3 ms·

The amount of money we collectively spend subsidizing driving is utterly insane. Yet every public transit measure is jet with the same tired dogma of “it’ll ra

by jmyeet 3y ago

The amount of money we collectively spend subsidizing driving is utterly insane. Yet every public transit measure is jet with the same tired dogma of “it’ll raise our taxes” or “it will run at a loss”. Street parking tons at a loss. Why is this never brought up? Significant money is spent by the likes of the remaining Koch brothers to fight public transit infrastructure in every city. Yet taking drivers off the road will make driving better and faster. The shortsightedness of this is bewildering. Parking minimums are a start, particularly for building more affordable housing but it’s barely scratching the surface and even this small gesture will often be met with fierce opposition.

swozey 3y ago
The middled/old-aged NIMBYs in the suburbs don't use Uber/Pub-trans so they don't care and don't want to ever vote for it being improved or "taking my tax dollars." They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around, nor how THEY can benefit from being able to come downtown or go to the mountains skiing more frequently. You know who wants tons of parking spots? Those people with their Suburbans and 6 kids who only come downtown for a sports game once every 3 months but complain about how scary and stressful being downtown is. If you want a concrete example of this- when Austin caused Uber/Lyft to exit the market in 2016 (iirc) based on them "not fingerprinting drivers" one of the big arguments for letting them leave from one of (or the most) important council members was some comment along the lines of, "Well I've never needed an Uber/Lyft before in my life. Why can't you use cabs?" Ironically this person lives in Clarksville (or Tarrytown) which is one of the most expensive suburbs right outside of downtown and they probably never NEED an Uber. I bartended back in 2016 when this was going on and it SUCKED when they left. We had already gotten them into Austin WAY later than most other cities and it finally felt like I could travel around without a headache and the bullshit that yellow cabs bring with it ("Sorry sir, my credit card is not working tonight! Cash only but we're here already, so you must find ATM!") People who actually go out and do things and didn't want to have to go back to cabs not showing up, potentially getting a dwi/dui, etc were angry beyond belief at the council. https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-14/dear-mayor-adler/ https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-14/dear-m...
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  > They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around. I rode BART out of Oakland for years. I don’t agree with NIMBYs but it’s not like they are making it up. I assure you, it is indeed full of insane people, homeless, the trains are nasty and smell like urine, frequently break down or get stopped because people regularly suicide themselves on the tracks. I’m sure in Asian countries the trains are fantastic but here people aren’t adults and ruin it for everyone.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > I’m sure in Asian countries the trains are fantastic but unfortunately public transit riders here aren’t adults and ruin it for everyone. Not sure why you would turn an obviously systemic problem into one of personal responsibility. Do you think there are no mentally disabled or homeless people in other countries? This attitude seems startlingly common in the US. It's like the pessimistic side of American Exceptionalism - "This problem, which many other countries have tackled successfully, cannot be fixed here".
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  < They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around. Because statistically that’s very true almost everywhere in America. Even flagship cities like NYC have pathetic trains/subways compared to Europe/Asia and 90% of the population has never been that far abroad to see what’s possible. I’ve tried the express busses and “train”(can you call it that with only two cars!) in Austin and gave up because they waste much more time and are less comfortable than driving. Never saw rich professionals on them, but plenty of mentally ill, drug addicted, and unbathed(not that we should avoid the homeless as much as we do now) persons.
  - swozey 3y ago
    I worked on 2nd and Congress for 4 years and almost every single person I worked with who lived in the suburbs took the train from around the Domain/Aboreteum/further-north-Canada area. They would usually bike, park-at, or get dropped off at a park-n-ride. Nobody said addicts, etc aren't on trains. I said people think that is who is only on it. My software engineer dad-friends absolutely took the train every single day and so did a TON of people who worked downtown. They constantly complained that the trains were full and I remember them changing schedules based on how full they were. They all said they took the train because it was faster and they didn't have to sit in traffic. I've also taken tons of buses. I lived off the drag and worked on 2nd. I always took a bus by UT down Congress to get to downtown. A bus is a bus. Every city bus has bus issues like you mentioned. Yawn. It's even worse here in Denver.
tellsomething 3y ago
Seems silly to think infrastructure means subsidising. Why don't you switch to dial up so that all the cables underneath the ocean can be slowly removed in order not to bother wild life over there? But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. I mean, wouldn't it be ideal to get all the benefits of a complex industrial society without a complex industry? It sure would.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. because the only way to get around in a city is by driving, right?
  - tellsomething 3y ago
    It will sure do great to inflation when your plumber has to take the bus and instead of having 5 customers per day only has 2.
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      In a nice designed city, getting to the destination with public transp is faster compared to cars, due to dedicated lanes, more direct paths, semaphore priority (Amsterdam for example) and this is applied to bike paths too. Car infra is designed in a way that it exists but is not optimal/as fast as possible, they optimize for ways to transport great amount of ppl as fast as possible and cars can't do that
- ta_1138 3y ago
  Of course infrastructure is subsidizing those who use it. Even more so when it comes to infrastructure that takes a lot of space, as every square foot of surface dedicated to one thing cannot be dedicated to another. And infrastructure induces demand by lowering some prices relative to others. In an extreme case, imagine that your typical, currently congested highway gained another 6 lanes in each direction, and we raise speed limits to 100 mph. First, the right of way is now way bigger, so we need to wreck a lot of buildings for this infrastructure. It makes being able to travel near that highway really nice for a while: Minimal congestion! A straight out windfall by people owning land near it. But that also means that the area redevelops, as farmland that was in the middle of nowhere is now a reasonable commute downtown! But as the development continues, the highway will fill up. And since downtown streets were not changed, it's the area downtown near the highway that is now a congested mess, as the limitation is getting from there to buildings. And again, a subsidy for you can be a harm for me: If every street is 8 lanes wide, it's very hard to cross. Every pedestrian crossing added is also infrastructure, but it slows down traffic. Every bit of lawn you use is another bit of distance I have to wade through to get to my destination, vs an area with the same number of houses, but without lawns. One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the fact that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism choices are picking some people's interests over others is just factual.
deleted 3y ago
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by jmyeet 3y ago

swozey 3y ago

The middled/old-aged NIMBYs in the suburbs don't use Uber/Pub-trans so they don't care and don't want to ever vote for it being improved or "taking my tax dollars." They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around, nor how THEY can benefit from being able to come downtown or go to the mountains skiing more frequently. You know who wants tons of parking spots? Those people with their Suburbans and 6 kids who only come downtown for a sports game once every 3 months but complain about how scary and stressful being downtown is. If you want a concrete example of this- when Austin caused Uber/Lyft to exit the market in 2016 (iirc) based on them "not fingerprinting drivers" one of the big arguments for letting them leave from one of (or the most) important council members was some comment along the lines of, "Well I've never needed an Uber/Lyft before in my life. Why can't you use cabs?" Ironically this person lives in Clarksville (or Tarrytown) which is one of the most expensive suburbs right outside of downtown and they probably never NEED an Uber. I bartended back in 2016 when this was going on and it SUCKED when they left. We had already gotten them into Austin WAY later than most other cities and it finally felt like I could travel around without a headache and the bullshit that yellow cabs bring with it ("Sorry sir, my credit card is not working tonight! Cash only but we're here already, so you must find ATM!") People who actually go out and do things and didn't want to have to go back to cabs not showing up, potentially getting a dwi/dui, etc were angry beyond belief at the council. https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-14/dear-mayor-adler/ https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-14/dear-m...

oceanplexian 3y ago
> They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around. I rode BART out of Oakland for years. I don’t agree with NIMBYs but it’s not like they are making it up. I assure you, it is indeed full of insane people, homeless, the trains are nasty and smell like urine, frequently break down or get stopped because people regularly suicide themselves on the tracks. I’m sure in Asian countries the trains are fantastic but here people aren’t adults and ruin it for everyone.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > I’m sure in Asian countries the trains are fantastic but unfortunately public transit riders here aren’t adults and ruin it for everyone. Not sure why you would turn an obviously systemic problem into one of personal responsibility. Do you think there are no mentally disabled or homeless people in other countries? This attitude seems startlingly common in the US. It's like the pessimistic side of American Exceptionalism - "This problem, which many other countries have tackled successfully, cannot be fixed here".
TexanFeller 3y ago
< They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around. Because statistically that’s very true almost everywhere in America. Even flagship cities like NYC have pathetic trains/subways compared to Europe/Asia and 90% of the population has never been that far abroad to see what’s possible. I’ve tried the express busses and “train”(can you call it that with only two cars!) in Austin and gave up because they waste much more time and are less comfortable than driving. Never saw rich professionals on them, but plenty of mentally ill, drug addicted, and unbathed(not that we should avoid the homeless as much as we do now) persons.
- swozey 3y ago
  I worked on 2nd and Congress for 4 years and almost every single person I worked with who lived in the suburbs took the train from around the Domain/Aboreteum/further-north-Canada area. They would usually bike, park-at, or get dropped off at a park-n-ride. Nobody said addicts, etc aren't on trains. I said people think that is who is only on it. My software engineer dad-friends absolutely took the train every single day and so did a TON of people who worked downtown. They constantly complained that the trains were full and I remember them changing schedules based on how full they were. They all said they took the train because it was faster and they didn't have to sit in traffic. I've also taken tons of buses. I lived off the drag and worked on 2nd. I always took a bus by UT down Congress to get to downtown. A bus is a bus. Every city bus has bus issues like you mentioned. Yawn. It's even worse here in Denver.

tellsomething 3y ago

Seems silly to think infrastructure means subsidising. Why don't you switch to dial up so that all the cables underneath the ocean can be slowly removed in order not to bother wild life over there? But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. I mean, wouldn't it be ideal to get all the benefits of a complex industrial society without a complex industry? It sure would.

_dain_ 3y ago
>But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. because the only way to get around in a city is by driving, right?
- tellsomething 3y ago
  It will sure do great to inflation when your plumber has to take the bus and instead of having 5 customers per day only has 2.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    In a nice designed city, getting to the destination with public transp is faster compared to cars, due to dedicated lanes, more direct paths, semaphore priority (Amsterdam for example) and this is applied to bike paths too. Car infra is designed in a way that it exists but is not optimal/as fast as possible, they optimize for ways to transport great amount of ppl as fast as possible and cars can't do that
ta_1138 3y ago
Of course infrastructure is subsidizing those who use it. Even more so when it comes to infrastructure that takes a lot of space, as every square foot of surface dedicated to one thing cannot be dedicated to another. And infrastructure induces demand by lowering some prices relative to others. In an extreme case, imagine that your typical, currently congested highway gained another 6 lanes in each direction, and we raise speed limits to 100 mph. First, the right of way is now way bigger, so we need to wreck a lot of buildings for this infrastructure. It makes being able to travel near that highway really nice for a while: Minimal congestion! A straight out windfall by people owning land near it. But that also means that the area redevelops, as farmland that was in the middle of nowhere is now a reasonable commute downtown! But as the development continues, the highway will fill up. And since downtown streets were not changed, it's the area downtown near the highway that is now a congested mess, as the limitation is getting from there to buildings. And again, a subsidy for you can be a harm for me: If every street is 8 lanes wide, it's very hard to cross. Every pedestrian crossing added is also infrastructure, but it slows down traffic. Every bit of lawn you use is another bit of distance I have to wade through to get to my destination, vs an area with the same number of houses, but without lawns. One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the fact that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism choices are picking some people's interests over others is just factual.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]