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You mean other than the fact that billions are taken from the larger population to pay for transportation of a much smaller number?
People that use cars are often designated as "car dependent" as if independence was some kind of disability or handicap that needs a cure. The urbanophiles' solution is to eliminate parking and road width to make it difficult to drive or keep a car. All this does is foster dependence on transit and elimination of independence. Surely you would agree that it is more likely the developer is salivating at the prospect of selling floors more units under the pretext of "encouraging people to walk" as if the developer has any interest in the health of the purchasers. I'm sure somebody is buying into all that nonsense. Hopefully they have rational friends that can steer them otherwise.
Ha. Then you shouldn't be offended by people that "choose" to use cars, right?
Yes. From the user's standpoint, cars offer a lot of independence. Transit offers only transportation on someone else's schedule.
...as opposed to transit?
Do you think all your goods and services are going to be provided via transit?
Do you think transit is going to transport goods and service providers to businesses?
"Car dependent" is a poor choice of words and non-analogous to transit dependent. If you have a car you also have independence as to where you go, when you go, who you go with, the environment within the car, the route you take, how fast or slow you go (within traffic limitations), how many stops you make on the way, etc. Your transit options are to try to catch one of the transit vehicles. You have no say in the schedule, no say in how many stops, no say in the environment immediately around you, no say in when you go, no say in who you go with, no say in the route, etc. If you miss the last run you're still transit dependent and you aren't getting home that way.
There are high negative external costs imposed by transit dependency.
Now I think I see that urbanophile anti-car sentiment starting to peek through. What's this "we" stuff? I thought you promoted choice? Now it seems you promote choice so long as it's your choice. Your argument as presented is more than a little asymmetric. You promote transit dependency which is the antithesis of independence or choice.
What you describe is certainly the pipe dream for some.
We get it, you prefer your car over any other form of transportation and there is no amount of arguing that is going to make you change your mind about your car.
Let's be honest here, that is exactly what you are arguing about in this post.....
We'll always allow cars. But public policy should be neutral at most, vs. being heavily pro car for the past few generations. The US didn't become dominated by cars in a vacuum.
Land use is part of that. Today, in 2016, the vast majority of the US not only doesn't allow uses to be mixed (office, retail, and housing for example), but requires parking for everything. Only in certain denser urban areas does freedom exist.
That's despite huge demand for these areas. Look at what people are willing to pay to live in the core parts of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, DC, and so on.
Buses Pollute and so does the power plants that run rail. It becomes inconvenient for Blue Collars workers who need to arrive before transit runs as well as visitors in the area. It is inconvenient for families as well.
The reason why Jobs became dependent on the automobile is because the car allowed workers to live further away from work and to arrive independent of the transit schedule. It also allowed workers to travel quickly to other locations if need be.
Anyway by being transit dependent you have limited where you can work and at what hours. Your shopping
choices are limited to where the bus runs or where you can walk and you are limited as to how much you can carry as well as what you can carry. Want to take a pet on the CTA, it had better fit in an carrier. Want to carry more than 4 bags of Groceries(or so) good luck. Want to take your bike somewhere during rush hour, sorry can't carry that on the train at that time. Or in crowded conditions(like a Cub's Game).
With a car you could drive to an commuter train station, a cheap covenant parking lot or even an EL station and still use transit saving lots of time vs. taking the bus and walking. Allowing you to leave latter and so on. You could drop the wife off or pick up the kid as well as get enough Groceries for a week in the same trip. You can carry just about anything you want at any time.
This is why people fell in love with the car.
Unless a city is small enough that people can rely on only walking and biking, people will need a medium-long distance mode of transportation like cars, buses or trains. Yes, buses and trains pollute too. But they're still more energy efficient if they use the same energy source. If we tax energy based on its true costs, then people will be encouraged to be more energy efficient and also would want to change land use patterns accordingly. As for blue collar workers, with smart urban planning, people should be able to go from anywhere to anywhere without a car. And why do you single out blue collar workers?
Why is living far away from work a good thing? We could design cities so that getting around by public transit is faster than driving. Driving is not inherently faster. It depends on a lot of factors. Also, the car became more popular because of the growth of suburbs which was subsidized due to social engineering and not a result of the free market. Also, driving is the least equitable mode of transportation. What if you're too old, too young, or disabled? Public transit allows those people to not have to rely on others all the time. In many European cities, the elderly and disabled don't need paratransit because the tram and bus systems can take them anywhere.
I get it. Cars have their benefits, and I'm not disagreeing. However we must assess the true costs of everything. If you had to pay the true cost of driving, including the infrastructure and environmental costs, would driving still be worth it?
You want to Compare Paris which is a small city with narrow streets and Cul de sacs to Chicago? The metro would have an advantage over the car just from being underground and the city being so small.
It is not taxed because we have both an oil industry and an auto industry to promote.
Paris is only 40 square miles, Chicago is 234 square miles worth of grid. That is a lot more area to cover and with the Grid non stop trips via auto are much more possible.
Are you arguing that the oil lobby is a good thing? What exactly is your point?
At this point, you're just nitpicking and not addressing what I said.
Ha. Then you shouldn't be offended by people that "choose" to use cars, right?
Basically my point was that driving needs to be taxed so that drivers pay its true costs. I get that people choose to drive. I'm fine with people driving if they pay the full cost of it. Fossil fuels in general should be taxed and that would affect public transit too, not only cars. So yes, public transit users should also pay the full cost of public transit.
Cars are awesome and I only take public transportation in cities like Washington DC and New York, but I don't like how the debate is framed around public transportation having to exist without subsidies from the taxpayers. The interstate highway system would be unusable without subsidies from the taxpayers.
Basically my point was that driving needs to be taxed so that drivers pay its true costs. I get that people choose to drive. I'm fine with people driving if they pay the full cost of it. Fossil fuels in general should be taxed and that would affect public transit too, not only cars. So yes, public transit users should also pay the full cost of public transit.
It's a fool's errand to try to get everyone to pay exactly the amount that they use for everything. It sounds great in principle, but once you start trying to figure out every single detail, you'll quickly see that there's a reason that certain things are public. It also neglects that we have a progressive tax structure. It certainly can be argued that such a tax structure should be overthrown, but that's a much bigger debate than just transit type.
What does make sense is to come up with a sensible public policy regarding transit and development. No need for people who live in a city and don't have a car to demonize those who do have cars (and yes, cars are generally much more pleasant than public transportation, I say this as someone who takes public transit to work). There's also no need for people who live nowhere near public transportation to demonize those who rely on it. In coming up with a sensible balance there will be disagreements, but hopefully the transit people can convince the non-transit people that some public funding of transportation is in their interest (and vice-versa). Articles like the one the OP posted are definitely not a good way of doing this; it's essentially presented as a smug, "here's what's wrong with cars" without offering much in the way of solution.
Unless a city is small enough that people can rely on only walking and biking, people will need a medium-long distance mode of transportation like cars, buses or trains. Yes, buses and trains pollute too. But they're still more energy efficient if they use the same energy source. If we tax energy based on its true costs, then people will be encouraged to be more energy efficient and also would want to change land use patterns accordingly. As for blue collar workers, with smart urban planning, people should be able to go from anywhere to anywhere without a car. And why do you single out blue collar workers?
Why is living far away from work a good thing? We could design cities so that getting around by public transit is faster than driving. Driving is not inherently faster. It depends on a lot of factors. Also, the car became more popular because of the growth of suburbs which was subsidized due to social engineering and not a result of the free market.Also, driving is the least equitable mode of transportation. What if you're too old, too young, or disabled? Public transit allows those people to not have to rely on others all the time. In many European cities, the elderly and disabled don't need paratransit because the tram and bus systems can take them anywhere.[/b]
I get it. Cars have their benefits, and I'm not disagreeing. However we must assess the true costs of everything. If you had to pay the true cost of driving, including the infrastructure and environmental costs, would driving still be worth it?
Buses are not all that energy efficient, especially when they run half (or more) empty. Do a search on this forum. The numbers have been run.
Probably because blue-collar workers (which encompasses a lot of different occupations) tend to work screwy hours, off shifts, and the like.
Au contraire, driving is almost always faster. How long do you think it takes to drive 1.6 miles in a suburban city? 10 minutes maybe. How long did it take my daughter to get home from school 1.6 miles away on the city bus? 45 minutes!
Oh, for Pity's Sake! That's all I'll say to that. We've had this discussion before.
Equitable? That's what we're looking for in a transportation policy?
As someone who has worked with the elderly, I know that by the time you need special services, you can't take the bus either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jayrandom
It's a fool's errand to try to get everyone to pay exactly the amount that they use for everything. It sounds great in principle, but once you start trying to figure out every single detail, you'll quickly see that there's a reason that certain things are public. It also neglects that we have a progressive tax structure. It certainly can be argued that such a tax structure should be overthrown, but that's a much bigger debate than just transit type.
What does make sense is to come up with a sensible public policy regarding transit and development. No need for people who live in a city and don't have a car to demonize those who do have cars (and yes, cars are generally much more pleasant than public transportation, I say this as someone who takes public transit to work). There's also no need for people who live nowhere near public transportation to demonize those who rely on it. In coming up with a sensible balance there will be disagreements, but hopefully the transit people can convince the non-transit people that some public funding of transportation is in their interest (and vice-versa). Articles like the one the OP posted are definitely not a good way of doing this; it's essentially presented as a smug, "here's what's wrong with cars" without offering much in the way of solution.
That isn't even the purpose of taxation. The purpose is to spread the cost over a large group. Take school taxes, for example, not that most people on this board think schools are important. That's another conversation we've had before. But anyway, if you were supposed to pay in taxes what it cost to educated your kids, why not just have private schools? In my district, 80% of the taxpayers do not have kids in school at any given time. Now some, like me, have had kids in school at one time. Some have never had any kids in school. but schools are a public good.
I agree that public transportation is a public good as well. And just to keep everyone focused, transit is heavily subsidized. Fares are but a small portion of the cost of a ride on "The Ride" (Denver's name for its buses). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ation_sign.jpg
Yes I know Chicago has more extreme weather than Copenhagen, though it has plenty of 30s. Only gets up to 11 inches of snow? I would have expected more. My location has more below 0°F mornings than Chicago. Frankly, except for maybe a few days I'd rather at least be outside a bit everyday regardless of weather. I used to bike in the winter some days, don't really anymore.
Having grown up in Minneapolis, the terrain is perfect for fostering a bicycling infrastructure - the city is both flat and relatively small which makes biking quite simple, even using the pre-existing river paths in place of the newer bike lanes.
The real hindrance in Minneapolis (and probably to a slightly lesser degree in Chicago) is not the amount of snow. Actually, Minneapolis often gets relatively small amounts of accumulation. The real issue is the sub-zero air temperatures and even more brutal windchill. There's little worse than being out on a sunny day in mid-January and getting hit with a 30mph gust of -20F winds. This type of climate is not uncommon between the months of December and April, sometimes May. That said, Minneapolis has a pretty solid cycling community, but the brutal winter temperatures usually succeed in dissuading all but the most determined cyclists - the average person willing to take on the task of (fair-weather) cycling to work typically retires the bike once the weather dips below freezing.
Last edited by vladlensky; 05-03-2016 at 09:22 AM..
We get it, you prefer your car over any other form of transportation and there is no amount of arguing that is going to make you change your mind about your car.
Let's be honest here, that is exactly what you are arguing about in this post.....
If you want to be honest then how about intellectual honesty in the discussion. It's pretty clear that the last go round started out trying a less than intellectually honest "logical" discussion. The poster then resorted to sanctimonious proclamations as to how people needed to live in order to justify or create a need for a mode of transportation that the poster wanted to have provided for him/her.
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