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Senator Strom Thurmond asked Mayor West if he thought "it would be better to just start from scratch and build it out from the city and not try to follow the old road system, from the standpoint of economy and efficiency and completion of the system." This question gave the Mayor an opportunity to site Nashville as illustrative of other cities:
Around our own city we have 10 State highways coming into the city. The Bureau of Public Roads engineers have... got it down to where there are five major highways. They join the existing highways farther out, and are bringing traffic in on one brand new proposed highway from each direction. They are taking those highways under their tentative plan through new territory, and we have retained some engineers in New York to plan for us a beltline which will connect these new Federal highways to get the people around our city.
We have a central city problem as all the cities do. In our central city we have a river on the east and a railroad gulch on the west and 3 bridges over the river and 3 viaducts over the railroad, and all the traffic has to come through the center of the city.
Most of the cities in the past have had bad planning. All the traffic pushes through the center of the city, and we want to circle the central business district with Federal highways with limited-access roads, because these new highways, as the engineers explained to me, will be limited-access beginning way out from the city, and then we want to get on and off at the junction of these beltlines with these Federal highways.
"The federal government gave final approval for the construction of the Capital Beltway (also known as the Circumferential Highway in the planning stages) on September 28, 1955. The first section of the 64-mile (103 km) long Beltway (including the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River) was opened on December 21, 1961; the highway was completed on August 17, 1964"
Construction of the freeway began on December 12, 1965, and the freeway between Interstate 70 and Interstate 76 (80S) was completed by October 23, 1970.
In the 1980's a lot of cars started using digital readouts for their guages. This was the new, technologically advanced way to do things then. But, we have largely switched back to the analog form of gauges--with a needle pointing to numbers--because, as it turns out, a majority of people liked that better.
LOL, that feature never did trickle down to any of the subcompacts I've driven.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
Some of the "Urban Renewal" of the 50s/60s turned out not to be so good, but it was the conventional wisdom of the Urban Planners of the day. Monday morning quarterbacking is not real useful.
This. Learn from past decisions all you want. The reasons why those decisions are made may or may not exist 50-60 years later. Learn and move on.
Why won't light rail or subways be useful for general living? That seems to be their function.
Sometimes you can get where you're going a lot faster by car. I look at those systems as ways to get to work, to the ball park, places you're going to stay a while.
I wish my eye doctor was located near a metro station, since I don't feel I can drive safely when my eyes are dilated. Not badly enough to change eye doctors at this point, though.
I've found light rail and subway to be extremely useful for daily living. Much commercial activity is clustered around the stops, so I could just get off at a station to do my errands before heading home, and depending on what I needed to do, either walk home from the station or get back on and continue on to my home station. FAR more efficient than having to trek from one location to another and to deal with, say, parking at a different lot for each business. Subways and light rail are (or should be, anyway) designed for daily living, and they do very well at that. I did my shopping, went to the doctor, brought my child to daycare, got myself to work, etc. on light rail, and more recently, by foot or by bus (but the light rail was much easier and more convenient).
.....In the 1980's a lot of cars started using digital readouts for their guages. This was the new, technologically advanced way to do things then. But, we have largely switched back to the analog form of gauges--with a needle pointing to numbers--because, as it turns out, a majority of people liked that better.....
I knew someone who had one of these, Nissan something or other, don't remember the exact model, it was great until it stopped working. Then you couldn't tell how much gas you had or how fast you were going. She drove it for two years like that and then gave it to her son who commuted to the university the next town over for three more. I'm not sure exactly how many tickets they ended up with in total but she said it was still cheaper than fixing it. I always thought it was more "gimmick" than "advanced".
I knew someone who had one of these, Nissan something or other, don't remember the exact model, it was great until it stopped working. Then you couldn't tell how much gas you had or how fast you were going. She drove it for two years like that and then gave it to her son who commuted to the university the next town over for three more. I'm not sure exactly how many tickets they ended up with in total but she said it was still cheaper than fixing it. I always thought it was more "gimmick" than "advanced".
I don't know if this helps prove your point or not, but think of KITT from the old Night Rider TV show.
My grandma's '88 Mercury Cougar had digital gauges, and they worked for as long as she had the car.
Sometimes you can get where you're going a lot faster by car. I look at those systems as ways to get to work, to the ball park, places you're going to stay a while.
They're also quite useful for bar hopping.
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