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If only we were hellbent on building communities where you don't need to get in a car every time you leave your house. California (outside of a few astronomical

If only we were hellbent on building communities where you don't need to get in a car every time you leave your house. California (outside of a few astronomically expensive city and town centers) is a hellscape of stroads and parking lots as far as the eye can see. There's a better way to design cities and towns. Yes, we need electric cars, but we also need fewer cars, and every NIMBY fighting tooth and nail against allowing people to live close to jobs, amenities, public transport, and bike infra is responsible for accelerating our present crisis.

arsome 4y ago
It's a matter of preferences, I for one far prefer living as distant from people as possible, "stroads" as you call them are often the most convenient places to shop for anyone who doesn't wish to live in an urban center.
- coryrc 4y ago
  Great, but don't use laws to forbid people building what GP and I like.
- Dawnyhf5 4y ago
  - seneca 4y ago
    > Well if you like sneezing of buffets, that’s very strange and anti-social and frankly your preference shouldn’t factor in any decision making because your tendencies are unhealthy in many ways. Responses like this are the most important replies. This is someone saying what the others are thinking, but without the guile. "Saying the quiet part out loud", that is. What it always comes down to with these types, "We know better than you. Shut up and do what you're told."
    - enragedcacti 4y ago
      It's a bit tart but it isn't actually saying "We know better than you. Shut up and do what you're told." What it is saying is that if you don't want to be a part of a community then that community has every right to make decisions without you. You can want to stroll in once a week to the Mega-Mart on a 45-mph six-lane road through the center of town, and the people who live in the town can want to walk safely, breathe clean air, and live close enough together to foster a sense of community with their neighbors. You're free to live in the sticks but when it comes down to it you are a visitor who isn't invested in the wellbeing of the community and that should be reflected in how much political capital you wield there.
      - seneca 4y ago
        It is absolutely saying "we know better than you". It's comparing a differing preference to contaminating shared food. It's attempting to paint that opinion, which actually happens to be the most common one, as despicable and able to be dismissed out of hand. This is an extremely common rhetorical technique with paternalistic types. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with your point about outsiders needing to accept that they don't have influence within a community. I actually very much agree, but I don't think that's actually the point being argued, nor is it what I was taking exception to.
        enragedcacti 4y ago
        Fair enough, at the very least its not a very productive way to make the point regardless of the intent.
s3r3nity 4y ago
> If only we were hellbent on building communities where you don't need to get in a car every time you leave your house. Not everyone lives in dense cities, nor does everyone want to. >There's a better way to design cities and towns. What makes them better? I love Tokyo, for example, but would hate to live there - as it's too crowded for my sanity. But I'm not going to hate on others for wanting that. I'd rather the government focus on fostering choice and options, rather than picking what they deem is "best" for everyone. >...every NIMBY fighting tooth and nail against allowing people to live close to jobs, amenities, public transport, and bike infra is responsible for accelerating our present crisis. I think you're misreading the argument from many NIMBY's: they aren't fighting against those things, but rather fighting against growth in population _in general._ YIMBY's take population growth and density in an area as a given assumption, and then solve from there. NIMBY's on the other hand would argue that there's plenty of space to spread out elsewhere.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  You can have suburbanism with walkable towns. This is how suburbs were built before 1945.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And those still exist! And any “small town” is walkable almost by definition-but people move away from them to the outskirts of the cities.
    - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
      I don't think that's true. My grandparents live near a town of 4k people or so that's not walkable in the slightest, spread out over miles of highway with massive city-sized streets criscrossing everything. Most of the houses are 2+ miles away from the grocery store.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I'm sure they exist, but what is around the grocery store that there's no houses within 2 miles? Often the "new developments" near these towns are out of town a bit, but even two miles isn't an insane walk. I'll grant that many of them don't have much in the way of sidewalks, but you can often find them.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I agree with you, and it’s frustrating seeing people in the replies who don’t seem to understand what good urban design can provide.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I want good urban design, but I realize that converting our existing construction is tremendously expensive and fraught with project risk. Our car-centric cities and suburbs cannot easily be undone. While it would be nice to have additional mass transit lines and increased density, all of these things are decades away at best. Edit: Therefore I am not against improving things for cars in the meantime. I don't think this is a zero-sum game.
  - 0_____0 4y ago
    It took decades to demolish vast swaths of US urban centers and replace them with surface parking, highways and sprawl. 1930s Dallas could be mistaken for 1930s downtown San Francisco. It will take decades more to undo this damage.
rhacker 4y ago
I'll move back to a city as soon as you pass laws on fragrance, booming radios and dog barking. In all cases those are a huge hell-no for me.
subsubzero 4y ago
Your heaven sounds like my hell :) I don't want to live in a super dense metropolis filled to the brim with high rises where I cannot barely see the sky, and people are jammed into streets like cattle and no one has yards. If you do there are a ton of cities in America that are not in California, see New York, Chicago etc. Its funny as everyone who complains about California's high housing costs say the answer is to turn the entire state into Manhattan. I think a better approach here is to focus on the supply side of things which is completely driven by companies that want people in the office and the offices are in SF or Palo Alto/Mountain View etc. So the answer here is either allow remote work and encourage people to leave California, or break up the head offices and move them across the country into less expensive areas. Before the tech boom houses would go for $500-600K in San Jose(I should know as I bought a place in 2013 for $550k) so this high housing crisis is totally artificial and recent. It also doesn't help that having a million+ engineers/tech employees making $200k+ a year all crammed into one geographical region which is constrained by water and mountains.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be a metropolis, the US just needs to fix their damn zoning laws. It's crazy that in most American cities, you have to have a car to get anywhere. Zoning in most places make it impossible to do things like walk to the grocery store or let you kids walk to school. The only time we think of walkability is in big cities but what if suburbs proposed this radical idea of building services that people use closer to where those people actually live. If your day to day is dropping your kids off at school, going to the grocery store and gym, and then work, why in the hell did we decide that your home, work, grocery store and gym should all be in segregated parts of town where the only way to get from one place to another is an expensive hunk of metal.
  - arsome 4y ago
    > why in the hell did we decide that your home, work, grocery store and gym should all be in segregated parts of town where the only way to get from one place to another is an expensive hunk of metal. Because we decided to prioritize things like peace and quiet, distance from people and outdoor spaces for play, cooking and recreation above not leaving a tiny bubble for your whole life. Living in tiny condos sucks and isn't for everyone, this is the tradeoff we've chosen. That said, I'd much rather have my kids walk to school in a suburb than a dense urban area.
freeqaz 4y ago
Are you aware of any resources that talk about what the design of a "cleanroom" city might look like? I always think of a high rise surrounded by parks with a subterranean train connecting it to the rest of the surrounding society. I like the idea of being able to be alone in nature easily but still living with modern conveniences. American cities (at least LA, SF, and Seattle) all require a car. The worst depression of my life was living in San Francisco and never being able to be alone in nature. (I was very broke and didn't have a car.)
- cbsmith 4y ago
  http://www.newurbanism.org/pedestrian.html http://www.newurbanism.org/pedestrian.html https://www.archdaily.com/954928/creating-a-pedestrian-friendly-utopia-through-the-design-of-15-minute-cities https://www.archdaily.com/954928/creating-a-pedestrian-frien... https://naturalwalkingcities.com/ https://naturalwalkingcities.com/
_fat_santa 4y ago
I've been watching NotJustBikes[1] on Youtube recently and he really drives the point home of how screwed up infrastructure is in the US and Canada. The problem for us seems to be cultural, we consider public transit to be a form a welfare rather than actual public infrastructure. We consider taking the train of the bus a thing you do if you're to poor to own a car and anytime expansion of a subway system is considered, there's always the kneejerk reaction of "you will bring crime to the suburbs". And anytime we do build a mixed use development, we make sure that it's marked as "trendy" and "hip", as to not give the impression that this should be a normal mode of development. Anytime a development like this goes up, property prices around the development are out of reach to working class families and that even further drives the point home that this is not a normal mode of development, rather a playground for the wealthy (and you're going to need a car to get there if you don't live in the million dollar townhomes around the corner). When these mixed use developments do go up, American's are amazed by the walkability and livability. News outlets do puff pieces on these new developments and everyone is happy about it, then when it's time to do more development around the city we go back to the old ways of segregating everything to the nth degree. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >The problem for us seems to be cultural, we consider public transit to be a form a welfare rather than actual public infrastructure. This is true practically everywhere bar a few select cities and megapolises. Doubly so if you have to get on at a stop which is dirty, dark and crowded. General exceptions include lack of parking and knowing you'll drink at the venue. The Dutch ain't doing it because Utrecht Central looks swell with all the cigarette butts everywhere.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    In what sense? Utrecht Centraal was splendid last time I was there, and Utrecht in general was fantastic.
    - 4y ago
jmyeet 4y ago
You should look into what the California legislature is doing to tackle the housing crisis because it's actually a lot, probably more than any other state by a mile. All California municipalities have to have what is called a Housing Element, which is a plan with the state for how they're going to build more housing. Many (rich) towns have fought this on the grounds of it "ruining the character" (which is just NIMBY code for being exclusionary). But not having one has real consequences as Santa Monica recently found out [1] where ~4,000 new units (20% affordable) got court approval and the city can't say no. Likewise there are other laws that are abolishing mandatory parking minimums, which goes to your point of California being a car-dependent hellhole (which it is, much like most of the US). Another example: bypass zoning and planning for building residential property above commercial property if the road it is attached to is a sufficient width. This will allow the building of mixed commercial and residential (which most cities forbid) without lengthy and expensive planning. But there are a whole host of other bills that have been passed to make building cheaper and easier. Hopefully this will culminate in the Holy Grail of zoning in most municipalities making anything about building anything other than single-family homes illegal (which it is in most of the US). [1]: https://smdp.com/2022/10/12/new-15-story-project-automatically-approved-due-to-late-housing-element/ https://smdp.com/2022/10/12/new-15-story-project-automatical...
- CalRobert 4y ago
  I have! I think it's an amazing development. Letting locals vote to block construction nearby was a huge mistake. Santa Monica getting their comeuppance was shared at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33186186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33186186 but it didn't catch on.
ravenstine 4y ago
That's your opinion. Plenty of people have the means to move elsewhere so they can not own a car, but they don't because they don't like your vision of transportation. My own opinion is as valid as yours, which is that public transport usually sucks ass. > California [...] is a hellscape of stroads and parking lots as far as the eye can see. Many people don't see it that way. Millions upon millions, actually. The fact that California needs to tax the rich to make electric cars work is a sign that said technology is not economical. Doesn't even matter why. I'd own an electric car if I could, but every time I've considered it I've realized that it doesn't make financial sense. One might think that now would be the best time to buy an electric car, but good luck with that when wages are stagnant, YoY inflation is ~8%, and the price of goods is up. I can simply drive less or take my motorcycle. As long as California is totally cool with its gross wealth stratification, people are going to realize that they can live in an affordable area, drive to and from work, enjoy the privacy of their own vehicle, and still come out ahead from where they would be if they lived close to work. I'd be making far less money if I lived in any of the cities my workplaces have had their offices located. > every NIMBY fighting tooth and nail against allowing people to live close to jobs I've never heard of anyone not wanting that. There's NIMBY attitude that might get in the way of people living close to their jobs, but your characterization of "every NIMBY" comes off as reductionist and a gross exaggeration. Surely citizens would never vote against their own interests. No, no one ever does that. /s
_huayra_ 4y ago
Santa Cruz voted down turning the disused railroad branch line connecting Watsonville to the old cement factory in Davenport into a rail trail [0], by an enormous margin. If this trail were implemented, it would basically create a scenic, flat mixed-use trail going through all of the major areas for hardly any cost. It would've created an easy ride to actually get between places people want to go, both for work and tourist destinations. It was shocking how short-sighted people were about this. So many pro-rail people showed up thinking "we'll turn this into a commuter or tourist thing", with so many people overlooking the fact that a huge amount of capex would have taken to make this safe for trains again (e.g. some of the more decrepit trestles and bridges need to be replaced, fine for bikes, irresponsibly risky for trains). I love train commuting just as much as anyone, but this train simping was infuriating when we could've had a fantastic easy bike path, like the one that goes along Hwy 90 in Seattle towards the mountains. It really seems like we deserve the stroady fate we're hurtling towards in California. NIMBYs and ridiculous zoning will rule the day, until everything is just broken :( [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Santa_Cruz_County,_California,_Measure_D,_Branch_Line_Rail_Corridor_Greenway_Trail_Initiative_(June_2022) https://ballotpedia.org/Santa_Cruz_County,_California,_Measu...
- CalRobert 4y ago
  The saddest part of all this is the railfans and trail fans are fighting each other like rats for a few discarded scraps. That's ridiculous when so much space is allocated to cars.
timbo1642 4y ago

arsome 4y ago

It's a matter of preferences, I for one far prefer living as distant from people as possible, "stroads" as you call them are often the most convenient places to shop for anyone who doesn't wish to live in an urban center.

coryrc 4y ago
Great, but don't use laws to forbid people building what GP and I like.
Dawnyhf5 4y ago
- seneca 4y ago
  > Well if you like sneezing of buffets, that’s very strange and anti-social and frankly your preference shouldn’t factor in any decision making because your tendencies are unhealthy in many ways. Responses like this are the most important replies. This is someone saying what the others are thinking, but without the guile. "Saying the quiet part out loud", that is. What it always comes down to with these types, "We know better than you. Shut up and do what you're told."
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    It's a bit tart but it isn't actually saying "We know better than you. Shut up and do what you're told." What it is saying is that if you don't want to be a part of a community then that community has every right to make decisions without you. You can want to stroll in once a week to the Mega-Mart on a 45-mph six-lane road through the center of town, and the people who live in the town can want to walk safely, breathe clean air, and live close enough together to foster a sense of community with their neighbors. You're free to live in the sticks but when it comes down to it you are a visitor who isn't invested in the wellbeing of the community and that should be reflected in how much political capital you wield there.
    - seneca 4y ago
      It is absolutely saying "we know better than you". It's comparing a differing preference to contaminating shared food. It's attempting to paint that opinion, which actually happens to be the most common one, as despicable and able to be dismissed out of hand. This is an extremely common rhetorical technique with paternalistic types. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with your point about outsiders needing to accept that they don't have influence within a community. I actually very much agree, but I don't think that's actually the point being argued, nor is it what I was taking exception to.
      - enragedcacti 4y ago
        Fair enough, at the very least its not a very productive way to make the point regardless of the intent.

s3r3nity 4y ago

> If only we were hellbent on building communities where you don't need to get in a car every time you leave your house. Not everyone lives in dense cities, nor does everyone want to. >There's a better way to design cities and towns. What makes them better? I love Tokyo, for example, but would hate to live there - as it's too crowded for my sanity. But I'm not going to hate on others for wanting that. I'd rather the government focus on fostering choice and options, rather than picking what they deem is "best" for everyone. >...every NIMBY fighting tooth and nail against allowing people to live close to jobs, amenities, public transport, and bike infra is responsible for accelerating our present crisis. I think you're misreading the argument from many NIMBY's: they aren't fighting against those things, but rather fighting against growth in population _in general._ YIMBY's take population growth and density in an area as a given assumption, and then solve from there. NIMBY's on the other hand would argue that there's plenty of space to spread out elsewhere.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
You can have suburbanism with walkable towns. This is how suburbs were built before 1945.
- bombcar 4y ago
  And those still exist! And any “small town” is walkable almost by definition-but people move away from them to the outskirts of the cities.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    I don't think that's true. My grandparents live near a town of 4k people or so that's not walkable in the slightest, spread out over miles of highway with massive city-sized streets criscrossing everything. Most of the houses are 2+ miles away from the grocery store.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I'm sure they exist, but what is around the grocery store that there's no houses within 2 miles? Often the "new developments" near these towns are out of town a bit, but even two miles isn't an insane walk. I'll grant that many of them don't have much in the way of sidewalks, but you can often find them.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

I agree with you, and it’s frustrating seeing people in the replies who don’t seem to understand what good urban design can provide.

BitwiseFool 4y ago
I want good urban design, but I realize that converting our existing construction is tremendously expensive and fraught with project risk. Our car-centric cities and suburbs cannot easily be undone. While it would be nice to have additional mass transit lines and increased density, all of these things are decades away at best. Edit: Therefore I am not against improving things for cars in the meantime. I don't think this is a zero-sum game.
- 0_____0 4y ago
  It took decades to demolish vast swaths of US urban centers and replace them with surface parking, highways and sprawl. 1930s Dallas could be mistaken for 1930s downtown San Francisco. It will take decades more to undo this damage.

rhacker 4y ago

I'll move back to a city as soon as you pass laws on fragrance, booming radios and dog barking. In all cases those are a huge hell-no for me.

subsubzero 4y ago

Your heaven sounds like my hell :) I don't want to live in a super dense metropolis filled to the brim with high rises where I cannot barely see the sky, and people are jammed into streets like cattle and no one has yards. If you do there are a ton of cities in America that are not in California, see New York, Chicago etc. Its funny as everyone who complains about California's high housing costs say the answer is to turn the entire state into Manhattan. I think a better approach here is to focus on the supply side of things which is completely driven by companies that want people in the office and the offices are in SF or Palo Alto/Mountain View etc. So the answer here is either allow remote work and encourage people to leave California, or break up the head offices and move them across the country into less expensive areas. Before the tech boom houses would go for $500-600K in San Jose(I should know as I bought a place in 2013 for $550k) so this high housing crisis is totally artificial and recent. It also doesn't help that having a million+ engineers/tech employees making $200k+ a year all crammed into one geographical region which is constrained by water and mountains.

_fat_santa 4y ago
It doesn't have to be a metropolis, the US just needs to fix their damn zoning laws. It's crazy that in most American cities, you have to have a car to get anywhere. Zoning in most places make it impossible to do things like walk to the grocery store or let you kids walk to school. The only time we think of walkability is in big cities but what if suburbs proposed this radical idea of building services that people use closer to where those people actually live. If your day to day is dropping your kids off at school, going to the grocery store and gym, and then work, why in the hell did we decide that your home, work, grocery store and gym should all be in segregated parts of town where the only way to get from one place to another is an expensive hunk of metal.
- arsome 4y ago
  > why in the hell did we decide that your home, work, grocery store and gym should all be in segregated parts of town where the only way to get from one place to another is an expensive hunk of metal. Because we decided to prioritize things like peace and quiet, distance from people and outdoor spaces for play, cooking and recreation above not leaving a tiny bubble for your whole life. Living in tiny condos sucks and isn't for everyone, this is the tradeoff we've chosen. That said, I'd much rather have my kids walk to school in a suburb than a dense urban area.

freeqaz 4y ago

Are you aware of any resources that talk about what the design of a "cleanroom" city might look like? I always think of a high rise surrounded by parks with a subterranean train connecting it to the rest of the surrounding society. I like the idea of being able to be alone in nature easily but still living with modern conveniences. American cities (at least LA, SF, and Seattle) all require a car. The worst depression of my life was living in San Francisco and never being able to be alone in nature. (I was very broke and didn't have a car.)

cbsmith 4y ago
http://www.newurbanism.org/pedestrian.html http://www.newurbanism.org/pedestrian.html https://www.archdaily.com/954928/creating-a-pedestrian-friendly-utopia-through-the-design-of-15-minute-cities https://www.archdaily.com/954928/creating-a-pedestrian-frien... https://naturalwalkingcities.com/ https://naturalwalkingcities.com/

_fat_santa 4y ago

I've been watching NotJustBikes[1] on Youtube recently and he really drives the point home of how screwed up infrastructure is in the US and Canada. The problem for us seems to be cultural, we consider public transit to be a form a welfare rather than actual public infrastructure. We consider taking the train of the bus a thing you do if you're to poor to own a car and anytime expansion of a subway system is considered, there's always the kneejerk reaction of "you will bring crime to the suburbs". And anytime we do build a mixed use development, we make sure that it's marked as "trendy" and "hip", as to not give the impression that this should be a normal mode of development. Anytime a development like this goes up, property prices around the development are out of reach to working class families and that even further drives the point home that this is not a normal mode of development, rather a playground for the wealthy (and you're going to need a car to get there if you don't live in the million dollar townhomes around the corner). When these mixed use developments do go up, American's are amazed by the walkability and livability. News outlets do puff pieces on these new developments and everyone is happy about it, then when it's time to do more development around the city we go back to the old ways of segregating everything to the nth degree. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>The problem for us seems to be cultural, we consider public transit to be a form a welfare rather than actual public infrastructure. This is true practically everywhere bar a few select cities and megapolises. Doubly so if you have to get on at a stop which is dirty, dark and crowded. General exceptions include lack of parking and knowing you'll drink at the venue. The Dutch ain't doing it because Utrecht Central looks swell with all the cigarette butts everywhere.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  In what sense? Utrecht Centraal was splendid last time I was there, and Utrecht in general was fantastic.
  - 4y ago

jmyeet 4y ago

You should look into what the California legislature is doing to tackle the housing crisis because it's actually a lot, probably more than any other state by a mile. All California municipalities have to have what is called a Housing Element, which is a plan with the state for how they're going to build more housing. Many (rich) towns have fought this on the grounds of it "ruining the character" (which is just NIMBY code for being exclusionary). But not having one has real consequences as Santa Monica recently found out [1] where ~4,000 new units (20% affordable) got court approval and the city can't say no. Likewise there are other laws that are abolishing mandatory parking minimums, which goes to your point of California being a car-dependent hellhole (which it is, much like most of the US). Another example: bypass zoning and planning for building residential property above commercial property if the road it is attached to is a sufficient width. This will allow the building of mixed commercial and residential (which most cities forbid) without lengthy and expensive planning. But there are a whole host of other bills that have been passed to make building cheaper and easier. Hopefully this will culminate in the Holy Grail of zoning in most municipalities making anything about building anything other than single-family homes illegal (which it is in most of the US). [1]: https://smdp.com/2022/10/12/new-15-story-project-automatically-approved-due-to-late-housing-element/ https://smdp.com/2022/10/12/new-15-story-project-automatical...

CalRobert 4y ago
I have! I think it's an amazing development. Letting locals vote to block construction nearby was a huge mistake. Santa Monica getting their comeuppance was shared at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33186186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33186186 but it didn't catch on.

ravenstine 4y ago

That's your opinion. Plenty of people have the means to move elsewhere so they can not own a car, but they don't because they don't like your vision of transportation. My own opinion is as valid as yours, which is that public transport usually sucks ass. > California [...] is a hellscape of stroads and parking lots as far as the eye can see. Many people don't see it that way. Millions upon millions, actually. The fact that California needs to tax the rich to make electric cars work is a sign that said technology is not economical. Doesn't even matter why. I'd own an electric car if I could, but every time I've considered it I've realized that it doesn't make financial sense. One might think that now would be the best time to buy an electric car, but good luck with that when wages are stagnant, YoY inflation is ~8%, and the price of goods is up. I can simply drive less or take my motorcycle. As long as California is totally cool with its gross wealth stratification, people are going to realize that they can live in an affordable area, drive to and from work, enjoy the privacy of their own vehicle, and still come out ahead from where they would be if they lived close to work. I'd be making far less money if I lived in any of the cities my workplaces have had their offices located. > every NIMBY fighting tooth and nail against allowing people to live close to jobs I've never heard of anyone not wanting that. There's NIMBY attitude that might get in the way of people living close to their jobs, but your characterization of "every NIMBY" comes off as reductionist and a gross exaggeration. Surely citizens would never vote against their own interests. No, no one ever does that. /s

_huayra_ 4y ago

Santa Cruz voted down turning the disused railroad branch line connecting Watsonville to the old cement factory in Davenport into a rail trail [0], by an enormous margin. If this trail were implemented, it would basically create a scenic, flat mixed-use trail going through all of the major areas for hardly any cost. It would've created an easy ride to actually get between places people want to go, both for work and tourist destinations. It was shocking how short-sighted people were about this. So many pro-rail people showed up thinking "we'll turn this into a commuter or tourist thing", with so many people overlooking the fact that a huge amount of capex would have taken to make this safe for trains again (e.g. some of the more decrepit trestles and bridges need to be replaced, fine for bikes, irresponsibly risky for trains). I love train commuting just as much as anyone, but this train simping was infuriating when we could've had a fantastic easy bike path, like the one that goes along Hwy 90 in Seattle towards the mountains. It really seems like we deserve the stroady fate we're hurtling towards in California. NIMBYs and ridiculous zoning will rule the day, until everything is just broken :( [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Santa_Cruz_County,_California,_Measure_D,_Branch_Line_Rail_Corridor_Greenway_Trail_Initiative_(June_2022) https://ballotpedia.org/Santa_Cruz_County,_California,_Measu...

CalRobert 4y ago
The saddest part of all this is the railfans and trail fans are fighting each other like rats for a few discarded scraps. That's ridiculous when so much space is allocated to cars.

timbo1642 4y ago