8 ms·

A Texas-Sized Pavement Problem

85 points by oftenwrong 8y ago

everdev 8y ago
The article seems to assume the reader knows about "strong towns". If they're trying to make an argument about overspending on roads it's very poorly worded and organized.
- wmf 8y ago
  People new to the topic should probably start at https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/6/14/greatest-hits-the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/6/14/greatest-hits-...
vondur 8y ago
Are these just county roads or does it also include State and Federal highways? I’d imagine there may be multiple sources of funding available.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Usually just county roads. State roads and federal highways receive federal tax dollars. That’s not to say you can’t get federal or state grants for some roadway related local projects, but these roads described would be primarily county roads built with borrowed money (or local tax dollars if they’re available, which they usually aren’t, hence the bond issue kicking the can down the road).
- kodablah 8y ago
  Increasingly in Collin and Denton county, highways are becoming privatized. This is great for maintenance and quality, but it is definitely regressive for the poorer. However, these counties are rapidly becoming more populated by more wealthy individuals and txdot is anything but rapid.
bmurray7jhu 8y ago
The premise of the argument is that Collin county needs to spend $12.6 billion on roads over the next 30 years, but no citation is provided for that number. The authors managed to have found citations for most of the other numbers. I suspect the $12.6 billion figure was not calculated using the same set of assumptions about inflation as the other numbers. Edit: Over 30 years, $230 million / year with a 4% annual escalator is about $12.9 billion in total spending. Lets assume that Plano's $343 million / year in spending for 30% of county residents is consistent with other cities and add in the $381 million / year spent by the county. Then the required local highway spending is about 15% of the total ~1.5 billion spent by all local governments. Perhaps it is a large amount of money, but spending 15% of the local budget on highways does not seem like an insurmountable burden on local taxpayers.
- secabeen 8y ago
  It's in the linked Dallas News article: > County Commissioner Duncan Webb told business leaders at a forum Wednesday that the county will need $13 billion for roads over the next three or four decades. Later Wednesday, former Commissioner Mark Reid, during a presentation to the Frisco Tea Party, said the figure is $12.6 billion. So not malicious or misleading at all. ST is using the commissioners own numbers.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    So is it 30 or 40 years? Constant or future dollars? Capital or operational spending? Local or Federal expense? It’s a dumb number to quote and was cherry picked to make a point. All local governments in New York combined spent around $3B in 2009 ( https://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/research/snapshot/highwayspending.pdf https://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/research/snapshot/... ) as a comparison.
    - xyzzyz 8y ago
      $3B a year is $90B over 30 years, in constant dollars. Your point is?
  - 8y ago
epakai 8y ago
What is the counterpoint to this argument? I feel like I'm only getting half an explanation here. It's apparent from looking up Charles Marohn that he's contributing to a lot of pieces on the web to push this idea, but I don't buy that infrastructure expansion is a straight up ponzi scheme.
- ip26 8y ago
  I think there isn't usually a direct counterargument to be found. One of ST's core points is, hey, you're deluding yourself because you're not accounting for eventual repair costs of all the infrastructure you've already got. There is either no reply- because, heads in the sand- or the reply is that all the new people who will move there and the growth of the tax base will make it affordable. Which, while not exactly a classic ponzi scheme, pretty much resembles one. It's really common, the whole "ignore future repair costs" thing. I lived in an HOA a few years ago that enjoyed low dues for many years, and everyone was always really happy about that. Guess what, the roofs and siding was ten years past due for replacement, and we had nothing in the bank. I want to say we were looking at special assessments of $30-40k/unit.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    I'll try: Strong Towns' predictions of future maintenance-debt doom are already true today of the urbanist, transit-centric alternative. If any group of Americans had sufficient motivation and resources to maintain a good public transit system, it would be New Yorkers, and they empirically don't. The MTA is deteriorating rapidly despite the best efforts of one of the richest cities in the world. That's textbook "unsustainable." It may well be true that America's freeways will meet a similar fate in the future, but that doesn't tell you which one is better or worse. The big roads Strong Towns despises have many lanes, road networks have many paths from A to B, and vehicles that are resilient to low-quality roads are readily available for purchase. On the other hand, the failure of any component anywhere in a rail network can ruin the whole system until it's fixed. If I have to live with a falling-apart transportation system, I'll take crumbling roads over crumbling trains.
    - 8y ago
komali2 8y ago
>Collin County has traffic problems. Collin County's traffic problems are a function of its land-use pattern—which spreads development extremely thin on the landscape, and segregates uses, ensuring that people have to make lengthy motor vehicle trips to accomplish pretty much every one of their day to day needs. The offered solution: >For automobile flooding (congestion), the only way to deal with it and still have a successful economy is to address it at the source. We need to absorb those trips locally before they become a flood. Instead of building lanes, we need to be building corner stores. I'm thinking hard about this article - I'm an ex-Houstonian. I can't go back. They worship the vehicle. They brag about their hour+ commutes one way. It's been wrapped up in machismo Texan pride. Because, inevitably when you bring up how much it sucks that no matter what we want to do, we've got a 20 minute drive ahead of us at least, instantly everyone's anti-tax hackles are raised. "Socialism" is on everyone's lips, you're getting suspicious glances. So hell yea brutha, we drivin! At least we don't have state income tax or zoning laws like those stupid Californians, just look at all the good that did them! /s If Strongtowns can find a way to start convincing Texans that cornerstores (which sounds to me like, need zoning) can be built without increasing taxes, I bet they could make the pitch. I remember as a real young kind in Green Bay, WI and then Charleston, SC, we could ride our bikes around and go places. I remember as a slightly older kid in Houston being tremendously bored on my friend's couch, suggesting we bike somewhere, and then realizing we had nowhere we could go. It was nothing but miles of suburbia encased in impassable freeways. Life got fun again at 16 when I finally got a car.
- xvedejas 8y ago
  As someone who grew up in Collin county and now lives in SF, isn't zoning the reason there aren't more corner stores in either? I know Houston doesn't have a "proper" zoning system, but according to a developer friend of mine, their development regulations are actually much more strict than most places, with huge setback requirements for instance.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Zoning is a tool. You can use it to make anything, really. Including sprawl that looks like an absence of zoning.
larrydag 8y ago
I lived in Collin County for almost 20 years. I've seen the suburban sprawl explode. I like the explanation brought forth in this article but I think its much more complex than investing locally. There are so many reasons why people choose their home, job, and transportation. In my opinion the best way to change behavior is to make an incentive for that behavior. Reduce taxes on urban areas and housing. Unregulate businesses that promote local economy. Make small businesses more favorable instead of giving large exemptions to big corporations. Perhaps the biggest thing you can do is to participate in the local government and municipalities. Find out who and what is driving the local economy and make reasoned recommendations for change.
- distances 8y ago
  > giving large exemptions to big corporations. I agree that giving tax breaks to large companies gets it backwards. Small companies, due to larger overhead, are probably employing more. Thus, the rational thing would be to tax larger companies harder, as they generate proportionally less wage taxes. Giving tax breaks should be illegal altogether though. It's distorting the marketplace. It's perhaps beneficial for a town that gets the Amazon delivery center, so the legalization should be on a higher, perhaps federal level -- not sure if that's possible.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > There are so many reasons why people choose their home, job, and transportation [...] best way to change [...] make reasoned recommendations for change What if the citizenry is happy and doesn't want change? This option never seems to appear in suburban sprawl discussions because so many of the discussors think clearly it's not wanted. I think, especially compared to others, the county's situation is ideal for most.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Because after the initial debt laden spending spree results in happiness, once the bills for upkeep and debt service come due at the same time, the cuts in quality of life will then result in unhappiness. And now you have a bunch of wasted resources with not enough people to support them, and it causes more pollution. But it’s not reasonable to expect people to not be short sighted. If people really want the future to be gated insular communities like in TX and FL, then I guess that’s what they deserve, but I’ve been to Africa and India and Brazil and the visual class divide it shows is unappealing to me.
quotemstr 8y ago
> $12.6 billion: The amount Collin County says it needs to spend on new roads in the next 30 years. Why should we accept that roads should be that expensive? [1] is an article that provides a good overview of the rise in construction costs that eventually stalled new highway construction projects. One can imagine this trend in costs being reversed: in particular, 1) we should be able to reduce labor requirements through relaxation of work rules, 2) streamline community and environmental review to reduce administrative costs of construction, and 3) raise revenues with direct usage fees instead of relying on increasingly precarious fuel taxation, decreasing the amount of highway funding that needs to come from the general budget. I feel like a lot of people are too eager to declare that new roads are no longer feasible and that we should adapt society to the degraded transit infrastructure of the future, but this attitude is defeatist and will impose a burden that will fall on everyone in society. Roads are good. Transportation is good. We should be devoting our energies to making roads cheaper, not finding elaborate ways to justify inaction. [1] https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1993/why-california-stopped-building-freeways/ https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1993/why-california-stop...
- pixl97 8y ago
  Labor is more expensive. Materials are more expensive. Property is more expensive. Lawsuits from poor civil engineering are more expensive. And all are getting more expensive all the time. Your "let's make things cheaper by sacrificing quality" seems to smell of a very deep ignorance of how this stuff works.
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    Yes, these inputs are more expensive now. The article I linked goes into some detail. I'd like us to find ways of reducing the costs of these inputs. Do you have any ideas for doing that? Suggesting that my post "seems to smell of... ignorance" is both hostile and unproductive. Thanks.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      These inputs are made in the billions of tons per years. Everyone wants them to be as cheap as possible, and they are. But you neglected the other side of the demand curve. These components are in high demand. China, for example has been producing huge amounts of concrete. Demand reduction is really the only feasible way of price reduction. Reducing demand means getting people out of cars.
martyvis 8y ago
Maybe we'll all need to have flying cars in 30 years ...
claydavisss 8y ago
Texas is big, red, suburban, and growing. Texas is a success despite basically doing the opposite of what New Urbanists say at every turn. This must really burn up writers at StrongTowns. The big problem for New Urbanists is the fact that dense cities seem to end up with more and more expensive problems than the burbs. Looking forward to a wave of Medium posts and Atlantic articles in 2021 professing a newfound love for suburbia as Millennials get sick of paying the bills for broken boondoggles like HSR and the dead-on-arrival Transbay hub
- brohoolio 8y ago
  The writers are highlighting a potential weakness with the Texas system. It’s not about identity politics or red vs blue. It’s about future costs that might be unsustainable. NYC transit has it’s own issues, but if you look at the population there you’ll see on average they are skinnier than folks in Texas who drive around in cars. Are there costs associated with that obesity? Costs that everyone picks up instead of just those who are obese? Will that make Texas a more expensive place to live? Who knows? As someone who lives in the suburbs and just got hit with a water rate increase to pay for the aging infrastructure i can say it’s good to have these conversations early before you rack up unexpected costs.
  - claydavisss 8y ago
    There are dozens of articles on the web about "fittest cities"....not one even put NYC in the top five
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  Texas is growing in general. People, especially younger people, are moving to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin proper, not just the ‘burbs. There have been problems with this though. Apartments are going up like crazy in these cities, but they are mostly single and two bed room (roommate style), at least slightly upscale, apartments. A lot of us millionaire are finding we have to move to the suburbs, not because we want to, but because it’s the only place where there is housing that exists at all for families. Also Dallas has the DART rail and it’s great. I do wish there were a lot more stops, but it’s well loved by millennials.
wemdyjreichert 8y ago
As someone who lives in Texas: I will never bike, but probably not for the reason you're thinking of. Rather, I won't because of heat. Days can hit 100 in high summer and 90% humidity. Many people supporting the "everyone should just bike" idea live in SF or New England. This means they don't realize quite how hot it is for much of the year. And though they may say it gets cold there, you can always add another coat. You can only remove so many.
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  Yeah I also live in Texas and can confirm this. Unless your work has a shower and everything, your coworkers will hate being around you if you bike to work. And even then it’s a miserable experience.
- shiftpgdn 8y ago
  This is what baby wipes are for.
apo 8y ago
I'm a fan of this blog and the way it develops the simple idea of the Growth Ponzi Scheme, which is sucking the life out of towns everywhere in the US. https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ I also like the way this post breaks down the numbers. for example: Okay. So we're talking about an amount [to be spend on roads] equivalent to more than the county's entire budget right now, and a really sizable fraction even if we add cities (which provide more services than the county itself, and which are responsible for maintaining local streets) into the mix. For myself and other visual learners, it would be very helpful to see these numbers presented graphically. Graphs for other data are presented in the article, but not the numbers I reference above that clearly paint a picture of program that will end in tears.

85 points by oftenwrong 8y ago

The article seems to assume the reader knows about "strong towns". If they're trying to make an argument about overspending on roads it's very poorly worded and organized.

wmf 8y ago
People new to the topic should probably start at https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/6/14/greatest-hits-the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/6/14/greatest-hits-...

vondur 8y ago

Are these just county roads or does it also include State and Federal highways? I’d imagine there may be multiple sources of funding available.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Usually just county roads. State roads and federal highways receive federal tax dollars. That’s not to say you can’t get federal or state grants for some roadway related local projects, but these roads described would be primarily county roads built with borrowed money (or local tax dollars if they’re available, which they usually aren’t, hence the bond issue kicking the can down the road).
kodablah 8y ago
Increasingly in Collin and Denton county, highways are becoming privatized. This is great for maintenance and quality, but it is definitely regressive for the poorer. However, these counties are rapidly becoming more populated by more wealthy individuals and txdot is anything but rapid.

bmurray7jhu 8y ago

The premise of the argument is that Collin county needs to spend $12.6 billion on roads over the next 30 years, but no citation is provided for that number. The authors managed to have found citations for most of the other numbers. I suspect the $12.6 billion figure was not calculated using the same set of assumptions about inflation as the other numbers. Edit: Over 30 years, $230 million / year with a 4% annual escalator is about $12.9 billion in total spending. Lets assume that Plano's $343 million / year in spending for 30% of county residents is consistent with other cities and add in the $381 million / year spent by the county. Then the required local highway spending is about 15% of the total ~1.5 billion spent by all local governments. Perhaps it is a large amount of money, but spending 15% of the local budget on highways does not seem like an insurmountable burden on local taxpayers.

secabeen 8y ago
It's in the linked Dallas News article: > County Commissioner Duncan Webb told business leaders at a forum Wednesday that the county will need $13 billion for roads over the next three or four decades. Later Wednesday, former Commissioner Mark Reid, during a presentation to the Frisco Tea Party, said the figure is $12.6 billion. So not malicious or misleading at all. ST is using the commissioners own numbers.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  So is it 30 or 40 years? Constant or future dollars? Capital or operational spending? Local or Federal expense? It’s a dumb number to quote and was cherry picked to make a point. All local governments in New York combined spent around $3B in 2009 ( https://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/research/snapshot/highwayspending.pdf https://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/research/snapshot/... ) as a comparison.
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    $3B a year is $90B over 30 years, in constant dollars. Your point is?
- 8y ago

epakai 8y ago

What is the counterpoint to this argument? I feel like I'm only getting half an explanation here. It's apparent from looking up Charles Marohn that he's contributing to a lot of pieces on the web to push this idea, but I don't buy that infrastructure expansion is a straight up ponzi scheme.

ip26 8y ago
I think there isn't usually a direct counterargument to be found. One of ST's core points is, hey, you're deluding yourself because you're not accounting for eventual repair costs of all the infrastructure you've already got. There is either no reply- because, heads in the sand- or the reply is that all the new people who will move there and the growth of the tax base will make it affordable. Which, while not exactly a classic ponzi scheme, pretty much resembles one. It's really common, the whole "ignore future repair costs" thing. I lived in an HOA a few years ago that enjoyed low dues for many years, and everyone was always really happy about that. Guess what, the roofs and siding was ten years past due for replacement, and we had nothing in the bank. I want to say we were looking at special assessments of $30-40k/unit.
- closeparen 8y ago
  I'll try: Strong Towns' predictions of future maintenance-debt doom are already true today of the urbanist, transit-centric alternative. If any group of Americans had sufficient motivation and resources to maintain a good public transit system, it would be New Yorkers, and they empirically don't. The MTA is deteriorating rapidly despite the best efforts of one of the richest cities in the world. That's textbook "unsustainable." It may well be true that America's freeways will meet a similar fate in the future, but that doesn't tell you which one is better or worse. The big roads Strong Towns despises have many lanes, road networks have many paths from A to B, and vehicles that are resilient to low-quality roads are readily available for purchase. On the other hand, the failure of any component anywhere in a rail network can ruin the whole system until it's fixed. If I have to live with a falling-apart transportation system, I'll take crumbling roads over crumbling trains.
  - 8y ago

komali2 8y ago

>Collin County has traffic problems. Collin County's traffic problems are a function of its land-use pattern—which spreads development extremely thin on the landscape, and segregates uses, ensuring that people have to make lengthy motor vehicle trips to accomplish pretty much every one of their day to day needs. The offered solution: >For automobile flooding (congestion), the only way to deal with it and still have a successful economy is to address it at the source. We need to absorb those trips locally before they become a flood. Instead of building lanes, we need to be building corner stores. I'm thinking hard about this article - I'm an ex-Houstonian. I can't go back. They worship the vehicle. They brag about their hour+ commutes one way. It's been wrapped up in machismo Texan pride. Because, inevitably when you bring up how much it sucks that no matter what we want to do, we've got a 20 minute drive ahead of us at least, instantly everyone's anti-tax hackles are raised. "Socialism" is on everyone's lips, you're getting suspicious glances. So hell yea brutha, we drivin! At least we don't have state income tax or zoning laws like those stupid Californians, just look at all the good that did them! /s If Strongtowns can find a way to start convincing Texans that cornerstores (which sounds to me like, need zoning) can be built without increasing taxes, I bet they could make the pitch. I remember as a real young kind in Green Bay, WI and then Charleston, SC, we could ride our bikes around and go places. I remember as a slightly older kid in Houston being tremendously bored on my friend's couch, suggesting we bike somewhere, and then realizing we had nowhere we could go. It was nothing but miles of suburbia encased in impassable freeways. Life got fun again at 16 when I finally got a car.

xvedejas 8y ago
As someone who grew up in Collin county and now lives in SF, isn't zoning the reason there aren't more corner stores in either? I know Houston doesn't have a "proper" zoning system, but according to a developer friend of mine, their development regulations are actually much more strict than most places, with huge setback requirements for instance.
- ip26 8y ago
  Zoning is a tool. You can use it to make anything, really. Including sprawl that looks like an absence of zoning.

larrydag 8y ago

I lived in Collin County for almost 20 years. I've seen the suburban sprawl explode. I like the explanation brought forth in this article but I think its much more complex than investing locally. There are so many reasons why people choose their home, job, and transportation. In my opinion the best way to change behavior is to make an incentive for that behavior. Reduce taxes on urban areas and housing. Unregulate businesses that promote local economy. Make small businesses more favorable instead of giving large exemptions to big corporations. Perhaps the biggest thing you can do is to participate in the local government and municipalities. Find out who and what is driving the local economy and make reasoned recommendations for change.

distances 8y ago
> giving large exemptions to big corporations. I agree that giving tax breaks to large companies gets it backwards. Small companies, due to larger overhead, are probably employing more. Thus, the rational thing would be to tax larger companies harder, as they generate proportionally less wage taxes. Giving tax breaks should be illegal altogether though. It's distorting the marketplace. It's perhaps beneficial for a town that gets the Amazon delivery center, so the legalization should be on a higher, perhaps federal level -- not sure if that's possible.
kodablah 8y ago
> There are so many reasons why people choose their home, job, and transportation [...] best way to change [...] make reasoned recommendations for change What if the citizenry is happy and doesn't want change? This option never seems to appear in suburban sprawl discussions because so many of the discussors think clearly it's not wanted. I think, especially compared to others, the county's situation is ideal for most.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Because after the initial debt laden spending spree results in happiness, once the bills for upkeep and debt service come due at the same time, the cuts in quality of life will then result in unhappiness. And now you have a bunch of wasted resources with not enough people to support them, and it causes more pollution. But it’s not reasonable to expect people to not be short sighted. If people really want the future to be gated insular communities like in TX and FL, then I guess that’s what they deserve, but I’ve been to Africa and India and Brazil and the visual class divide it shows is unappealing to me.

quotemstr 8y ago

> $12.6 billion: The amount Collin County says it needs to spend on new roads in the next 30 years. Why should we accept that roads should be that expensive? [1] is an article that provides a good overview of the rise in construction costs that eventually stalled new highway construction projects. One can imagine this trend in costs being reversed: in particular, 1) we should be able to reduce labor requirements through relaxation of work rules, 2) streamline community and environmental review to reduce administrative costs of construction, and 3) raise revenues with direct usage fees instead of relying on increasingly precarious fuel taxation, decreasing the amount of highway funding that needs to come from the general budget. I feel like a lot of people are too eager to declare that new roads are no longer feasible and that we should adapt society to the degraded transit infrastructure of the future, but this attitude is defeatist and will impose a burden that will fall on everyone in society. Roads are good. Transportation is good. We should be devoting our energies to making roads cheaper, not finding elaborate ways to justify inaction. [1] https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1993/why-california-stopped-building-freeways/ https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1993/why-california-stop...

pixl97 8y ago
Labor is more expensive. Materials are more expensive. Property is more expensive. Lawsuits from poor civil engineering are more expensive. And all are getting more expensive all the time. Your "let's make things cheaper by sacrificing quality" seems to smell of a very deep ignorance of how this stuff works.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Yes, these inputs are more expensive now. The article I linked goes into some detail. I'd like us to find ways of reducing the costs of these inputs. Do you have any ideas for doing that? Suggesting that my post "seems to smell of... ignorance" is both hostile and unproductive. Thanks.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    These inputs are made in the billions of tons per years. Everyone wants them to be as cheap as possible, and they are. But you neglected the other side of the demand curve. These components are in high demand. China, for example has been producing huge amounts of concrete. Demand reduction is really the only feasible way of price reduction. Reducing demand means getting people out of cars.

martyvis 8y ago

Maybe we'll all need to have flying cars in 30 years ...

claydavisss 8y ago

Texas is big, red, suburban, and growing. Texas is a success despite basically doing the opposite of what New Urbanists say at every turn. This must really burn up writers at StrongTowns. The big problem for New Urbanists is the fact that dense cities seem to end up with more and more expensive problems than the burbs. Looking forward to a wave of Medium posts and Atlantic articles in 2021 professing a newfound love for suburbia as Millennials get sick of paying the bills for broken boondoggles like HSR and the dead-on-arrival Transbay hub

brohoolio 8y ago
The writers are highlighting a potential weakness with the Texas system. It’s not about identity politics or red vs blue. It’s about future costs that might be unsustainable. NYC transit has it’s own issues, but if you look at the population there you’ll see on average they are skinnier than folks in Texas who drive around in cars. Are there costs associated with that obesity? Costs that everyone picks up instead of just those who are obese? Will that make Texas a more expensive place to live? Who knows? As someone who lives in the suburbs and just got hit with a water rate increase to pay for the aging infrastructure i can say it’s good to have these conversations early before you rack up unexpected costs.
- claydavisss 8y ago
  There are dozens of articles on the web about "fittest cities"....not one even put NYC in the top five
Pulcinella 8y ago
Texas is growing in general. People, especially younger people, are moving to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin proper, not just the ‘burbs. There have been problems with this though. Apartments are going up like crazy in these cities, but they are mostly single and two bed room (roommate style), at least slightly upscale, apartments. A lot of us millionaire are finding we have to move to the suburbs, not because we want to, but because it’s the only place where there is housing that exists at all for families. Also Dallas has the DART rail and it’s great. I do wish there were a lot more stops, but it’s well loved by millennials.

wemdyjreichert 8y ago

As someone who lives in Texas: I will never bike, but probably not for the reason you're thinking of. Rather, I won't because of heat. Days can hit 100 in high summer and 90% humidity. Many people supporting the "everyone should just bike" idea live in SF or New England. This means they don't realize quite how hot it is for much of the year. And though they may say it gets cold there, you can always add another coat. You can only remove so many.

Pulcinella 8y ago
Yeah I also live in Texas and can confirm this. Unless your work has a shower and everything, your coworkers will hate being around you if you bike to work. And even then it’s a miserable experience.
shiftpgdn 8y ago
This is what baby wipes are for.

apo 8y ago

I'm a fan of this blog and the way it develops the simple idea of the Growth Ponzi Scheme, which is sucking the life out of towns everywhere in the US. https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ I also like the way this post breaks down the numbers. for example: Okay. So we're talking about an amount [to be spend on roads] equivalent to more than the county's entire budget right now, and a really sizable fraction even if we add cities (which provide more services than the county itself, and which are responsible for maintaining local streets) into the mix. For myself and other visual learners, it would be very helpful to see these numbers presented graphically. Graphs for other data are presented in the article, but not the numbers I reference above that clearly paint a picture of program that will end in tears.