Re: The end of the world as we know it

With some inconvenience, people can plan their errands better and car
pool.  Neighbors could go to the market together, for instance.
Parents could really re-think their chauffeur duties.

How utopian. The more I listen to strategies like these, the more I
suspect that the planners behind them don't have kids, or are the
quintessential hypocrites (I've yet to find a suburban or rural
transportation planner that has truly preferred living in a mixed-used
development than a home on an acre-plus-some -- who would want to live
above a store, anyway? :D). When kids start having to go to all those
fun afterschool activities (below the level of being overscheduled,
which is a problem all its own), carpooling becomes more difficult due
to sheer scheduling.

Gas prices led me to buy a smaller car earlier this year; now you want
me to cram my neighbors in it with my family? A better strategy is to
reduce the trips a household takes to the store by planning what to
purchase in advance, rather than making the trips ad hoc.

Chauffeur duties are now sometimes dictated to parents by school
districts out of safety concerns as well. Although I grew up in the
era of the latchkey kid and see little wrong with it (hey, I
survived), that practice is highly discouraged, if not considered
outright criminal, nowadays...

In today's world where it raises eyebrows if you're five minutes late
to something, "some inconvenience" on the surface is actually "a lot"
in reality.

The fact of the matter is that our settlement patterns and irrational
commuting and errand trip generation makes any cooperative
transportation effort difficult, especially outside of major
metropolitan areas (although I do think the "slug" riding that occurs
down in DC is a great success). I find any transportation or land-use
planning that does not take into account the current settlement
pattern and transportation system to be detached from reality.
.

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