cycle friendly. I'm surprised you haven't moved here yet.
I love it where I live. I've had a very successful carfree career here for a long time.

Minneapolis has sprawl around it. Almost very American city has sprawl around it. Maybe carfree people are less aware of it because they dont go near it.
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Old 06-26-14, 08:20 AM
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Originally Posted by RPK79
See this bothers me because what if everyone in a region wants to drive except Bob. Bob wants to take the bus. Should everyone subsidize the bus program so Bob can take the bus? Replace drive with ride bikes if your bias against cars gets in the way of an honest answer. Personally I think Bob should move somewhere that suits his needs.
The future shouldn't preclude the possibility of people changing transportation modes without moving to another area. As I understand it, federal school busing rules require that any student living more than 2 miles from their school have a bus available. This same rule could apply to employees. I would be willing to support a 3-5 mile radius for cycling so that only >5 miles are entitled to transportation. If 'Bob' is the only person in the area who doesn't drive, you could get away with sending a taxi or people could just pick him up and carpool.

Rules like this, while inconvenient, would promote planning that doesn't practically mandate driving. How else can you prevent automotivism from driving development to the point where the only affordable residential housing is available in areas that practically mandate driving? This is like giving monopoly power to automotive industries and sentencing people to spending a certain amount of their day driving.

Originally Posted by Dave Cutter
Whenever negotiating from impossible differences.... look to opponents vales.

All humans.... share the exact same values. We all value our own beliefs, our freedoms, and our loved ones. What you have to admit in order to make progress is you value MY belief, freedom, and family less than you do your own.
Do you believe that universals exist or do you think that all truth is relative? I have the feeling that you are a total relativist and that you could spin any belief so that it appears legitimate simply because someone holds it as their own.

Those who would pass laws... build walls... setup armed check points... to guard people who might venture outside of their prescribed legally allowed boundaries.... have no respect for the individual.
What about people who abuse freedom in ways that harm themselves, others, and future generations? Do they have respect for 'the individual?'

People will naturally venture to where they think life will be better for themselves and those they love. Calling that sprawl.... removes the humanity from a natural human behavior. PEOPLE... are NOT an invasive species here on planet Earth. You CAN stop people from behaving like people... it has been done. But you have to kill them.
To some extent I think sprawl has flourished because suburbs gave racism a way to persist while civil rights was advancing. E.g. if blacks weren't going to stay in the back of the bus, whites would just stop using the bus and drive instead. If blacks would move to white neighborhoods, whites would make new white neighborhoods farther away, etc. Anyway, if segregation is the thing you're talking about but not mentioning, I don't think you'd admit because those who favor it rarely admit it, but I mention it only because those who do prefer sprawl for the sake of segregation are, I think, the toughest sell. If you would give them segregation as a legal right, apartheid style, they might agree to doing something about sprawl but as long as they fear encroachment by people they don't wish to encroach, they'll keep building suburbs far enough away to discourage encroachment by people except in cars. Cars are of course easier to police, which sort of speaks to your dislike of boundaries and checkpoints, but does it even bother you that some people are stopped by police simply because of the way they look?

Anyway, I only mention racial segregation because it is what I think of when you mention people moving to areas they think life will be better. Really it's a separate issue to me from sprawl and transportation multi-modality. If nothing else, I don't think children should have to grow up in areas where driving is the only viable way of getting anywhere because it skews their cultural norms toward imagining any other form of transportation as essentially ineffective relative to driving. That is like programming people with a psychological driving mandate, which as already occurred with several generations of people, I think.

Originally Posted by Dave Cutter
It's simple. City's can't raise the revenue (TAXES) they need to pay themselves with. And as people abandon the overpriced overregulated poorly governed city's..... politicians are looking for ways to restrict that flight. It is ALWAYS about fear and money!
If sprawl-free areas were created and maintained, people in those areas would still have to pay federal taxes that fund sprawl in other areas. They'd still have to pay prices set by markets where the expenses of sprawl are built into prices, revenues, salaries, and other costs. If all the costs of sprawl could be shifted to exclusively to those who want to live in sprawl, those who don't would have a significant lower cost of living. This, in turn, would attract others away from sprawl, if only because the cost of living would be lower. If businesses didn't stop investing in such areas, they wouldn't become blighted and crime wouldn't deter people from living there and taking advantage of affordable costs of living. Ironically, I don't think you would accept this scenario as you do the scenario where blight drives up prices in other areas and stimulates people to move to suburbs for a lower cost of living.

Originally Posted by RPK79
It has been stated that some posters would like roads made so inconvenient that driving is more of a hassle than it's worth.
Driving is always more of a hassle than it's worth unless there is no other viable option. How many people own, maintain, fuel, and insure a private aircraft? Practically no one. Why? Because commercial airline travel is available practically everywhere for significantly lower cost. What about personal helicopters for local trips? Cost prohibitive compared with driving. So why doesn't the same logic make driving excessively costly relative to cycling and transit? Answer: insufficient availability of transit, fear of sharing the road with cars when cycling, and distances beyond what is convenient for cycling and public transit.

If sprawl expanded to scales that favored helicopter/airplane travel, would people who want to drive complain about a lack of motor-traffic roads and commercial airlines?
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Old 06-26-14, 08:28 AM
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Originally Posted by tandempower
The future shouldn't preclude the possibility of people changing transportation modes without moving to another area. As I understand it, federal school busing rules require that any student living more than 2 miles from their school have a bus available. This same rule could apply to employees. I would be willing to support a 3-5 mile radius for cycling so that only >5 miles are entitled to transportation. If 'Bob' is the only person in the area who doesn't drive, you could get away with sending a taxi or people could just pick him up and carpool.

Rules like this, while inconvenient, would promote planning that doesn't practically mandate driving. How else can you prevent automotivism from driving development to the point where the only affordable residential housing is available in areas that practically mandate driving? This is like giving monopoly power to automotive industries and sentencing people to spending a certain amount of their day driving.
Transportation is not a right.

Originally Posted by tandempower
To some extent I think sprawl has flourished because suburbs gave racism a way to persist while civil rights was advancing. E.g. if blacks weren't going to stay in the back of the bus, whites would just stop using the bus and drive instead. If blacks would move to white neighborhoods, whites would make new white neighborhoods farther away, etc. Anyway, if segregation is the thing you're talking about but not mentioning, I don't think you'd admit because those who favor it rarely admit it, but I mention it only because those who do prefer sprawl for the sake of segregation are, I think, the toughest sell. If you would give them segregation as a legal right, apartheid style, they might agree to doing something about sprawl but as long as they fear encroachment by people they don't wish to encroach, they'll keep building suburbs far enough away to discourage encroachment by people except in cars. Cars are of course easier to police, which sort of speaks to your dislike of boundaries and checkpoints, but does it even bother you that some people are stopped by police simply because of the way they look?



Originally Posted by tandempower
Driving is always more of a hassle than it's worth unless there is no other viable option. How many people own, maintain, fuel, and insure a private aircraft? Practically no one. Why? Because commercial airline travel is available practically everywhere for significantly lower cost. What about personal helicopters for local trips? Cost prohibitive compared with driving. So why doesn't the same logic make driving excessively costly relative to cycling and transit? Answer: insufficient availability of transit, fear of sharing the road with cars when cycling, and distances beyond what is convenient for cycling and public transit.

If sprawl expanded to scales that favored helicopter/airplane travel, would people who want to drive complain about a lack of motor-traffic roads and commercial airlines?
Are you really comparing air travel and automobile travel? I mean really? You are seriously out there on some of your theories. I mean really out there.
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Old 06-26-14, 08:33 AM
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Originally Posted by Roody
I love it where I live. I've had a very successful carfree career here for a long time.
Despite having sprawl nearby and having to ride/walk on a five to seven lane highway with no sidewalk or bus lane to get to Lansing Mall!

What is the secret to a very successful carfree career despite the nearby presence of objectively evil sprawl?
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Old 06-26-14, 02:12 PM
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Originally Posted by RPK79
Transportation is not a right.
Freedom and pursuit of happiness are rights. Driving should be a choice but not a prerequisite for the pursuit of happiness.

Are you really comparing air travel and automobile travel? I mean really? You are seriously out there on some of your theories. I mean really out there.
What I said is that if the predominant use of air travel precluded the choice to drive, drivers would be as upset at a lack of drivable roads as cyclists are at a lack of bikeable ones. If commercial airline travel was as bad relative to the use of private planes and helicopters as buses in some cities are to private automobiles, it would infringe on many people's ability to fly. It is a good analogy.
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Old 06-26-14, 02:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Machka
No. Suburbs in Europe, Canada, and Australia tend to be a bit more small towns which have been swallowed up by the main centre. They are a more or less a collection of small towns all joined together. They've got a shopping area somewhere roughly in the middle of each suburb where you can get your groceries, mail letters, visit your doctor, take a book out of the library, and go to church.

In Australia, the word "suburb" just means "neighbourhood". Rowan and I live in a lovely little suburb 4 km from the CBD which is also a suburb, and we're looking at moving to one of the suburbs a little further out. Some of the things we like about our current suburb are how close two shopping areas are (about 2 km and 2.5 km away) and there we can get anything we want ... groceries, hardware, clothes, jewellery, household goods. There is a library nearby, medical centres, post office, and a delicious little bakery. As we consider a move, we have observed the same things in the new suburbs as well.

That's not saying a version of the US-style suburbs don't exist in Europe, Canada and Australia, but not the extent that they do in the US.

Also Europe has an excellent transportation system.


As for sidewalks on roads leading out/into the big city ... ummm ... not sure what you're talking about there.
Machka
Thanks for the info.Never been anywhere but USA Canada Mexico-and not out of USA since 1958.

So the main difference between "our suburbs" and European Aussie suburbs is
The MAIN STREETS on our "suburbs" are several miles long and "covered with"
strip malls gas stations old beat up motels various businesses

European and Aussie "Suburbs" have shopping areas centralized in the middle of the "living areas" and are within walking distance of "most folks"


I can see why the European cities didn't develop post war USA style suburbs- no demand no $$ populations depleted a bit-2 wars-fuel expensive

But Aussies-car lovers (saw Mad Mad and Crocodile Dundee-taught me everything I know about Aussies)-
Why no USA style suburbs for car crazy Aussies ??


PS Our suburbs formed along important roads leading in and out of our big cities-so naturally they had linear shopping areas.
Cheap land nice and cheap housing for the soldiers coming home from WW2 producing the baby boom-
and we had the cheap reliable cars and cheap fuel to drive to them and to shop on the main drag
Europeans were broke and fuel was expensive-and their populations WEREN'T expanding( were depleted a bit)

But Aussies-why no suburbs??
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Old 06-26-14, 02:36 PM
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Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike
Despite having sprawl nearby and havingo to ride/walk on a five to seven lane highway with no sidewalk or bus lane to get to Lansing Mall!

What is the secret to a very successful carfree career despite the nearby presence of objectively evil sprawl?
Avoidance of sprawl areas unless I get a ride. I go to a mall that's 12 miles away rather than one that's 3 miles away because the distant all has bus service every 10 minutes, and also has better bicycle access.

Your use of ridicule and reductio ad absurdum is not a substitute for logic. It just makes people think you have no ability to reason, which I know is not the case.
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Old 06-26-14, 02:40 PM
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Originally Posted by RPK79
Transportation is not a right.
Are you sure about that?

Freedom of movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old 06-26-14, 02:49 PM
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Originally Posted by Roody
Yes. I am certain. We have the right to not be restricted movement and can freely travel within the confines of our country and live where we choose, however that right does not, and should not, grant us a right to transportation (or should I say entitles us to transportation). It is up to us as citizens to provide our own means of travel.

We also have the right to bear arms and the government does not supply us with weapons.
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Old 06-26-14, 03:14 PM
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Originally Posted by tandempower
.......... To some extent I think sprawl has flourished because suburbs gave racism a way to persist while civil rights was advancing. E.g. if blacks weren't going to stay in the back of the bus, whites would just stop using the bus and drive instead. If blacks would move to white neighborhoods, whites would make new white neighborhoods farther away, etc. Anyway, if segregation is the thing you're talking about but not mentioning, I don't think you'd admit because those who favor it rarely admit it, but I mention it only because those who do prefer sprawl for the sake of segregation are, I think, the toughest sell. If you would give them segregation as a legal right, apartheid style, they might agree to doing something about sprawl but as long as they fear encroachment by people they don't wish to encroach, they'll keep building suburbs far enough away to discourage encroachment by people except in cars. Cars are of course easier to police, which sort of speaks to your dislike of boundaries and checkpoints, but does it even bother you that some people are stopped by police simply because of the way they look?

Anyway, I only mention racial segregation because...........
There you go! Other people think you're wrong because everyone is a racist. Except... or course some of us (like ME) who aren't white. Your ideas of people of color.... and the general populations regards for us... are insulting and berating!
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Old 06-26-14, 03:26 PM
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Originally Posted by RPK79
Yes. I am certain. We have the right to not be restricted movement and can freely travel within the confines of our country and live where we choose, however that right does not, and should not, grant us a right to transportation (or should I say entitles us to transportation). It is up to us as citizens to provide our own means of travel.

We also have the right to bear arms and the government does not supply us with weapons.
Arguably true.

But if travel in or to large regions is de facto restricted by government support exclusively of one transportation mode, it could be argued that freedom of movement is being restricted.

On the other side of the coin, motoring advocates can (and often have) argue that bicycles impede their freedom of movement. They claim bike lanes and road diets deprive them. When they yell "get on the sidewalk where you belong", they are in effect implying that we are depriving them of the right to movement. At the same time they're implying that we have no right to movement on bicycles.

I don't claim to know much about freedom of movement. It's an interesting topic, and it might become more disputed as demand for transportation resources, public and private, becomes greater.
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Old 06-26-14, 03:30 PM
  #370  
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Originally Posted by Roody
Arguably true.

But if travel in or to large regions is de facto restricted by government support exclusively of one transportation mode, it could be argued that freedom of movement is being restricted.

On the other side of the coin, motoring advocates can (and often have) argue that bicycles impede their freedom of movement. They claim bike lanes and road diets deprive them. When they yell "get on the sidewalk where you belong", they are in effect implying that we are depriving them of the right to movement. At the same time they're implying that we have no right to movement on bicycles.

I don't claim to know much about freedom of movement. It's an interesting topic, and it might become more disputed as demand for transportation resources, public and private, becomes greater.
You're over thinking it. The government simply can't impede your travel. They can't do things like force you to obtain permits to travel from one city to another much like North Korea does to its citizens. By not building a bike path or supplying a bus route they are not impeding your travel.
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Old 06-26-14, 03:49 PM
  #371  
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Originally Posted by RPK79
You're over thinking it. The government simply can't impede your travel. They can't do things like force you to obtain permits to travel from one city to another much like North Korea does to its citizens. By not building a bike path or supplying a bus route they are not impeding your travel.
Maybe. But isn't the commerce clause being argued in the courts a lot more lately? To the extent that free travel by different modes could be said to affect commerce, it becomes a topic for legal battles.

Anyhow, the population grows and the highway system cannot keep pace. This means ever increasing demand for a limited resource. There will be many disputes in coming years. Lawyers and justices will be called on to determine who has a "right" to what.

One thing I know, and I think you will agree with: sprawl can exist only if there are lots of cars and lots of high speed highways. So that's where the battle lines will be drawn.
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Old 06-26-14, 03:54 PM
  #372  
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Originally Posted by Roody
Maybe. But isn't the commerce clause being argued in the courts a lot more lately? To the extent that free travel by different modes could be said to affect commerce, it becomes a topic for legal battles.
Yes, they're using the commerce clause to legislate all sorts of things from the bench that were never, ever, intended. It's incredibly infuriating! We won't go there though that leads into P&R.
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Old 06-26-14, 04:25 PM
  #373  
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Originally Posted by Roody
Avoidance of sprawl areas unless I get a ride.
It appears then that the approved solution to the OP's Problem is for those that do not like living in or visiting so-called "sprawl" is to avoid it. Eh?

All the wailing and whining about the evil effect of sprawl on the lifestyle of those who wish to be car free is what is ridiculous.
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Old 06-26-14, 04:41 PM
  #374  
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Originally Posted by RPK79
Transportation is not a right.

Are you really comparing air travel and automobile travel? I mean really? You are seriously out there on some of your theories. I mean really out there.
Originally Posted by tandempower
Freedom and pursuit of happiness are rights. Driving should be a choice but not a prerequisite for the pursuit of happiness.

What I said is that if the predominant use of air travel precluded the choice to drive, drivers would be as upset at a lack of drivable roads as cyclists are at a lack of bikeable ones. If commercial airline travel was as bad relative to the use of private planes and helicopters as buses in some cities are to private automobiles, it would infringe on many people's ability to fly. It is a good analogy.
I spent 2009-2012 in Fairbanks, AK. I learned that there are many long-standing (spanning multiple generations, hundreds of years old) Alaskan towns and villages which are accessible solely by air; many are inaccessible during the nine months of winter, and only by waterway at other times, and then, flooding can render those impassible. Some will say their inhabitants have a choice about where they live, but more often than not, there's really no choice -- certainly not ones that many wish to opt for... many people, everywhere, do not want to discard their geographic heritage. As Americans learned after WWI, "how ya gonna keep 'em, down on the farm?" is often about government priorities for population redistribution, rather than individuals' wishes.
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Old 06-26-14, 05:26 PM
  #375  
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We went to a play last night that reminded me very much of tandempower's utopia.

Some of you might be familiar with the name of the play.

It's name was ... 1984.


Every time tandempower writes about his utopia the image that springs to mind are futuristic sci-fi horror films where everyone is heavily regulated.
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