From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Cars, Cities and Choices
Keywords: Cars Transit Cities
Date: 28 Jul 92 14:35:44 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <ajpbart.711966671@adam.adelaide.edu.au>, ajpbart@adam.adelaide.edu.au (Paul Barter) writes:
>USAnian cities have generally chosen to cater to demand for facilities
>for automobiles and have progressively built more and more freeways,
>parking etc.  This was done in the name of free choice and consumer
>sovereignty.

Correction: this was done in the name of speed, expediency and cost.  All of it
evolved from dirt roads with horse carts.  As they say in Boston, after the
traffic engineers were finished laying out the roads they were killed and
eaten.

>              Unfortunately it has ultimately led to cities in which
>the basic choice in transport is to drive a car or to stay put!

Depends on what you call a city.  In NY, DC or many others, you have a whole
pile of choices besides cars.  In Nashua, LA or Houston, you have limited
choices.  The key difference is density.  NY has it.  Nashua doesn't.  Where
is density there is mass transit, and it works and is efficient.  Where there
isn't, the car is king.

>US cities sprawled outward. The central areas decayed - cars can never
>provide enough access to keep a thriving centre, in trying to do so they
>swamp it with heavy traffic, freeways and car parking. Detroit is a good
>example of this process taken to its extreme. LA too!! Cars cause the
>activities of a city to disperse - they are fleeing congestion. Even most
>major suburban malls now suffer congestion which puts a cap on their further
>growth (unless they are served by transit).

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.

>Once a city has become dispersed it is very difficult for transit to be

Cities don't "become dispersed" the density remains the same, it's the same or
worse in NY and the same or worse on every major city.  What gets dispersed is
the TAX BASE, as people who can afford to move away from confiscatory taxes do
so.  Why can't you utopian nitwits realize that people don't like paying an
extra 10% on everything they buy over and above the special income tax, the
parking fees, the jaywalking tickets, the high rents, etc.  etc.  etc.  Cities
are very expensive places to live, pure and simple.

>effective, so it decays...services are cut..there are screams about any
>subsidies...you all know the story.

Of course we know the story, and a damn sight better than you, obviously.  As
more of the tax base is driven out, taxes go up higher on those that remain,
or services are cut.  There isn't enough money, period.  If they weren't
already overextended in the first place, no one would have moved out.  This
is gov't in action, boy.

>                                     Walking is also now out of the question
>since nowhere that anyone wants to go is within walking distance anymore.

Utter nonsense, it remains as viable as it ever did in areas of high density.
Suburban facilities don't service the city dwellers, city facilities do.  If
they are closing it's because they can't afford to stay open, not because they
"want to move".  Few businesses ever "moved" out of New York, they went bank-
rupt and new ones started in the suburbs.  The effect may be the same, but if
you don't understand the cause, as you obviously don't, then you haven't a
hope in hell of understanding the problem enough to help.

>Riding bicycles is now dangerous and unpleasant because of the traffic -

It is no more dangerous than it ever was.  You're grasping at straws, boy.

>and again everything is now far away.

What nonsense.  Even the most decayed inner cities still have businesses to
support the locals - even though they get robbed or looted with dismaying
frequency.  What a life - every time a cop shoots another black, the small
businessman in the inner city get looted during the riots.  Still, they stay,
until the system breaks down entirely, which it will do, whether you have
cars or not.

>Most European cities (and Asian, a few Latin American etc) avoided the
>car domination trap described above - they are places where everyone has
>a great deal of choice as to their mode of transport. Car ownership is often
>very high - but people have the choice not to use them very often.

They avoided the decay by placing their tax structures at national levels 
rather than local ones, so there is no incentive to move to an area of lower
taxes.  It works for socialist countries, but those with pretentions to
freedom have problems with it.

You don't like cars - you despise them in fact.  Fair enough.  But only a fool
would claim it was the maggots that killed a corpse full of bulletholes.  Learn
to tell the difference between cause and effect and then come back with better
suggestions.

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.