Best way to encourage transit?

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by verybadgnome

Couple of issues here. One is that a lot of people don't like density, especially Texans. Two, is that the neighborhood associations here in Austin have what many perceive as too much power and a knee-jerk NIMBY reaction to any new or redevelopment. Three, is that even if gov't enables something, e.g. high rise development in the Rainey Street area, it still takes the private sector time to acquire the land and build. Fourth, is that good transit is not cheap and will always have to be subsidized. Fifth, is that CapMetro is constrained in their funding to their 1(?) cent sales tax allotment.

Good news is that some TODs (Transit Oriented Developments) like the Domain and Crestview have taken off while others like Saltillo Plaza are on the cusp. Another factor in our favor is elected officials that support transit in general and lastly is the influx of people and their relatively deep pocketbooks into the area.

Also that article probably did not include all subsidies. For example guarding the Strait of Hormuz is usually chalked up to a Defense expenditure but the real reason our Navy is there is PETROLEUM.

Could this possibly have anything to do with more density causing more heat, of which we have more than enough already? In other words, Texans, being immersed in it from birth, of necessity instinctively better understand their own climate and what will and won't work for it?

I ask this because of something I noticed in the horse world. Folks that I know from here, where our stalls are usually 12 x 12 and our barns have high ceilings with, it you're lucky and it's designed right, spacing around the top to let hot air out and pull the cooler air through, went up to the Northeast (specifically Vermont and surrounding states) for horse shows and came back saying they would NEVER send a horse up there, that the stalls were tiny and the ceilings were low and they'd never put their horses through that! Then, I went up there on a visit and got to visit several farms and noted the same thing, except when I visited, it happened to be in the winter. I immediately got that our stalls are designed to deal with excessive heat, which is our problem, and their stalls are designed to deal with their problem, the cold, and to conserve heat. So the same overall goal, good housing for the horses, had VERY different solutions based on the native climate, but someone from down here might go up there and build stalls the way we do down here thinking they were the obvious and best solution, or someone from up there might come down here and build stalls the way they do up there thinking they were the obvious and best solution, and both, with the best will in the world, would be doing the wrong thing for the same right reason.

Maybe density as some of you see it isn't the right solution for our climate even if it is for other places. Has anyone ever looked at it from that perspective, do you know?