“It’s just more and more lanes’: the Texan revolt against giant new highways”

[ExpressLane]

So if you cannot drive, you cannot live independently? There are plenty of people with health problems that are not old enough to be in a retirement home. Will they have to live in a halfway house for life? Or people who have an injury that will prevent them from driving for a little while? Do they have to go to one of your prisons for the duration?

Amazon, Uber, Grub Hub, Kroger delivery etc. There is an assisted living around the corner from me that has apartments and a cafeteria and a resident van.

 

[SmarterthanYou]

And yet Connecticut was able to achieve some of that. The Netherlands (even bigger) was able to achieve that.

SOME.........and you appear to overlook the geographical size aspect of the issue...........is that because the leftist viewpoint is one of HUGE government?

 

[SmarterthanYou]

So what happens if you become old, and are no longer able to drive?

probably is very dependent upon what locality one lives in. My city in north fort worth area has over a dozen people who always volunteer to help older folks with issues like being unable to drive.

 

[SmarterthanYou]

So if you cannot drive, you cannot live independently? There are plenty of people with health problems that are not old enough to be in a retirement home. Will they have to live in a halfway house for life? Or people who have an injury that will prevent them from driving for a little while? Do they have to go to one of your prisons for the duration?

I find it interesting that when it comes to vaccinations, you were extremely uncaring about the handful of people who might react badly to them, but now you have this super caring attitude about the handful of elderly who might have severe limitations on living by themselves

 

[Walt]

SOME.........and you appear to overlook the geographical size aspect of the issue...........is that because the leftist viewpoint is one of HUGE government?

So a sidewalk is "HUGE government", but a road is not?

 

[Into the Night]

I just just yesterday as we driving Texas roads had a conversation with my brother on the subject of how the way Texas does roads sucks up a lot of real-estate....the frontage roads and such.

You're talking about Texas. It has a lot of real estate.

 

[Into the Night]

Of course they won't come as long as they have additional lanes, but as the topic post pointed out, more people will drive in the improved conditions, leading to more traffic and eliminating any initial benefit, building more roads only leads to more cars

A road isn't a car. It is not even made of the same materials.

People becoming affluent leads to more cars.

 

[Into the Night]

Not going to waste my time responding to dangling participles and phrases, if you can't tie two sentences together, move on

Semantics fallacy. Pivot fallacy. No argument presented.

 

[Into the Night]

I'm not an expert on Texas. What I do know is they have lots of land and continue to build further North in the DFW area to meet their massive population growth. It's not any different than what we did in California. Even today, NIMBYs here stop dense urban development which only leads to more sprawl.

Just saying they shouldn't build more highways doesn't tell the whole story. It's an incomplete argument.

It is a complete argument. It is based on a paranoid fear of traffic.

 

[Into the Night]

I'm not "seething" over anything, but sounds like you are, and if I am not mistaken, California has begun to recognize the problem

The SDTC has 'solved' the problem by creating conditions so unfavorable that people are moving out as fast as they can.

Oh...the roads? Many are in such poor shape they are little more than gravel.

 

[Into the Night]

Never said it did, nor that they should stop building highways, but doing so hoping to address transportation problems often leads to worsening the problem

And if the area is experiencing massive rapid growth, mass transit for the future is a better option

Not building roads where needed (including highways and freeways) only chokes the economy.

 

[Into the Night]

Which is the problem

Where I live, we have had mass transit, was here long before I arrived, and there has been substantial suburban growth, they didn't build new highways to service the growth, they extended the mass transit, so today no one talks about additional lanes on the existing highways, in fact, they are actually removing some of the highways

Where you live isn't Texas.

 

[Into the Night]

No, they'll sit in traffic rather than on a light rail car or bus. Why? I can think of two big reasons right off:

Massively more safe.
Even with traffic, it's still faster and more convenient.

Both excellent reasons.

Transit such as rail is very limited. You have to wait for the bus or train to arrive, transfer, then wait for the bus or train to arrive, and to that a couple of times to reach a destination in the same city.
It takes a 30 minute trip and turns it into 3 hours...and THAT's if it goes where you need to go.

Ever carry a lot of cargo on a transit system?? Not practical. Easy with a car or truck.

Building transit doesn't lead to reducing congestion on roads.

Building more roads doesn't lead to more cars. It leads to fewer cars per mile of road. The amount of cars doesn't change because roads get built. The problem usually is that in areas of growth, roads take far longer to expand than the growth in population and cars does.

This is most often the case. The road is often late and inadequate by the time it's built and opened.

Here in Phoenix, the latest light fail expansion is northwards, then to the west. This stretch of new track goes from an area known as "Sunnyslope" (aka Meth Central), along Dunlap Road which in that section is mostly empty office buildings, then across I 17 into a now closed mall called "Metrocenter." The area is marked by closed restaurants, closed office buildings, and closed hotels.

An already obsolete system. Oh...these areas will probably become high crime areas, with stops to let criminals get on and off the train or bus.

The office space that's hot right now is 10 to 20 miles north of that location and there are new restaurants and hotels going up next to the office buildings. The companies moving in are national ones and their management likes that there's a regional airport (Deer Valley) right in the middle of the area. That means they can fly in on a charter or private jet and go to their company offices in a short hop from the airport.

I've been to Deer Valley airport. Nice place.

Taiwan Semi-Conductor is building a multi-billion dollar campus and factory nearby. I've been told they'll employ about 5,000 people initially, mostly high paying jobs in engineering, science, and manufacturing. Just did a rewire on a house that one of their engineers got for a relative steal. $575,000 in an older golf course neighborhood about a mile from my current house. I'm moving to an upscale area called "Arrowhead" in Peoria about 10 miles from my current address. It's the Scottsdale (aka Snobsdale) of the West valley.

Heh. Like the nickname. It fits.

My current neighborhood is becoming a victim of Joke's policy to force people into renting.

Not sure what this means.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

On that last, because of HUD policies and federal regulation changes, it's becoming more valuable to investors to rent, even to section 8 losers, than to flip and sell.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

last week a band of residents from across Texas

I wonder how many of them just moved to Texas from LA.......

 

[PostmodernProphet]

Having in-laws that live in the Metroplex I've spent some time there. Texas, and DFW specifically, has experienced massive population growth. Where exactly are all those people going to live? Unless you want to make Dallas and Ft Worth look like Manhattan and just go straight vertical, you have plenty of land in Texas to build.

Do you suggest they do what Austin has done and have an anti-development attitude? That hasn't stopped people from coming but it's made housing expensive as fvck.

I check out housing prices in Dallas for sh*ts and giggles when we visit. It's not cheap. A bunch of people from California and New York moving there driving up prices. So people have to move further out to afford it. But that's racist to you?

the growth patterns west of Chicago, out along Interstate 88 are interesting.....clusters of high rise commercial buildings every five miles or so.......trains running between the eastbound and westbound interstate lanes........suburbs and strip malls surrounding each cluster........seems like they built an interstate to encourage development rather than waiting for the development then building roads to get to it....

 

[Matt Dillon]

A road isn't a car. It is not even made of the same materials.

People becoming affluent leads to more cars.

Even so, some rail infrastructure would be good.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Even so, some rail infrastructure would be good.

For inner-city rail like light fail to really be necessary and successful, you need a population density about 5 to 10 times higher than virtually any city in America has currently. That isn't happening in the next century...

Rail between cities in the US isn't a reality simply because, with a few exceptions, it is horribly inefficient in time and no less costly than air travel.

 

[Matt Dillon]

For inner-city rail like light fail to really be necessary and successful, you need a population density about 5 to 10 times higher than virtually any city in America has currently. That isn't happening in the next century...

Rail between cities in the US isn't a reality simply because, with a few exceptions, it is horribly inefficient in time and no less costly than air travel.

Light rail is what gave rise to cities across America in the 1st place; That's my theory.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Light rail is what gave rise to cities across America in the 1st place; That's my theory.

No, light rail was an early transit system at a time when there wasn't an alternative. Most early trolley and rail systems were privately owned and for profit. They died off when the automobile and bus became available in mass. The flexibility of these dominated the fixed routes of rail systems.

Railroads worked until highways replaced them for the same reason: Flexibility and a reduction in time and cost. In the US air travel also prevailed as it was more efficient than rail for passenger service.