Light Rail - Where and how do we get started! (Columbus: rental, transfer)

[hensleya1]

Originally Posted by kjbrill

People comment on how the youth are waiting longer to get married and start a family. They make it sound like it is personal preference. BS, it is economic necessity. They simply cannot afford anything else, particularly if they have large student loans hanging around their neck.

kjbrill--

^^ This, and I wish people would begin to pay more attention and not speak for "younger people" especially when they're no longer of that age group.

It bugs me when certain people repeat ad nauseam a few talking points about "younger people" returning to the cities, or eschewing cars, not driving as much, not having licenses, and longing to take mass transit.

I call absolute BS. Nobody I'm aware of doesn't want to drive, nobody I'm aware of wants to take mass transit everywhere, and nobody I'm aware of wants to be at the mercy of other people's transit schedules. The only ones I see doing that are because they can't afford anything else. Not some high-minded way of saving the planet by living in the city, not because cars pollute and kill the earth/cause global cooling/whatever, but because the economy simply sucks and there isn't enough money to go around.

About half my friends don't have their own cars, but they all, without a fault, would have one if they had a decent job and enough money to buy one. I'd say 95% of them have a driver's license and drive whenever they can, they hate being at the mercy of RTA/Metro/whatever.



And the minute jobs come back, I can guarantee you cars will be flying off the dealer's lots again.

[neilworms2]

^Perceptions are very different in other parts of the country.

Do you consider yourself young Henleya1?

[hensleya1]

Originally Posted by neilworms2

^Perceptions are very different in other parts of the country.

Do you consider yourself young Henleya1?

neilworms2--

At 24, sometimes I don't feel it (especially when I have to write things down lest I forget them), but all the older people around me certainly say so.

And considering the friends I'm talking about range from mid teens to mid 20's... in a word, yes.

[natininja]

In hensleya1's experience, most young people are right-wingers, too.

[TomJones123]

Originally Posted by hensleya1

I call absolute BS. Nobody I'm aware of doesn't want to drive, nobody I'm aware of wants to take mass transit everywhere, and nobody I'm aware of wants to be at the mercy of other people's transit schedules. The only ones I see doing that are because they can't afford anything else.

That's because you live in backwards Dayton Ohio, in backwards south west Ohio. Visit NYC, San Francisco, LA (to a certain degree) and get back to me.

[SWOH]

It depends on the area and background.

My friends at a four-year college want to live in the city, and have a car but primarily try to live a car-free lifestyle. My community college friends look at me like I have three heads, until we are out at the Greene at 11pm under the influence of a few drinks and they realize "hey, if I lived here, I could keep drinking until 2am instead of what I am doing right now" (dodging traffic to try to get to Waffle House across the street to sober up enough so they can make the 30-min drive home).

Just saying. Increase in alcohol consumption = increase in interest in car free lifestyle haha

[neilworms2]

At 24, sometimes I don't feel it (especially when I have to write things down lest I forget them), but all the older people around me certainly say so.

Fair enough, your younger than me, at 29 I'm getting pretty close to the age where I can no longer call myself young.

That's because you live in backwards Dayton Ohio, in backwards south west Ohio. Visit NYC, San Francisco, LA (to a certain degree) and get back to me.

Don't forget Chicago too. Even Cincinnati is a bit ahead of where Dayton is at, but I think that's largely due to economics - Dayton's economy is decimated bar the defense industry and a handful of legacy IT companies from the days when it was a major tech hub back in the 60s/70s. Cincinnati still has companies that are major draws for people outside the region (and around the world for that matter), and has to fight the prevailing cultural (not necessarily political) conservatism to keep itself competitive. Downtown Dayton is a ghost town and only now are a handful of developments trying to seep in there, investors who realize that its only a matter of time til Dayton catches up at least to a degree.

Which leads me to drive home the point - over 50% of everyone I know from Springboro are married and most of them have children at 29. Only 2 people I know in Chicago are married at 29 and 0 have children. Dayton is very very behind the times - social trends take a long time to seep in down there.

[SWOH]

Originally Posted by TomJones123

That's because you live in backwards Dayton Ohio, in backwards south west Ohio. Visit NYC, San Francisco, LA (to a certain degree) and get back to me.

That too.

[hensleya1]

Originally Posted by natininja

In hensleya1's experience, most young people are right-wingers, too.

natininja--

I would say that the people I know are roughly 50-50. With only a few exceptions, they aren't fans of mass transit, almost all want to drive, and quite a few "lefties" disapprove of the streetcar for the exact same reason that both the NAACP and COAST do. I've always found it a bit ironic that those two groups are united against the program, given that they are generally miles apart on everything else.

I wonder if you can say the same about the people you associate with? Do you have a 50-50 split? Many self-described advocates of "tolerance" and "diversity" are often lacking when it comes to diversity or tolerance of other, non-conforming ideas. I wonder if I pulled up the electoral results from 2012, district by district, whether downtown/OTR/Avondale would be even close to 50-50.

[hensleya1]

Originally Posted by OHKID

Increase in alcohol consumption = increase in interest in car free lifestyle haha

OHKID--

LOL, I wish I could say that - generally it just invited a flurry of DUI's and tickets for public intoxication during my first two, maybe three years of college. I consider myself lucky I wasn't one of them that ever got ticketed or worse (or gotten into a crash).

Funnily enough, I highly approve of going to the Greene because you can walk around there (and so do many of the same friends), so long as a car's being driven there. I'm contributing to thread drift here, but I wonder what the status on Liberty Centre is? IIRC Steiner is going to build another Greene/Easton/whatever in Liberty Township?