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Yes, and more yuppies (and anyone else who doesn't have kids, but prefers urban living) will replace the ones who leave for better schools.
It's an unfortunate cycle. The city schools won't improve until the middle class returns. But, the middle class won't return to the city schools until they improve.
Even that's changing. I lived in Phoenix till a year ago and the older central areas along the Light Rail are cleaning up with better people even with kids moving IN and the "riff raff" is moving OUT to places like Maryvale which WAS nice about 30 years ago.
Have you ever tried to walk a mile in a suit in a hot southern city? It does not prepare you for work.
I walked two miles each way in the snow (as in up to 2 feet) AND 95+ degrees of humid heat. It's doable if you are healthy (and I only had to get a car because I was not). Of course you don't wear your suit - you change when you get to the office.
Many of my coworkers bike 10 - 15 miles each way in the summer, freshen up with baby wipes in the bathroom, and change into their suits or business attire.
Little price to pay to save on $300+ a month in car costs, not including the payment itself.
I walked two miles each way in the snow (as in up to 2 feet) AND 95+ degrees of humid heat. It's doable if you are healthy (and I only had to get a car because I was not). Of course you don't wear your suit - you change when you get to the office.
Many of my coworkers bike 10 - 15 miles each way in the summer, freshen up with baby wipes in the bathroom, and change into their suits or business attire.
Little price to pay to save on $300+ a month in car costs, not including the payment itself.
The amount one can save from not being dependent on the if car could mean having enough money each year for big exciting trips. I use to always take a couple big trips every year because I always had the money to pay for them because I was barely using my paid off car at the time.
Particularly rail. Rail made much more economic sense when a huge percent of the population worked 8 to 5 and commuted to a central location. Today, more and more people work from home, travel, work odd hours or work from a remote location. Rail takes you from a location of it's choosing to a location of it's choosing. You can choose to move close to a rail station, but most people don't. The "if you build it, they will come" philosophy has been a total failure. Most of us just shake our heads in wonder as we watch mostly empty light rail cars go by.
Meanwhile, tax payers watching the half empty rail cars are sitting in traffic jams because they have no choice. Politicians believe if they make driving more painful (by slowing funding for roads) then people will shift from cars to rail. The problem is that most people have no choice. They don't commute to a central location every day.
So despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested and hundreds of billions of dollars from tax payers, ridership per capita continues to decline and has done so for decades. But it's politically correct to continue to invest in rail even though a huge majority of tax payers will never board a train.
You realize that GM, Ford and Chrysler were responsible for destroying much of the public transit many years ago, because they wanted Americans to buy their cars. Some cities in New England still have the old trolly tracks in the roads.
I liked mass transit when I used it. They run rail from my city right into DC and it is full most of the time from what I have seen. I miss being able to ride the transit buses in my home state (they were discontinued). I wish there was more commuter rail taking people more places (and I am not a carbon nut).
Even that's changing. I lived in Phoenix till a year ago and the older central areas along the Light Rail are cleaning up with better people even with kids moving IN and the "riff raff" is moving OUT to places like Maryvale which WAS nice about 30 years ago.
Their system did impress me. Light rail should become more widely added. We need to include cost avoidance in mass transit ROI calculations. Without adding it, as people spread to suburbia, road maintenance and construction costs will explode, faster than the population itself. In many cases roads cannot be built in adequate amounts.
I live near a connector to I65 (Nashville's main route), and my county is projected to see a few hundred thousand more residents in the next few decades. The connector has traffic jams NOW, and cannot be widened. Bridges across a very wide river direct to Nashville will cost many times what light rail would. That makes our resistence to light rail idiotic, at best.
That same idiotic tendency in your old region extended to Scottsdale, Az which stuck its nose out at a light rail option in its city. As a region whose economy is tourist-centered, I cannot be over that stupidity level.
And why would a suburbanite want to visit another suburb? What's there that he doesnt have in his/her own suburb?
Where you live doesn't sound like where I live and tens of millions of others live. I live near a small city where the suburban population is 2-3 times larger than the urban. Most of our bus routes transit through downtown. Why? There is no reason to.
Now, your other question. I live in the suburbs, and my job is in a different section of the suburbs; this is a reality that most people face in my area, and countless millions throughout the country.
Where you live doesn't sound like where I live and tens of millions of others live. I live near a small city where the suburban population is 2-3 times larger than the urban. Most of our bus routes transit through downtown. Why? There is no reason to.
Why? I don't know your city, but there may be a good reason: outside of downtown destinations are too spread out for a bus service to cover it well or get much of any ridership for each route. Even if the downtown is small, it's still more transit-friendly than outside of it.
I walked two miles each way in the snow (as in up to 2 feet) AND 95+ degrees of humid heat. It's doable if you are healthy (and I only had to get a car because I was not). Of course you don't wear your suit - you change when you get to the office.
Many of my coworkers bike 10 - 15 miles each way in the summer, freshen up with baby wipes in the bathroom, and change into their suits or business attire.
Little price to pay to save on $300+ a month in car costs, not including the payment itself.
Hmmm... but you still have to have a car to drive to the rail station.
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