New Residents: Now that you've moved to Mass, do you have any regrets? (Boston: apartment, condo)

[1979]

Originally Posted by AandD

The downsides:
I'd never find my way to the store towns over without my gps. If I COULD find my way there, I'd sure as hell never find my way back. DO NOT move here without a TomTom!

Prices are staggering here. I have no idea how people in service or retail industries make it. Truly.

I can see us staying here, happily, thru the kids primary education. I do miss the warm weather in Texas, and would prolly like to retire south where there is a longer gardening season and warmer winters for my old aching joints. But for now, we love MA.

This is so funny, because in TX I feel the same way! Down there, everything looks alike. If you're on the west side, it looks the same as on the east side (at least it does to me). The character is all the same. I'd definetly need either a GPS, or have stacks of mapquest print outs.

[HeadedWest]

Originally Posted by lrfox

In fact, some places have such extensive and well used public transit that the service not only creates a better environment, but turns a profit...

Can you name a few of them in the US?

[MonkeyButler7000]

Originally Posted by holden125

No, we cannot. Survival lies in using less energy. An awful lot of anti-prosperity has come from thirty years of uncritcal worship of private property.

Private property is inseperable from liberty. Originally, the Declaration of Independence was going to read "Life, Liberty, and Property" but it was revised to the "Pursuit of Happiness." Maybe they thought it had a better ring to it.

[MonkeyButler7000]

I also like more dense, walkable living with the option of public transportation. I think that the people leading the charge have got it all wrong, however. You are never going to convince large numbers of Americans to change their minds about they way they live by cramming a bunch of anti-capitalist, global-warming stuff down their throats. The way to do it is to show them the benefits that the lifestyle can offer people and their families, not just the artist or yuppie crowd. That is why people moved to suburbs in the first place, they thought that it offered a better quality of life then continuing to live in cities like they always had. The same approach needs to be taken if anyone wants them to move back.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by MonkeyButler7000

Private property is inseperable from liberty. Originally, the Declaration of Independence was going to read "Life, Liberty, and Property" but it was revised to the "Pursuit of Happiness." Maybe they thought it had a better ring to it.

I said "uncritical worship" of private property. Although you wouldn't know it from the howlings of the libertarian and right-wing crowds, I'm not aware of any proposing the abolition of private property. I am aware of people coming to the realization that we live in a very interconnected world today and letting an extremely wealthy group of egomanaical inmates run the asylum with no rules for thirty years was a bad idea. It's like five year old kids on a playground. There have to be some basic rules.

John Locke, 80 years earlier, wrote "life, liberty, and property" in his Second Treatise on Government. Jefferson deliberately changed it. There's a lot of argument about what Jefferson meant, but he copied the whole rest of the sentence and took the word property out.


On transit (not directed to you, MonkeyButler--I hear you on pitching the argument differently):

There are cities in the world with profitable mass transit. But that is missing the point. We wouldn't have many roads or cars if someone said, OK, if you want roads, let private enterprise build them, maintain them, and operate them, with no public subsidy whatsoever, and judge them on whether they are profitable.

Paying taxes for things you don't necessarily use is normal, and it's called society. For example, people living in New York City pay high state income taxes and an additional city income tax that's as high as the state income tax in many states. Suburban and rural drivers constantly complain that "their" tax dollars go to subsidies for the MTA, but the state and city combined give the MTA a lot less than New York State's spending on roads. Many people in New York City, which is over 40% of the state's population )and has a lot of high-income people paying a lot of state income tax), do not drive. But they generally don't spend their days whining about the fact that billions are spent on upstate roads they will never use, and they don't go around suggesting that those roads should close unless they somehow run themselves without any public money.

When I lived in Paris, I paid something like $50 a month for an unlimited metro pass. The system had a stop withing 3 blocks of almost anywhere in the whole city. Between car payments, insurance, maintenance, gas, etc. cars are a lot more expensive than that and they would be pretty useless if not for the billions of public money spent to create roads.

In 2004, state governments across the nation spent 13 times more on highway projects than mass transit. So let's not talk about transit being dependent on public funding. And ultimately we're going to have to look at environmental costs and the chokehold all the traffic puts on our major metropolitan areas, which are our biggest economic engines and where most Americans live. We need cleaner and better options.

[MonkeyButler7000]

i think one of the real problems that public transportation, and even walking, face is that people view it as beneath them. There is the metallity that only poor people who can't afford cars get around that way. Personally I would rather sit on a train, bus, or subway with a cup of coffee and newspaper and relax on my way to work instead of fighting gridlock for 45 minutes. I am certainly not above that! I think it is hard though because in order to do that, you have to choose between a very small and expensive list of cities

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by HeadedWest

Can you name a few of them in the US?

Nope... and that's the problem. We simply don't do it right. If we did, it would be more than possible, ESPECIALLY in the Northeast. You have to have a good, extensive network for them to be profitable and we don't.

[HeadedWest]

Originally Posted by lrfox

Nope... and that's the problem. We simply don't do it right. If we did, it would be more than possible, ESPECIALLY in the Northeast. You have to have a good, extensive network for them to be profitable and we don't.

The problem is that there is zero evidence that we can do it 'right'. Between legal, environmental, and union restrictions it is impossible.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by MonkeyButler7000

i think one of the real problems that public transportation, and even walking, face is that people view it as beneath them. There is the metallity that only poor people who can't afford cars get around that way. Personally I would rather sit on a train, bus, or subway with a cup of coffee and newspaper and relax on my way to work instead of fighting gridlock for 45 minutes. I am certainly not above that! I think it is hard though because in order to do that, you have to choose between a very small and expensive list of cities

This is why I decided to save my pennies to stay here. I could never live anywhere with that mentality. I really feel a cultural divide between the "mass transit cities" and "the rest of them" in this country, and I just could not live in any of those places.

[VlyRoadKid]

Originally Posted by MonkeyButler7000

I also like more dense, walkable living with the option of public transportation. ...You are never going to convince large numbers of Americans to change their minds about they way they live by cramming a bunch of anti-capitalist, global-warming stuff down their throats. The way to do it is to show them the benefits that the lifestyle can offer people and their families, not just the artist or yuppie crowd. That is why people moved to suburbs in the first place, they thought that it offered a better quality of life then continuing to live in cities like they always had. The same approach needs to be taken if anyone wants them to move back.

You make some good points, but linking the absolute necessity to halt global warming with anti-capitalism makes no sense. Alternative technologies COULD generate profit as well as burning fossil fuels and the associated businesses...IF we ever used them!

Also, I think it's pretty naive to assume that addressing global warming is ONLY directed at the "artist and yuppie crowd"...(where'd THAT come from?!) As far as I can see, melting polar ice caps, sinking cities, drought, floods and other things resulting from global warming affect EVERYONE, including (as long as we're stereotyping here!) non-artist, Joe Six-Pack and his wife, Sally Housecoat. In short, everyone is going to benefit by stopping fossil fuel reliance and gas guzzling cars, to name a few things.