Uhhh... necessity?

Would you suggest that the so-called sprawl be bulldozed and made back into farmland and the residents and businesses be forcibly relocated back into the urban core, just so a relative handful of carfree malcontents can listen to the birds chirp and/or take pretty pictures whenever they ride out of said urban core areas?

Tandempower

BIG MONEY-sure as heck controls USA- it gets a cut of every transaction that isn't pure barter-but very little to do with "cars".

Po folks-and all the rest of us- LOVE CARS!
How in hell did those Okies-Grapes of Wrath-manage to get to CA- and perhaps eventually find a better life??
Cars trucks on Route 66 and its like.Yeah we loved cars-think advertising sold them that truck??
Cars are/were soooo much fun-like a bike really. The same impulses that "make" us love bikes-makes us love cars!!


Fewer cars in various cities is ALWAYS FAVORED by the elite- they always will have affordable transportation-and protection

It isn't BIG OIL or BIG CAR MANUFACTURING or Developers that have the whip hand-they actually produce real useful products

Pretty sure a Goldman Sachs shill was sitting at President Obama's right hand- they are completely indifferent to how they skim/skin the rest of us-as long as we spend-they make out-and safe bet all those elite-prefer car lite cities-just like you.( safe bet they won't be pedaling)

You are inadvertently shilling for the same folks who *****ed about/sued because "Their view and property values were being ruined by wind turbines 10 miles off the Mass. coast"
Yeah-second "cottages" of course

Much/most of the 2008 "bad loans"(brought to us by BIG MONEY Goldmann Morgan Stanley etc) weren't new construction- they were churned sales-BIG MONEY made $$ 3 ways
1) Made $$ on the original crummy loans(points etc)
2)Made $$ When they bundled AND SOLD the crappy loan BUNDLES- to various customers-foreign and domestic investors banks funds etc- Oh they also claimed that "some complicated math we can't understand "made this Junk in=Junk out which was pure BS of course-at its heart they said "they won't fail because they didn't fail this way last year" Completely ignoring the truism- REAL ESTATE BUBBLES-ALWAYS POP!
3)MY FAVORITE-They made $$ BETTING that these crappy loan bundles they sold to treasured customers-WOULD FAIL!!
I just LOVE #3 . Might not have even been illegal!!

These affluent folks ALWAYS favor "car lite cities" but "po folks" will always be the car lite ones of course.
And good affordable public transportation is only feasible in very big dense affluent cities-
It is just too expensive to run a trolley bus "light rail" if it isn't "full" almost all the time
and my suspicion is good affordable(meaning cheap $1/ride)public transportation-never directly "pays for itself"
The city has to subsidize it in some fashion-which makes sense in rich crowded cities NYNY

NOLA- my city-used to have GREAT cheap- 10 cents in 1965-public transportation-but we were RICH back then-with a much bigger population-QUEEN OF THE SOUTH- lots of BIG CORPS OIL SHIPPING-
Big Port and lots of mineral wealth-and we weren't as poor-maybe less violent-certainly not as well armed.
650,000 citizens in NOLA proper- now roughly 350,000 no or almost no fortune 500 headquarters

10 cents for a bus or trolley ride and so many lines if you played it right-got a transfer-the 10 cents could get you there-and back!!
Yeah-public transportation- takes a huge dense city-affluent city to make it affordable.
Earlier some poster said his 100,000 city-did a study-couldn't afford it.
Rust belt cities-some still big-Detroit-etc-can't afford whatever they have-can't pay pensions or current salaries

I see a lot of arguments that people should have the option to choose not to drive, but then choosing their environment to live this car free lifestyle is ignored. There are places where going car free is easy and places where it is difficult. Why should the difficult places to be car free be changed simply because a small amount of people there may suddenly decide after moving there that they no longer like the area they are living. The beauty of a free country is that it allows people to vote with their feet and their wallets by living in regions that most suit them and patronizing businesses that align with their beliefs. By forcing a cookie cutter policy across the board from a national or even statewide level it strips the local governments and people from their freedom.

I don't agree with a lot of people in this sub-forum, but I fully support their right to make their particular communities over in the way they see fit if they can gain the support of their peers there. I just want them to do the same for me.

I think it's an illusion that "people" design their communities. Decisions are made in back rooms by people with money and influence.

I don't believe that it is possible to undo sprawl -- even if it were physically possible, it would be financially impossible and irresponsible; so, let's not go down that dead-end road. OTOH, we can do a great deal to ameliorate the problems of sprawl by investing in improved public transportation and allocating space for realistically-wide bike lanes on public roads.

I'm not looking to "make-over" affected communities, just to adapt/upgrade their transportation routes for a wider range of travel/travelers.

PS: Many (most?) of us cannot "vote with our feet", insofar as affording to live near(er) to where we work. If I had a dollar, for every article I've read in the newspapers about "regular" people -- teachers, first-responders, etc. -- who had to live an hour-or-more away from their places of employment, due to the high cost of buying or renting -- and the option to "vote with our wallets" has been, effectively, taken out of our hands (pockets?).

We all can vote with our feet and our wallets. It is sometimes more difficult than others and people choose not to. Proof that their situation isn't so bleak that they want to change it.

What about when they vote with other people's wallets?

I think you watch too much tv.

Investing in improved public transportation and allocating space where it is economically practical and wherever sufficient demand can be predicted/anticipated for realistically-wide bike lanes on public roads wherever sufficient people need to travel would/could ameliorate the problems of carfree people regardless of their moral stance on the evil/negativity of sprawl.

Investment normally requires some sort of expected return. Subsidizing money losing transit lines to less dense areas with little demand for it, or reallocating resources to likely-to-be almost unused bicycling facilities to the same locations, principally to meet the desires/demands of a relative handfull of urban car-free bird watchers, smug anti-sprawl/anti-car moralists, or bicycling enthusiasts who want to meet their total mileage goals, does not seem to pass the sniff test as a good investment of public money.

What about the cost of freeways to those areas?

Here's an article by a conservative think tank guy on the costs of highway congestion including health costs: Free the freeways - Economics - AEI

He presents evidence that highway congestion may cause health problems in nearby residents due to the excess exhaust produced by idling in traffic, or that simply living near a highway has health costs. (in other words your driving hurts my health - you heard it from the American Enterprise Institute) He tosses out a few ideas for correcting the problem:

We could build more roads, increase tolls during rush hour, add more fast-passes to avoid tollbooth traffic, and improve public transportation. While members of the different political parties might favor different combinations, the key point is that pricing road use could help solve the problem, and provide a double dividend as revenues are used in other ways.

Now it seems to me that "building more roads" would not be ideal, as simply living near a highway harms your health, and more roads would expose more people to risk. Ultimately though, he sees "pricing road use" as the solution. I can certainly get behind that idea.

Geez what an eyesore-poor you!!

When I first lived in Columbus, Ohio the population was about 330,000 and now it is 1.82 million in Columbus and Metro area. Yeah, that's sprawl. But, I still live on the edge of farmland and it is wide-open with rolling hills.

EXACTLY what the affluent- "PRETEND FREE MARKET" types want. We the GREAT UNWASHED- will be priced off the roads-and the affluent will have the "car lite livable cities" they soooooo love.
The GRAPES OF WRATH OKIES- HY 66 sure as hell didn't WANT some TOLL ROAD-motor transport makes POOR FOLKS lives better-
so no surprise the American Enterprise ****** would suggest Toll Roads
TEXAS is doing just what you want now--somehow they are managing to turn parts of what was interstate into TOLL ROADS-
and they just built opened an 85mph TOLL ROAD for "affluent people who drive too fast"(only a stupid shi$ would drive 85 mph in a "deer everywhere state" like TX)
Toll roads-are a typical AFFLUENT FOLKS solution to "their" roads being too crowded.


American Enterprise Institute-hell they should go for a more free market the solution-tell you to quit whining and MOVE
Toll roads are always subsidized by the rest of us no matter what they claim(even if the SUBSIDY-is your poisoning me with your exhaust)
Yeah-MOVE should have been their suggestion if they were playing it straight-but the affluent are always quick to privatize roads-get the unwashed out of their way)

I linked to that site to try to find common ground with the more conservative thread participants. I was more interested that they agreed on the problem rather than the specific solution.

My point is that we should not be publicly subsidizing other people's driving, either directly or indirectly, or rich or poor. In terms of the harmful effects of exhaust, probably more of that comes from poor people's cars than rich people's cars, so why would I want to subsidize either rich or poor people driving? If poor people need my help I'll try to figure out a way to help them that doesn't involve more fossil fuel consumption.

Fair enough-but their take on sprawl-will never favor anyone but the affluent.
And in truth-since diesels have become clean living near a highway shouldn't be very toxic (most public transportation was/is diesel buses -which until recently spewed absolutely HORRIBLE soot(carcinogens) and other nasty stuff)
Yeah exhaust much cleaner now in respect to measurable health effects-
Diesels of all sorts produced horrible exhaust-and that annoying diesel clatter-
Highway noise-pretty annoying of course.

But owning a car does provide benefits-
I could probably find some study indicating owning a car benefits less affluent people relatively more than very affluent folks-
no doubt I could find the opposite too-cars drive less affluent to poor house

But they -cars-certainly allowed the parents of the baby boomers to MOVE THE HECK OUT OF CITIES and away from their too close to annoying neighbors- as they became somewhat more affluent
Many folks see cars as a net plus-quality of life wise-I certainly do
so how do you measure that benefit- not having to stand waiting for a bus-in rain/snow cold- growing your own tomatoes?
Not having to share walls ceiling with various neighbors??

The CO2 certainly could be a MUCH bigger deal than "rude,stupid,careless,inattentive drivers" which is the main knock bike free folks have in respect to "cars/roads"
But there is a tech solution to CO2 cars- electricity from wind turbines nukes etc-so cars will be with us for a while-
unless of course the more dire "MAN CO2 WARMING PREDICTIONS"- meaning famine from no rain - rain at wrong time - rain in wrong place come to pass
Whining about cars and rude drivers -will be small potatoes
And we seem to forget-Transportation riding-tiny in USA- always was tiny-
We are unimportant

What about the costs of a roadwork network that ties the country together for commerce and its various transportation needs? Is that what you mean? Who the heck do you think pays for it, only the toiling and suffering masses of the densely populated cities who draw no benefits at all from the existence of such a network?

Perhaps you would like to add to the discussion who pays for Amtrak and whom benefits from long distance passenger rail service?

Why should bike free people pay for bicycling facilities?

Maybe you would like to add to the discussion why should child free adults pay for schools or playgrounds.

What makes you think the roads, highways and streets outside of your approved city limits should be toll roads paid for only by the users?

BTW, how do you expect farmers to get their product to urban "farmer markets" or anywhere else? Only on dirt paths in carts pulled by team of oxen like the good old days?

I think everybody should pay their way. I would gladly pay the full cost of my share of the freeway for goods transported on it, if someone else payed their full share for driving on it. The simplest way to implement that would be a carbon tax. We would all end up paying our share of the energy costs of transporting ourselves and the goods we consume. And we would all look at the price and think twice about driving so far, or buying goods transported so far.

Lots and lots of theory here.

But if it matters to you ... and I'm especially talking to you, tandempower ... what are you currently doing about it? We know you can talk about it ... and this thread is going round and round and round for many pages with lots and lots of talk ...

But if the so-called "sprawl" is a concern for you ... what are you doing about it?

Reductio ad absurdum. Appeal to irrational fear. Poor logic/reasoning. Forcible relocation is both illegal and immoral. Use economic incentives. The best solution to sprawl is to limit its future growth. This will force developers to infill. The sprawl will not return to wilderness, but (hopefully) become a suburb that is both efficient and pleasant. The wilderness and farmland that already exists will also be preserved.

This seems to be what is happening in Mississauga, Ont., where wolfchild lives. Northern Virginia is another place I have read about and also Orange County, Cal.

If you are one of the ones who is anti-sprawl ...

1. Where do you live? Have you chosen to live in the middle of your local big city?

2. How much room do you take up? Have you opted to downsize so that you can fit into a small apartment?

3. How far is it to where you work? To school? To shopping? To your medical facilities? To your library, or church, or all the other places you go? Time? Distance?

4. How do you get to all the places you go? Public transportation? Cycling? Walking?

5. What other things are you doing to reduce sprawl? Are you attending public meetings? Are you getting involved in community decisions? Are you an active member of a bike coop encouraging people to cycle? Are you a developer who is repurposing old inner cities buildings into apartments?


It's all "they" should do this ... "they" should do that ... theory, theory, theory. But if you are concerned about sprawl, what are YOU doing about it?

Why is important to note that you didn't? Are you avoiding responding to that for some reason besides disliking it as a topic? That was my assumption, which is why I told you that economic critique can be irritating to me too. It just is, but it is also necessary if you want to have a conscientious democratic society/economy.

I've explained this in previous posts. It has to do with how spread out destinations are. If you cycle, it can take hours to get around sprawl. If you take a bus, the bus stops every block or two because the blocks are huge, so it can take hours to get across town.

1) implement subsidized shuttle transportation for employees to workplaces, school bus style, for those who can't or won't take city buses.
2) create parking limits for the zoning of new construction and renovation.
3) Offer tax incentive for converting sprawling parking lots (partially) into usable buildings or green space.
4) Target special tax incentives for reducing parking in areas with the best transit and bike lane access.
5) As traffic grows denser in areas with less transit/bicycle access, create new transit line and bike lanes.
6) goto #4
7) Continue until parity is reached between transportation modes, e.g. driving/cycling/transit = 33%/33%/33% or at least 50%/25%/25%

The 50%/25%/25% target would probably be sufficient to ensure sufficient infrastructure for people to freely choose any of the three transportation modes. If 25%/25% utilization isn't reached for cycling and transit, that probably means the city isn't sufficiently conducive to these forms of transportation and more work needs be done to facilitate them.

You said of me ... "I think you may underestimate" ... a whole bunch of blah, blah, blah ...

But in reality, the conversation went like this ...


You are assuming ... a whole bunch of blah, blah, blah ... that is not in those two short bits of conversation. You are having a conversation with yourself and presuming that my statements have something to do with that conversation ... presuming that by stating "Anyone can visit places like the ones in Machka's pictures. You don't have to be rich. That's the great thing about having a bicycle ... you can ride anywhere" I'm somehow underestimating something ... or that it means so much more than those words might convey on face value. Lots of assumption ... not a lot of truth.

The truth is that you don't have to be rich to enjoy nature (i.e. places like the ones in Machka's pictures).

I also favor biking over transit because of autonomous mobility (automobility). Still, I know that many people won't bike because of their clothes, hair, or other physical impairments so transit needs to be an option as well. Ultimately, driving doesn't need to be prohibited as a choice. It's just that people need to be free to make one of the other choices so that cities don't continue erupting into more and more sprawl, their drivers spilling over into new areas and causing more motor-traffic and sprawl-pressures there. It's not a sustainable growth paradigm for sprawl to reduce all transportation besides driving to inconvenience and then continue expanding because everyone forgets that any other form of transportation is even a viable potential. Sprawl is basically the beginning of the end, so there needs to be new beginnings nascent everywhere there is sprawl. That translates into bike lanes/paths and effective public transit lines. If both of those alternatives are sufficient for anyone to choose them over driving, there is hope for the future. Otherwise, population growth is a one-way road to disaster.

I'm afraid that's the free market. If there is parking scarcity, parking will become a privilege reserved for an elite. It either happens by privatizing parking spots (i.e. reserved signs, handicapped parking, etc.) OR it happens by giving parking to the highest bidder, parking meters, etc. This wouldn't be the case if enough people simply chose not to drive. In that case, there would be sufficient parking for whoever drove simply because they needed to or wanted to some of the time.

If a transit operator makes $12/hour, and the vehicle gets 6mpg, and it travels 6 miles in an hour, and the vehicle costs $100k with a, say, $700/month payment, which translates into @$25/day, then those costs add up to @$25/hour discounting maintenance and administrative costs (assuming the bus runs 8 hours per day). So if you get 25 passengers per hour at $1/ride, that covers those costs. Generally, however, transit is subsidized so the costs go as high as subsidies allow with many auxiliary personnel performing all sorts of auxiliary functions, much like most other well-funded corporations.

What can you really do besides attempt to talk sense into people and let them choose to support better policies or resist them? Raising consciousness propels discourse forward. For a while, we get support for alternative transportation, make some progress, then there's what I call an 'ego-backlash' that involves those who aren't supportive of the alternative developments getting defensive because it feels to them like they are under fire for driving. They don't understand that reaching parity between different modes of transportation makes the choice to drive sustainable because it allows growth into other transportation modes. All they can see is their choice to drive is becoming less ubiquitous, less dominant, less taken-for-granted, etc. and they backlash against this. Still, eventually they are going to have to accept the need for viability in other transportation choices because sprawl-growth is simply not sustainable in the long term. Things are going to get worse and worse for more and more people economically as long as the automotivism-choice is made inelastic by sprawl so really all you can do is keep trying to make people see the path ubiquitous driving leads down so that they will support making the needed changes before things get worse than they already are and the shift becomes even more difficult than it already is in many areas.