Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Where I live was built by and for "the greatest generation" so no guilt here. By the way, the real greatest generation are the millenials now entering the workforce. I do feel sorry for the gen-Xers as they're sort of the "victim generation".
I don't like labels, but I've been called a Gen X and a Gen Y since I sort of fall between the two. I never understood why it mattered since you have the greatest control of yourself, not what a label says. So why are Xers the "victim generation" and why are Yers the "real greatest generation?" Just curious.
As far as the OP's "rant". Eh. I like the roadways just fine. I don't see how they divide us, I see them connecting us even more. I ride a motorcycle and have done multi-state trips and it's fantastic that I have the freedom to travel to all these states. I have the control to stop and eat where I please. Take in the sights, it's a beautiful country we live in.
What's wrong with driving your own vehicle? Why should I have to give up the control to someone else by taking a train or plane? With all the TSA/VIPR junk that goes on, I'd rather not deal with it and am perfectly happy to drive myself. Plus driving can be cheaper than flying, especially for a family. My buddy has two kids. When he drives down to FL with his wife and kids, it's actually cheaper for them to drive down versus flying. The good old American Road Trip is not dead.
Judging from this thread, perhaps you left too soon. Pretty obvious here that the paint's not dry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
I'm also a professional engineer who is fed up with the older generation not taking into account a huge study period of 70 years in traffic engineering, and continuing to design the way that intuitively makes sense, instead of empirically makes sense.
Would this "older generation" happen to be personified by your current boss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
The fact is the greatest generation was a generation of creators, who thought outside the box.
Hardly explains the narrow-minded, straight-laced types who were so staunch in their support of Jim Crow or the Glass Ceiling. Or the ones who thought that Kent State was long overdue. Or the ones who dissed Nam vets as a bunch of long-haired, dope-smoking hippies who never fought in any REAL war anyway. You want to own this so-called Greatest Generation? Then you buy them with all their very considerable disfiguring warts glaringly intact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
The me me me boomers can only think as far as their next paycheck and tax payment. If you want to leave the next generation something, then get out of the way, thats the best gift of all. How old may I ask are you two?
Mid-60's are already a memory receding in the rear-view mirror as I cruise down the 8-lane, concrete, super-highway of life with its elegant, farmland-destroying, sprawl-supporting cloverleafs and fly-overs on my way to further express my inate me-me-me-ness at yet another meeting to help raise funds for the 501(c)(3) I direct that might very well be helping kids you know make their way through school. You tell us to get out of the way? Here's some much better advice -- don't play in the street.
Last edited by saganista; 05-08-2012 at 07:50 AM..
As far as the OP's "rant". Eh. I like the roadways just fine. I don't see how they divide us, I see them connecting us even more. I ride a motorcycle and have done multi-state trips and it's fantastic that I have the freedom to travel to all these states. I have the control to stop and eat where I please. Take in the sights, it's a beautiful country we live in.
What's wrong with driving your own vehicle? Why should I have to give up the control to someone else by taking a train or plane? With all the TSA/VIPR junk that goes on, I'd rather not deal with it and am perfectly happy to drive myself. Plus driving can be cheaper than flying, especially for a family. My buddy has two kids. When he drives down to FL with his wife and kids, it's actually cheaper for them to drive down versus flying. The good old American Road Trip is not dead.
Which is why highways are great travel and freight tools. The boomers took that and turned it into local roads on steroids, allowing decades of crappy planning for the sake of cheap housing so that every day 90% of the population drives 25 miles to work.
The reason why statistics like the one I linked before are getting better is because more millennials are coming into the work force and more boomers are retiring (thank god) and going to live in their mcmansions in the middle of nowhere. Millennials for the most part (again stereotype) have bucked the trend of the past 50 years and are now choosing smaller houses, are healthier by walking more, eating less, and smoking almost none (will cost less public service funds than boomers), and are averaging less than a car per person, as opposed to boomers who statistically average nearly 1.5 cars per person
You can stand on your own decisions and point out you are not one of those, and that's fine, but statistics, ie when all things are averaged out, show a huge correlation between the maladies of the 20th century and the period in time in which the boomers ruled the world. I'm glad you do so much for your community and for legislation saganista, and I like your posts and the information you provide, but most of your contempories have treated the world as their own personal playground for their own instant gratification.
I'm glad you do so much for your community and for legislation saganista, and I like your posts and the information you provide, but most of your contempories have treated the world as their own personal playground for their own instant gratification.
Many people like my posts. Judging from the rec's it's received, Post #2 above seems to have been particularly well received. But if you'd like my considered opinion, you are simply making an ass of yourself in this thread. Why not go make a nice cup of tea and see if you can think up a way to assess blame for all the design problems in the world without basing it on other people's birthdays.
Meanwhile and with only rare exceptions, humans have been trying transform the world into their own personal playground since before the days of the caveman. None of this should have come as any sort of surprise to you.
The reason why statistics like the one I linked before are getting better is because more millennials are coming into the work force and more boomers are retiring (thank god) and going to live in their mcmansions in the middle of nowhere. Millennials for the most part (again stereotype) have bucked the trend of the past 50 years and are now choosing smaller houses, are healthier by walking more, eating less, and smoking almost none (will cost less public service funds than boomers), and are averaging less than a car per person, as opposed to boomers who statistically average nearly 1.5 cars per person
It's hard to say if your linked statistics is a temporary dip or really telling of a long lasting trend. There have been dips in the past and the recession we've been going through has had drastic repercussions, so it'll be a number of years before anyone can say with definitive certainty that this is a new trend and not just another dip. I did see a news story that mentioned that less young people are getting licenses. One reasons stated that with the new connectivity of social media and cell phones, kids don't need to physically be near each other to "hang out". I guess I'm old school that if I want to hang out, I'll call friends and get together and that's probably why I don't have a FB or Tweeter account.
As far as millennial being healthier, have you seen this news story: Obesity could affect 42% of Americans by 2030 I'm not surprised at all as I go through my daily routines the amount of overweight people I see. It's not just older folks or millennials, it's also the children that are overweight and sedentary. Anyone see that movie "Surrogates" with Bruce Willis?
Again I buck the trend because I'm 32 and I own 2 motorcycles, a pickup and a SUV
I'm 23 and I think it's pretty silly to blame anything on a generation. I guarantee you every generation we have had an will have to come have had people arguing and disagreeing on things of all kinds. But majority wins.. that's just how it works.
Also... I'm pretty sure there are still areas in this country you can go where the "highways" aren't taking over. So another great thing about this country is you have a choice of where to live and where to go.. you have a choice to use a train, bus, plane or car, you have a choice. Not everyone can say that in this world. Would I like it if I could walk to the stores better in my town? Yes... personally I would.. but others don't. There are also other places I could move if that was my number 1 priority, but its not.
1) The study on obesity which I also read looks at current population and anticipated obesity. What it doesnt consider is how old the people who are obese are and whether changes in how we layout our cities will buck that trend (which by the way was the reason why the obesity anticipated percentage has fallen 10% since the last time this study came out).
2) You can yell at me and say that it's not a generational gap, but stories continue to come out about how the prior in power generation made mistakes, and how the current generation is correct those mistakes. From health care, to financing, city planning to infrastructure, social ideals, cheap food, isolationism, and lack of community the lists go on about the trend from 1970 to 2000.
I like plenty of pre-octogenarians, and to discount MY points as being a "young pup" grumbling actually makes my point. In your opinions (very indicative of every experience i have ever had with a boomer) anyone with valid points just hasn't LEARNED how the world works. I'm actually very well versed in how the world works, and I didn't personally attack you, I attacked a majority of your age group backed by historical context.
Breakdown: Boomers view their failings in the hippie era and the subsequent fall into yuppism as "the truth about the world" and anyone who tries to change or challenge those institutions are viewed as outsiders who havent learned that the world crushes you. The world doesnt crush people, the ruling generation does in order to cling onto their beliefs. Just as the WWII crowd stifled you, so too has your generation stifled ours.
Dear people born today, See you at the status quo see you in 30 years I suppose.
BTW Saganista, by ratio just as many people like my posts too (more actually). Once again duration of time in existence means nothing when it comes to a valid debate.
I personally have given you plenty of those reputation points, because as much as you are annoying me with your aggressive retort I actually agree 99% of the time with you personally.
Thought all you "the car is always king" people would like to see the following chart. Turns out when gas is high, traffic is bad everywhere, and yes there was a 5% reduction in employment, you see a sudden decrease in how much we as a society drive.
While we did see a 5% reduction in employment, keep in mind we saw a 3% increase in driving population over the past 2 years which almost negates that.
My diatribe is, we (americans and virginians) are becoming a divergent population. There are some who think that the car is our only way forward, they are generally conservative, older, and have lived in virginia since the era of the highway boom. Then there is the younger group, who never created the highways in the first place, have no particular attachment to them, and see them as divisions in our region instead of commercial booms.
I was told the other day that highways are the reason why Arlington boomed... highways. That explains why there are so many people climbing over themselves to build along Route 50, 66, and 395 right? Because everyone just wants to live work and have fun at restaurants and bars along major highways. Highways are a great tool for moving freight, unfortunately freight traffic, even more significantly than the general population, has plummeted because of gas price.
Why are older people so obsessed with keeping the highways? Do they feel like if they admit it was a bad choice in the first place that old Dwight D will rise from the grave and eat their brains? Is it because they feel that if the highways are torn down that they have failed to leave a lasting generational improvement to the world?
Embrace change. This reminds me of the guy in my old office who refuses to upgrade software. He says that he can do the same stuff just as fast on the dumbed programs from 10 years ago, and yet anytime we both worked on the same designs I finished DAYS before he would. Fighting change because it makes you feel irrelevant is the lasting image I will have of the baby boom generation.
The baby boomers have taken the greatest generations HUMONGOUS accomplishments, sacrifices, and dedication to making this country better and just smeared it with the wishwash non-sense of self indulgence, isolationism, and poor design. For decades they didnt even consider the operational costs of their choices, just build it, let the future figure it out.
Well we have figured it out, we are the future, we for the most part have run the numbers and the way you guys left the country is bass ackwards and we want to change it, we want to simplify it, we want to make systems redundant so that people have more options not just one option. Stop holding on to your control of society, go enjoy florida and retire already.
-The rants of a person who is fed up with the generation before me
Your opinions would be a lot more palatable to the rest of us if they were presented as that--opinions. In this thread (and others) you consistently talk down to those who don't agree with you. If you have all the answers, please, quit your job and run for office and implement all your plans.
Can't dont have the backing of major corporations to help fund a system of television ads... another example of how solutions aren't important when there is an established system to stifle innovation.
Everything I say is opinion except for things that are backed by statistics, lets just put that as a blanket statement, I can squeeze it into my status if you prefer. I have no plans of implementing a despotism :P
I like a good debate, thats how middle eastern people roll, we like arguments. I don't like it getting personal though, and the times that I have done that I apologized. I don't mean to discredit others opinions, but Saganista was simply discrediting mine by saying I don't have the background and knowledge to dispute what HE was saying. If we want to debate my rant that's fine, I await discussion that doesn't call me a pup or question my education which I assure you is adequate to be included in this subject.
Last edited by tysonsengineer; 05-08-2012 at 11:08 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
