From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Cars, Cities and Choices
Keywords: Cars Transit Cities
Date: 30 Jul 92 14:35:14 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Jul28.160458.2333@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (dean alaska) writes:
>In article <4605@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com writes:
>>In article <ajpbart.711966671@adam.adelaide.edu.au>, ajpbart@adam.adelaide.edu.au (Paul Barter) writes:
>>Not only wrong, but idiotic as well.  Cities don't "decay" because of cars,
>>they merely make it happen faster.  Even a railway can make it happen if the
>>rail goes to someplace WITH LOWER TAXES!!!  People leave cities because they
>>are damned expensive places to live if you aren't on the public dole in one
>>form or another.  When push comes to shove and budget must be balanced, people
>>tend to decide that all the wonderful benefits of the city don't mean beans if
>>they have to sleep on a subway grating.  Of course, some people made that
>>choice.

>These complaints about taxation in the city are total generalizations.  I

And the original statement wasn't?  What could possibly be more general than
his blanket statement that cars and cars alone are responsible for dispersal
of the population?  It lacks even the tiniest and most mediocre understanding
of the real world, it's a sound bite, not a fact.  Certainly my reply is a
generalization.  But it is a generalization that is demonstrably true in a
very great number of cases, so much so that you'd have to work to find counter-
examples, which makes it an *apt* generalization.

>don't doubt they are true in some instances, but Paul is correct is many
>cases.  I left the city because of congestion and the high cost of living.

Really?  Allow me to re-iterate:
>>People leave cities because they
>>are damned expensive places to live if you aren't on the public dole

If your "high cost of living" is why you left then why do you think Paul is 
right?  He wasn't right for you, was he?

>Its true that taxes are lower in the smaller city I live in now, but the 
>difference in _local_ taxes is marginal for me.  State tax differentials
>are larger, but that doesn't relate to living in the city.

That is utterly beside the point, Dean.  Did you move there just because of
an overpowering desire to use your car more?  Or were the costs, both monetary
and personal, the deciding factor?  If you simply love to drive your car and
moved for that reason then you agree with him, if not then you agree with me.
All I claimed was that dispersal was economic, and that cars were a symptom,
NOT the problem.  Anyone with an ounce of sense will see that banning cars in
such a circumstance will not change the underlying economic circumstance that
impels the dispersion.  The original analysis was simplistic to the point of
idiocy and that's what I called it.

Of course, it reflects the dismaying tendency I see in this newgroup to mistake
cause and effect.  Without a basic understanding of that, you and your agenda
are doomed.  That's ok, but you're planning to blow *my* tax money in the
attempt!

>Higher congestions in dense cities _has_ made bicycling harder.  The 
>cars drive much faster when they can, makiing it more dangerous for
>bikes.

Higher congestion slows traffic, you contradict yourself.  Of course cars drive
faster when they can, and they can in areas of low congestion far more often.
You're logic isn't impressing me either.

>Sprawl is a major issue in the west but I believe that this sprawl
>started not becasue of taxes but because of the desire to avoid
>density and to avoid minorities.

Somehow, I just knew it would have to be cast as a racial issue sooner or
later.  If it isn't cast as something dire, no one will really care, so we
have to make it some fundamental flaw with society, don't we?  Once again,
the historical evidence that economics ALONE are sufficient to explain the
dispersal must be ignored when there's social engineering to be done.  We
must justify what we have decided to do anyway, and Americans are _so_ dense
about believing this crap.

Sprawl is a major issue in the west BECAUSE the west was settled later than
the east and desired to avoid the problems the east already suffered from,
that were directly attributable to high density.  Don't you think the city
council in turn-of-the-century LA was fully aware of the traffic problems
the horse-drawn carts in NY city were experiencing?  In a rare example of
gov't actually planning for the future, California and the west deliberately
set up their zoning laws to encourage spread as much as possible.  They
succeeded, and now rely heavily on cars.  With 20-20 hindsight we can say that
that might not have been optimal, but we have no justification whatsoever
for calling it racial.

>                                  Cars made the sprawl possible.

Any transport mechanism would have served.  If someone invented a magical
mass-transit system tomorrow it would support exactly the same dynamic.  Look
at Long Island!  Most of the towns out there in the 40's and 50's relied on
the LIRR for commuting into the city, very few of them used cars until the
LIRR service and cost got so bad that cars became viable.  That spread was
triggered and supported by mass transit, no cars needed.

>Eastern cities were well developed before there were cars so they
>have a higher dinsity in the older parts but they still have
>modern LA-style sprawl on the outside.

And it seems not to have occurred to you that this is because they had to deal
with the older parts as best they could but the outer areas could still be
zoned for lower density?  That this was not a conscious decision?  Or are you
going to tell me that the Europeans are racist, too?  At least that would be
consistant.

>                                       This did lead to a loss
>of tax base, which now feeds upon itself as those can afford
>services move away from those who can't, but I don't believe it
>started that way.

Believe it, Dean.  Facts won't go away because you don't like them, and
refusing to understand basic human motivations will cause you to misunderstand
and misinterpret in virtually every enterprise you choose to support, and you
will fail utterly.  Just as all the billions spent on mass transit failed,
because wishful thinking made people hold onto the urban hub/suburb wheel-and-
spokes model instead of finding out where the jobs REALLY were, where people
REALLY lived, and how transit REALLY needed to work. As Boston discovered after
spending I don't know how many billions of dollars, one study finally figured
out that people *weren't* commuting into downtown, the freeways were jammed
because of cars moving from one ring to the next, so they could use circum-
ferential highways to shift from sector to sector to get to their jobs.  This
model knocked the wheel-and-spoke idea into a cocked hat, and it was obvious
once the study was done.  If the wheel-and-spoke commute to downtown was right,
the freeways would be jammed (true) the on ramps would be jammed in the outer
ring (false) and the off ramps jammed in the inner rings (false) and reversed
in the evening commute (false) and most intervening ramps would show a similar
pattern depending on their distance from downtown (false).  Instead what they
found was on and off ramps were not jammed, but used heavily, both ways, the
entire length of the expressway.  In the wheel-and-spoke model, circumferential
highways should have been lightly used, but both 495 and 128, the two largest
circumferential routes, are legendary parking lots.

>Larry, is name-calling a personality trait for you or is it a
>proven fact that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot?

Dean, if I think there is even a smidgen of thought or logic in someone's
expressed opinion, I can respect it and argue with it in less emotional
terms.  But when I see some jerk blast out some logic-free sound bite
that is wrong as well as unthinking, I can only call it what it is, stupid.
Many people who are not stupid disagree with me, but when someone demonstrably
stupid disagrees, what can I do but point it out?

My entire purpose in this newsgroup is specifically to reply to such posts.
I'm not all that interested in the environment beyond seeing to it that it
is protected from being destroyed by short-term interests.  But it is my view
that the environment is pretty well holding its own, and that many people who
do not take the "environmentalist" label care enough about to protect it to
some, perhaps even a reasonable, extent.  This is good, because it sure looks
to me like the "environmentalist" "movement" has clapped the core of Marxist
thought to its collective breast, and is now only interested in the environment
to the extent they need some lever to advance their political agenda.  Yahoos
who parrot their line, like Paul, are their stormtroopers.  Their speech is not
a reasoned attempt at argument or debate, it is a content-free, semantic-free
cry to rally the troops.  It hardly matters what they say, it might as well be
"YA! YA! YA! YA!".  Its only purpose is a hunting signal to the rest of the
pack, disguised as concern for the environment.  But if it is repeated often
enough, the undiscerning readers may presume it is true.  My purpose here is
simply to continue to contradict the politically-motivated speech.

So long as arguments stick to facts, or at least to the SCIence of ENVIRONMENT-
alism, I am content.  When I see the social engineers lurking about, when I
hear the mindless call of hunting socialist, then I post.  And if I think I am
up against stupidity and nothing else, I'll call it that.  At the very least,
it will force the other person to *think* about their position, if for no other
reason than to prove me a pompous ass.  It's been done, after all.  Thankfully,
not often, but whether is succeeds or fails, we have *both* _thought_ about
our positions, something I'm sure Paul hasn't done.

I course, I think I'm right - I probably am right a goodly percentage of the
time.  That does give me a considerable advantage.  Many of the regulars here
find me obnoxious.  That's good, that's precisely my purpose here.  I represent
all the people who aren't going to buy emotional arguments, or vague assertions
about "facts".  And such people are, after all, the swing vote.  When all the
sides of a question rely on emotion, trusting in the faithful to mouth their
lines on cue, and so forth, they tend to cancel each other out.  What's left
are the people who will try to analyze and understand.  It gives us a dis-
portionate amount of power, but I suspect that's why democracy manages to work
as well as it does.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Daily I'd go over to Congress - that grand old benevolent national asylum - and
report on the inmates there.  Never seen a body of men with tongues more handy,
or information more uncertain.  If one of those men had been present when the
Deity was on the point of saying "Let there be light" we never would've had it.
Xref: sparky sci.environment:9910 sci.physics:11538 sci.energy:3614