Why suburbia sucks (Atlanta: station, gas, rating)

[abalashov]

Regarding the ease with which highways are built vs. transit, at least when federal dollars are involved (and given the scale of transit endeavours, they usually must necessarily be), this is an insightful read:

Highways and Transit: Leveling the Playing Field in Federal Transportation Policy | Brookings Institution

[abalashov]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Yep, I have. Even their "suburbs" are more walkable than in town Atlanta.

Indeed. And the same holds true of most suburbs around the world. It takes America to build strictly car-dependent cruft to such an extreme and ubiquitous degree as we have.

I've been to German villages where most residents obviously travel by car, as rural Europeans generally do. And yet, there were still pedestrians in sight. I remember thinking to myself, even as I surveyed the cars parked next to every house: still more walkable than 90% of Metro Atlanta's ~8300 sq mi.

It's not just about "space" and "elbow room", yards and gardens and whatnot--the villagers have that, too, in spades. You've really got to go far--very far--out of your way to build this geography of QuikTrips we've got.

Originally Posted by jsvh

But yes, China is making some bad decisions in planning by closing bike lanes and trying to make more room for cars and supporting people buying cars by the millions.

They're in the developing economy - rising middle class stage I mentioned in a previous comment, where cars are totem objects of affluence. It's cargo cultism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult), and they'll snap out of it, much like we're beginning to. Unfortunately, though, it will likely get somewhat worse before it gets better. I cringe to think of that nadir scaled across 1.5 bn people (or, more charitably, just China's urban population).

I lived in Yerevan for two years and saw the same dynamic playing out across Armenia. Any guy who can somehow afford to get a car gets a car, no matter how beat-up or old. It's not because it's the cheapest, most convenient or practical way of getting around the city--it's definitely not, especially in a dense city built for people, not cars. Practicality has nothing to do with it. It's all about image. It's a big, blinking light that telegraphs that you've made it. That's why to have a car.

If the aim is to satisfy an inherently irrational set of psychological impulses, there's no arguing from rationality. This has far more to do with picking up chicks in the hot rod (or at least, imagining that one will) than with mobility or economic empowerment.

This too shall pass. But I worry about how much damage it'll do before the reality sinks in, as captured by the former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it’s where the rich use public transportation."

Originally Posted by jsvh

Reality is, no major city can function with 90%+ of people driving personal vehicles.

And that's really the important point. Americans tend to view widespread car ownership as a manifestation of their national wealth, willfully blind to the negative externalities (pollution, health effects) and the entirely unnecessary waste and duplication involved in everyone driving their own 4,000 lb. behemoth for anything so small as a trivial errand. Why not a personal Learjet or a rocket ship? Wouldn't that be even classier?

It bears comparison to smoking. We've passed the peak where everyone thought it was cool and listened fastidiously to the camel in sunglasses, but nothing's really changed much yet. Mid-late 1960s, maybe?

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by jsvh

We are not the only one that gives subsudies to suburban life. But if you have ever been to many of these other countires you would realize the density of their "suburbs" never drops below that of intown Atlanta. You can be walking down a dense set of townhomes on a grid and all the sudden the next block is farm land. Very few of the cul-de-sac type setup that you can only drive to.

Big European cities have car oriented suburbs that stretch as far as the eye can see.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa...522219!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3911...8i6656!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lo...277583!6m1!1e1

[abalashov]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Big European cities have car oriented suburbs that stretch as far as the eye can see.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa...522219!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3911...8i6656!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lo...277583!6m1!1e1

Not "as far as the eye can see", but they certainly exist. And all of the places you showed are considerably more dense and compact than the average Metro Atlanta exurban cul-de-sac.

Also, look at the width of the streets. Definitely not designed to support 50 MPH cars under the pretext of accommodating full-size fire engines.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Big European cities have car oriented suburbs that stretch as far as the eye can see.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa...522219!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3911...8i6656!6m1!1e1

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lo...277583!6m1!1e1

Look at how close together those houses are and how narrow those streets are. Many of our intown "urban" neighborhoods could only dream of that level of density.

[abalashov]

Also, lest the most important point be lost: the places shown were cherry-picked suburbs. Zoom out on the map and see where they are. One can choose to live there if one likes. One can also choose to live somewhere in the great, big city that these suburbs surround.

Do we have that choice in most US cities, or in metro Atlanta?

[wasel]

Originally Posted by abalashov

Yeah, all 16%, in the national aggregate. The remaining 84% goes to highways. Cry me a river.

The Heritage Foundation

Your Heritage link is a dead link. But currently, the Mass Transit portion represents about 33% of the Highway Trust Fund balance.


Status of the Highway Trust Fund | Federal Highway Administration

[abalashov]

It's not dead for me. The relevant portion is:

Legislation passed in 1993 increased the motor fuels tax rates to their current levels of 18.3 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon for diesel. The highway account receives 84 percent of the gasoline tax revenue, and the mass transit account receives the remaining 16 percent.[2] Sales taxes on tires, heavy trucks, and trailers also support the trust fund. The revenues are then apportioned to states via statutory formulas.

Ironically, this figure comes from an article that is against funding transit from the HTF:

Over the past few decades, lawmakers have diverted more trust fund resources to local and state programs, thus starving general purpose roads of funds.

Transit—including light rail, trolleys, and buses—marks the largest diversion. In 2010 alone, it received 17 percent, or $6 billion, of federal highway user fees, even though it accounted for only about 1 percent of the nation’s surface travel.[3] Despite receiving a portion of federal user fees for decades, transit has failed to reduce traffic congestion or even maintain its share of urban travel. For example, between 1983 and 2010, traffic volumes in the nation’s 51 major metropolitan areas increased by 87 percent, peak travel times in those areas increased by 125 percent, and transit’s share of passenger miles fell by one-fourth.[4]

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by abalashov

Do we have that choice in most US cities, or in metro Atlanta?

You can in Atlanta.

Of course it's not Paris, Barcelona or London, but you can get a pretty good, urban quality of life here for a reasonable price. Plenty of neighborhoods in areas like Virginia Highland, Buckhead or Midtown fit the bill.

You can live without a car but most people will prefer to use an automobile, even though their trips will typically only be a mile or two.

[abalashov]

Originally Posted by arjay57

You can in Atlanta.

Of course it's not Paris, Barcelona or London, but you can get a pretty good, urban quality of life here for a reasonable price. Plenty of neighborhoods in areas like Virginia Highland, Buckhead or Midtown fit the bill.

Somewhat. Things are evolving more in that direction, in strictly relative terms, but the limitations are stark and have been extensively discussed in this thread. The short version is that we've got a few pockets of somewhat usable (if rather low-density) urbanism in a huge ocean of highway sprawl, which means, in effect, that a car is required regardless. Absent regionally integrated planning vision and investment, it'll continue to be that way.

It hardly needs to turn into Paris, Barcelona or London to be viable.