Re: The end of the world as we know it

On May 16, 8:13 pm, Rick Powell <rkpow...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 16, 6:44 am, Larry G <gross.la...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 15, 11:00 pm, Rothman <dnro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 15, 4:28 pm, Larry G <gross.la...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 15, 11:35 am, Rothman <dnro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 15, 10:16 am, Larry G <gross.la...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 15, 8:49 am, Rothman <dnro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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.

I have absolutely no problem with folks living where they want,
driving kids to school or running errands one at time in separate car
trips - UNTIL someone tells me that despite my efforts to be frugal, I
have to pay higher taxes to support others optional intensive usage of
the road system.

Who decides what travel is "optional"?  If I disagree with your
opinion of what is optional, who are you to disagree with me, and vice
versa?

and that's the essential issue when people say that more money is
needed for roads - despite the fact that virtually very DOT in the
country has more money this year than the year before for as many
years as one would like to go back and the trend continues.

Just looking at the money amounts apportioned, that is true.  However,
construction costs have inflated much, much faster than how much the
apportioned amounts have increased.  Therefore, the bang for the buck
has lessened considerably.

With taxes, everyone is forced to pay for for max consumption because
we build to meet peak hour - capacity sufficient to serve peak hour
solo suv driving... no matter whether others have chosen to live
closer to work, stack errands for one car trip or carpool or whatever;
no matter - the taxes are expended to meet the needs of maximum
consumption of that resource.

We need to have a system where the roads are egalitarian for basic
access and mobility for a basic price and more intensive users pay
their proportional bigger share for having to build extra capacity for
higher intensity uses.

A lot of assumptions are made in this post of yours.  First, you
decide that you know which travel is optional or mandatory for other
people.  Then you use this word "intensity," in which you think
someone who is travelling during rush-hour on a road -- someone who
most-likely has a job -- should pay more just because they have to go
to work during that time.  That doesn't seem fair to me.  You drive a
car on a road, you create the same wear and tear on your lane of
interstate as you do on your side of the paved rural road.  Who you
end up travelling with doesn't seem relevant, since if you have more
cars traveling on the same road, they're all paying taxes.

Seems more of a problem with distribution of the gas tax (i.e. making
sure they go to the roads that they need to go to) than the concept of
the gas tax.

In any matter, I find throwing around terms that cannot be
operationalized kill more trees than anything due to all the fluff
that's written about them (and yet nothing can be done about them due
to lack of definition).  Intensity, sustainability, efficient...heck,
even New Urbanists can't agree on how dense a development "should" be
too...

We do not charge the gas tax according to whether one drives at rush
hour or not - only on the miles they drive. So the guy that drives 40
miles a day on rural roads pays just as much in gas tax as the guy
that drives 40 miles a day in the height of rush hour.

40 miles on pavement is 40 miles on pavement.

So when there is not enough money to upgrade the rush hour road, taxes
are raised on everyone.. and of course NOT spent to make the rural
road more safe - as rural roads do have twice the death rate.

Rural roads are less safe due to drunk hicks (I joke...).  Yet,
there's only so much a DOT can do to make roads more safe given that a
signifcant percentage can be attributed to driver error (last pie
chart I saw I think said 40% at least).

so.. we tax everyone.. and prioritize the money for ....more
driving...

...which is due to the way our society has settled itself.  You can go
around in circles for centuries (and the transportation world will).
s

The fact is that DOTs are mandated to have the infrastructure meet the

needs of the travelling public as those needs are dictated in the
present, not some utopian (and I'd aver: dystopian) future where we
all live on top of each other with an organic food shop on the corner
and get around on segways (so much for grocery shopping).  Therefore,
we throw a little money at transit and used to expand capacity.

I'd suggest that now we're not doing much of anything except just
maintaining the current infrastructure anyhow.  Except in North
Carolina.

Also, please let me know when the gas tax goes the way of the dodo..
I'll be holding my breath.

This has been fun.

let me change "optional" to "discretionary" and let me give an example
of someone who drives SOLO every day at rush hour in an SUV.

the road runs out of capacity and new capacity has to be added so then
there is a need to raise the money to pay for the new rush hour
capacity.

you can do it by raising taxes or you can do it with HOT lanes which
allows those who want to not drive solo at rush hour to not have to
pay higher taxes and it still lets those that want to drive at rush
hour - do so - or if they want pay for less congestion.

and that's what I mean by optional or discretionary in terms of the
choices to those that want to commute at rush hour.

taxing everyone to provide  capacity for the most intensive users is
not egalitarian. It's instead a subsidy for some at the expense of
others.

Polls show  that people prefer tolls to taxes by 2-1 and the reason
why is with tolls you do have a choice and with taxes you don't.- Hide quoted text -

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Which polls are these?  I've heard them referenced, but I've yet to
see a cite.

Although using an SUV is certainly discretionary in my book (although
probably not in someone else's), traveling alone may be an only option
given the nutty "laborsheds" for workplaces.

Driving at rush hour is a hard sell as being "discretionary."  You've
just traded one fuzzy term for another.  Nothing becomes better
defined...and the decisions about funding transportation will continue
to lack long-term strategic vision due to the lack of consensus over
this whole dilemma...

I do wonder...you're all for tolling.  What about rural roads?  I'd
imagine due to the low volumes, tolls would be sky high...I've always
said either tax me or toll me, not both...

And, in the end, like I implied, all of this really doesn't matter in
the end.

here's a fairly recent one in Virginia -

http://universityrelations.cnu.edu/news/2008/04_30_08tunnel.html

and here's one from AAA:

..."..When respondents were asked to choose from a number of funding
options, the public did not favor using general purpose revenues.

...

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We tried a private system the first time around. Didn't work out too
well, which is why we have a mostly publicly-funded system now.
.