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Ban Cars, Build Trains
Author: R Ruiz
Date: 12-02-2018 - 00:38
There is more demand to live in the major urban areas of California than our infrastructure and policies currently allow for. Real estate costs and congestion in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles prove this.
We are inured to the costs of auto-dependency - the amount we spend on new roads and lanes, the demand for free and abundant parking1, the death toll2, and the toll on our environment.3 Until recently, the sacred cow of transportation impacts per CEQA was Level Of Service. This thankfully discarded concept identified anything that limited the flow of autos as a negative environmental impact. So you want to create signal preemption to help the thousands that arrive in downtown via LRVs on Flower? Couldn't do it because that would slow the flow of private autos.
The resources we devote to alternatives such as active transit, buses, and rail are pathetic because we've spent decades thinking that was the natural order of things
Denser, pedestrian-oriented urbanism served by trains and buses (much like the urbanism of the early 20thC) is what the future should look like. Single family suburbs will continue to exist, but having a state where that is pretty much the only thing that gets built is an outdated boomer fantasy and either it or all of us is going to have to die.
CAHSR will help re-urbanize the cities it serves and provide an essential alternative to highways and airplanes. I'm not that young myself, but I bet most of the opposition to CAHSR comes from the boomer generation because it doesn't comport with their outdated vision of spending billions in the hopes of having the free flowing highways they THINK they remember.
Is the process full of corruption and waste? Yes. Let's fix it.
I know you many of you will dismiss me as some kinda straw man radical. fine. As I said, the real estate prices in San Francisco prove otherwise.
I walk the damn walk and I bike it as well. I haven't owned a car since 2004
1. 8! parking spaces per car in the US
2. 4 people had violent, terrible deaths due to autos in the time it took to read this screed
3. Common, really? NASA and JPL can reliably land robots on Mars, but you don't believe them about climate change? whatever.
We are inured to the costs of auto-dependency - the amount we spend on new roads and lanes, the demand for free and abundant parking1, the death toll2, and the toll on our environment.3 Until recently, the sacred cow of transportation impacts per CEQA was Level Of Service. This thankfully discarded concept identified anything that limited the flow of autos as a negative environmental impact. So you want to create signal preemption to help the thousands that arrive in downtown via LRVs on Flower? Couldn't do it because that would slow the flow of private autos.
The resources we devote to alternatives such as active transit, buses, and rail are pathetic because we've spent decades thinking that was the natural order of things
Denser, pedestrian-oriented urbanism served by trains and buses (much like the urbanism of the early 20thC) is what the future should look like. Single family suburbs will continue to exist, but having a state where that is pretty much the only thing that gets built is an outdated boomer fantasy and either it or all of us is going to have to die.
CAHSR will help re-urbanize the cities it serves and provide an essential alternative to highways and airplanes. I'm not that young myself, but I bet most of the opposition to CAHSR comes from the boomer generation because it doesn't comport with their outdated vision of spending billions in the hopes of having the free flowing highways they THINK they remember.
Is the process full of corruption and waste? Yes. Let's fix it.
I know you many of you will dismiss me as some kinda straw man radical. fine. As I said, the real estate prices in San Francisco prove otherwise.
I walk the damn walk and I bike it as well. I haven't owned a car since 2004
1. 8! parking spaces per car in the US
2. 4 people had violent, terrible deaths due to autos in the time it took to read this screed
3. Common, really? NASA and JPL can reliably land robots on Mars, but you don't believe them about climate change? whatever.
