6 ms·

Another way to look at "sprawl" is: Enough space to have privacy, enough space to pursue your own interests, enough space to have the kids enjoy the backyard as

by declan 13y ago

Another way to look at "sprawl" is: Enough space to have privacy, enough space to pursue your own interests, enough space to have the kids enjoy the backyard as opposed to a 4'x3' balcony on the 20th floor of an apartment building. Enough space to design your own home or addition, perhaps, if you have the inclination. And enough space to have a car that gives you more independence (when you want it) than being at the mercy of public transportation schedules concocted by central planners. You also might enjoy sports cars, as I do, and enjoy owning a very well-designed vehicle that does 0-60 in under four seconds and is a joy to drive on the windy roads near my house -- though it would be nice to add a self-driving car to the garage too. (HN trivia: I had lunch with Steve Jobs in 1989, and he drove up in a black Porsche 911. Larry Page bought a Tesla roadster. I recall Cypress Semiconductor CEO TJ Rodgers telling me about his Mercedes; you can probably track down the interview if you're interested.) Also: I don't live in a downtown area. Nor do I live in suburban sprawl. But "sprawl is just a subsidy for cars" is a weak argument that gets the facts wrong: car commuters are subsidizing public transportation via gas and other taxes, not the other way around. Here's Randal O'Toole on single-family homes in the SF Bay area: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/do-single-family-homes-threaten-planet http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/do-single-family... "The vast majority of population growth continues to be in low-density suburbs. Surveys of millennials show that more than three out of four aspire to live in a single-family home with a yard. The data also show that crowding people together isn’t really effective at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions or addressing other urban concerns. Population densities in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose urban areas have already grown by nearly 60 percent since 1990, yet per-capita driving still has increased." I do apologize in advance for injecting facts into a religious argument about that loathsome invention known as the automobile. :)

mikeash 13y ago
> car commuters are subsidizing public transportation via gas and other taxes, not the other way around. Do you have numbers for this? Last I checked, gas taxes didn't cover the costs for road construction and maintenance, let alone have enough left over to subsidize public transportation.
- declan 13y ago
  Billions of dollars are taken from so-called Highway Trust Fund, paid for by your gas taxes, to fund public transport. Cite: http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/14/house-aims-to-stop-highway-robbery http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/14/house-aims-to-stop-hig... >>Every time you buy a gallon of gas in this nation, you pay 18.2 cents to Uncle Sam. The original rationalization for the federal gas tax was that it was collected in a "Highway Trust Fund" and used to pay for road infrastructure. In 1983, a transit account was created [pdf], diverting 20 percent of the trust fund to pay for the mass transit dreams of local potentates.<< That's not counting $$$ coming from general FedGov income tax revenue. Because far more people use cars regularly than use public transport regularly, those are additional subsidies extracted (involuntarily) from automobile and truck owners. Related, with an entertaining headline: http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/22/breaking-affluent-well-educated-guys-dig http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/22/breaking-affluent-well-edu...
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    Year, those numbers make basically no sense. Even your link doesn't prove what it claims in the headline. The government shovels billions from the general fund into the highway fund every year. The highway fund disburses a much smaller number of billions into transit projects every year. Therefore the fuel tax does not cover the cost of highway spending. I'll stop here because I have a policy against arguing with libertarians on the internet, but in case you are interested in facts from actual research rather than from political mouthpieces here's one. The URL says it all: http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pa...
    - mikeash 13y ago
      For some reason, the other side basically looks at interstates and then calls it a day, ignoring that the vast majority of road expenditures isn't federal. (OK, the reason is pretty obvious: it's the only way to make the numbers come out "right".)
seszett 13y ago
> Enough space to have privacy, enough space to pursue your own interests, enough space to have the kids enjoy the backyard as opposed to a 4'x3' balcony on the 20th floor of an apartment building. Enough space to design your own home or addition, perhaps, if you have the inclination. And enough space to have a car that gives you more independence (when you want it) than being at the mercy of public transportation schedules concocted by central planners. I often see this argument on how urban sprawl is supposed to be the only way to have gardens and garages, but... that's not true, look at this place: http://goo.gl/maps/INScH http://goo.gl/maps/INScH Sure, the gardens might not be as large as what you would get in the countryside and not all houses have a garage (and some have no garden) but I still prefer that kind of place much more than the vast soulless sprawling suburban American neighbourhoods (and I've lived in both - as well as real countryside, which is still nicer than both). You actually have commerces and places to go near you, and you still get to enjoy your private garden.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
Your post contains false dichotomies and incorrect assertions of fact. False dichotomy: sprawl vs. 20th floor apartment. There are many single family homes with yards in dense urban areas. Note in this aerial image how the compact residential areas with grid streets are bracketed by commercial corridors on major streets. Walkable access to work, shopping, entertainment, and long-haul transportation are the features lacking in "sprawl". https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8412554,-122.2511705,700m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8412554,-122.2511705,700m/da... You claim about gas buyers subsidizing transit has already been addressed in your other post. I will just add that every time I get on the bus I have to disgorge another $2.10 whereas every time I get on the freeway I pay no direct user fee. Your data about per-capita driving is also obsolete. According to FHWA data, per-capita vehicle miles traveled has fallen 8 years in a row. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring... It's not back to 1990 levels yet, certainly, but it's headed there and is mostly a matter of demographics.

by declan 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago

> car commuters are subsidizing public transportation via gas and other taxes, not the other way around. Do you have numbers for this? Last I checked, gas taxes didn't cover the costs for road construction and maintenance, let alone have enough left over to subsidize public transportation.

declan 13y ago
Billions of dollars are taken from so-called Highway Trust Fund, paid for by your gas taxes, to fund public transport. Cite: http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/14/house-aims-to-stop-highway-robbery http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/14/house-aims-to-stop-hig... >>Every time you buy a gallon of gas in this nation, you pay 18.2 cents to Uncle Sam. The original rationalization for the federal gas tax was that it was collected in a "Highway Trust Fund" and used to pay for road infrastructure. In 1983, a transit account was created [pdf], diverting 20 percent of the trust fund to pay for the mass transit dreams of local potentates.<< That's not counting $$$ coming from general FedGov income tax revenue. Because far more people use cars regularly than use public transport regularly, those are additional subsidies extracted (involuntarily) from automobile and truck owners. Related, with an entertaining headline: http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/22/breaking-affluent-well-educated-guys-dig http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/22/breaking-affluent-well-edu...
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Year, those numbers make basically no sense. Even your link doesn't prove what it claims in the headline. The government shovels billions from the general fund into the highway fund every year. The highway fund disburses a much smaller number of billions into transit projects every year. Therefore the fuel tax does not cover the cost of highway spending. I'll stop here because I have a policy against arguing with libertarians on the internet, but in case you are interested in facts from actual research rather than from political mouthpieces here's one. The URL says it all: http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pa...
  - mikeash 13y ago
    For some reason, the other side basically looks at interstates and then calls it a day, ignoring that the vast majority of road expenditures isn't federal. (OK, the reason is pretty obvious: it's the only way to make the numbers come out "right".)

seszett 13y ago

> Enough space to have privacy, enough space to pursue your own interests, enough space to have the kids enjoy the backyard as opposed to a 4'x3' balcony on the 20th floor of an apartment building. Enough space to design your own home or addition, perhaps, if you have the inclination. And enough space to have a car that gives you more independence (when you want it) than being at the mercy of public transportation schedules concocted by central planners. I often see this argument on how urban sprawl is supposed to be the only way to have gardens and garages, but... that's not true, look at this place: http://goo.gl/maps/INScH http://goo.gl/maps/INScH Sure, the gardens might not be as large as what you would get in the countryside and not all houses have a garage (and some have no garden) but I still prefer that kind of place much more than the vast soulless sprawling suburban American neighbourhoods (and I've lived in both - as well as real countryside, which is still nicer than both). You actually have commerces and places to go near you, and you still get to enjoy your private garden.

thrownaway2424 13y ago

Your post contains false dichotomies and incorrect assertions of fact. False dichotomy: sprawl vs. 20th floor apartment. There are many single family homes with yards in dense urban areas. Note in this aerial image how the compact residential areas with grid streets are bracketed by commercial corridors on major streets. Walkable access to work, shopping, entertainment, and long-haul transportation are the features lacking in "sprawl". https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8412554,-122.2511705,700m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8412554,-122.2511705,700m/da... You claim about gas buyers subsidizing transit has already been addressed in your other post. I will just add that every time I get on the bus I have to disgorge another $2.10 whereas every time I get on the freeway I pay no direct user fee. Your data about per-capita driving is also obsolete. According to FHWA data, per-capita vehicle miles traveled has fallen 8 years in a row. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring... It's not back to 1990 levels yet, certainly, but it's headed there and is mostly a matter of demographics.