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donoteat posted:Without additional funding the plan was to shut down infrastructure as it became unsafe to operate (in contrast with the WMATA policy of "doing gently caress-all") and mothball it until it could one day be rebuilt. Thankfully the state legislature passed Act 89, but it hasn't provided entirely the funding needed to even bring the system up to a state of good repair, let alone any kind of expansion to its former glory. Que sera, sera. Admittedly, the WMATA is impossible situation since it more or less has to beg from 2 states and a district for funding and at the same time needs to maintain a system if anything else needed to keep the capital functioning. Closing down a metro line is not only a big deal, but most likely would have severe political repercussions. There is a reason that it has taken years for find a permanent GM. Basically, a meltdown has been coming for a while, and it is sad to see what is still one of the better systems in the country to be on the skids, it wasn't hard to predict either. New York has its issues as well, but rather than actual service be disturbed, stations basically usually have a few decades of deferred maintenance and modernization is scatter shot at best.
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Apr 8, 2016 04:31
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Cicero posted:Counterpoint: no. You haven't shown this to be the case. One of the biggest isn't even in suburbia, and the bay area would be almost impossible for a company like Apple or Google to put their HQ in a real city, where would it even go? SF, the city that already hates techies and development? In all honesty I spent quite a bit of time around the Santa Clara valley, and public transportation there is just rather terrible to be honest and barely better than Greater Los Angeles. I guess better density is a okay thing, but ultimately the vast majority of those employees are going to be in cars and I doubt bike lanes almost no one is going to use is going to change. I mean by and large as far as the physical surrounding of that area, it really doesn't look or work that differently than Orange County. That said, If anything the Apple HQ really make even sense because the only public transportation around it is a local bus line, and it literally faces single family dwellings. It really looks like a HQ some alien overlord just dropped down from space on a random lot with zero thought about anything around it. The 280 is already a parking lot anyway, I guess ten thousand more cars isn't going to hurt.
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Apr 20, 2016 05:05
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Cicero posted:I think this is unreasonably pessimistic. For Google's HQ, 9% of workers currently bike to work, and 21% of those that live within 9 miles bike to work. Those are incredibly high rates, especially when you consider that most bike infrastructure in the area, except for the nearby trails (which are excellent), is garbage. And already, less than half of Googlers there drive to work alone. Part of that is biking, but of course a bigger part is the extremely extensive network of shuttles that Google runs all over the place. Plus, the whole idea of throwing in a bunch of high density housing there is that people who live < 1 mile away probably aren't gonna drive. Yes, ultimately Google is limited in what they can do if the surrounding local governments don't get their act together with decent transit, but they're clearly trying very hard. Fine the shuttles make a difference, but the they are an issue on their own and ultimately the issue is that really nothing around that area but that housing is conductive to that life style and if you want to "get off campus" you probably are going to need a car. Now it may help limit commutes, which is a good thing but it is far from actually constructing any type of real urban environment. Basically, it is company housing that exists to serve the needs of its owner, which is fine, but it doesn't really mean any dramatic shift here. quote:edit: I can't get over how defeatist "I doubt bike lanes almost no one is going to use is going to change" is. Like, I can understand how people might say that not many people are going to ever bike in hilly and rainy Seattle, or very hilly SF, but we're talking about a place that is largely flat and has about as close to perfect weather for biking as you could ask for. Amsterdam's climate sucks for biking compared to the south bay: colder, windier, wetter. The difference is Amsterdam is an entire city that has had its infrastructure built around public transit and bike use, you can get across almost all of Amsterdam very easily with a bike and public transportation. It really isn't the case of the Santa Clara valley, especially since the distances are comparatively vast. More bike lanes is fine, and I am sure a few people are going to use them but ultimately the mistakes of the fifties are still going to guide the future of the valley. It is a situation that is hosed in a way that will take generations to be fixed if ever, and is only compounded by being wanting to live in SF [which tried to resist those mistakes]. To be clear, I don't think any of these improvements are really bad at all, but rather you have to be realistic about how far behind California is and if anything any improvement will probably be balanced out by companies that don't give a poo poo [Apple]. If anything, LA [I know] seems more serious about infrastructure investment at this point and even then it is going to be a very very long time.
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Apr 20, 2016 18:41
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HorseLord posted:Amsterdam in the 70s vs now: The issue here is that even during the seventies, Amsterdam had the building blocks to make that transformation possible including just the density itself compared to the Santa Clara valley which by and large is more or less standard California issue suburbia. It took the Dutch decades to fix Amsterdam, how long will it take to fix a place that was never intended to be livable for people without cars? There are some American cities that did turn around, like Portland. However, if you talk about a city like Portland, most people st commute to work by car on a road system developed for about half the amount of people and its local government is struggling to find money to find any alternative.
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Apr 24, 2016 06:39
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RuanGacho posted:I find myself absent mindedly wondering that if we go full vehicle automation with metropolitan based traffic control if it couldn't give the US a unique and different model to the stuff that has been successful elsewhere. The main advantage possible I can see from the people mover model is cargo delivery could also be retrofitted into the system where a transport vehicle just pulls up and delivers a standardized package to a building. I think a big issue with the expectations behind automation is that those vehicles would still have to more or less use the same roads of today, but with an extra couple decades of added congestion. Automation will be driving [or riding] more efficient but it is far from a cure-all especially once you start adding in pedestrians, bikes and "hold outs" that will demand to drive "manual and how much automated cars will have to react to counter them. To be honest, I don't know if automation would really work in Manhattan, where drivers need to be skilled but very aggressive at the same time. If any extremely optimistic expectations of car automation reminds me of the type of modernist thinking that got the US in trouble in the first place, that technological innovation will always be enough rather having it balanced by planning and community input. Also most American cities were radically alternated in the post-war period and while some scars are healing, many of them still show, the worst of all have to be freeways themselves. If anything the reason Portland was rather unique is due to the fact the city was practically in open-revolt when the Mt.Hood Freeway was proposed, the destruction of the area where it would have gone through [Clinton-Division] would have radically shape the fate of the city if it had gone though. If anything the reason why so many American cities suck comes down to freeways and how much they devastated the cities they were installed in. DC and NYC would practically be different cities today if their planned freeways were actually constructed, in comparison Boston literally spent billions of dollars to try to that legacy [semi-successfully]. If anything I would say the cities that minimized freeway construction [usually older coastal cities] clearly benefited from the decision. It isn't always the case but looking at SF, NYC or DC they are really doing quite a bit better than the rest of the country. It wasn't that high capacity roads didn't need to be built, but eradicating "slums" and replacing them with freeways and parking lots had predictable but irreversible consequences [Btw, most of those pictures being posted didn't show "an odd shack" being torn down but literally portions of neighborhoods being eradicated. One thing to be clear about though there was no way to really stop white flight, but the recovery from that period is highly variable. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Apr 24, 2016 |
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Apr 24, 2016 19:57
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hypnorotic posted:I feel like DC is hosed because the metropolis has three different governments to deal with, which at any time could have obstructionist governments who poo poo on any project that will mess with their budget promises. It's amazing that any of the metro actually managed to be extended beyond the district boundaries. Well it is more the DC Metro itself is hosed because of it, but at the same time DC itself is more livable than most American cities [unless you go to a career focused happy hour]. Still it is rather amazing to see how much local governments try to handicap the Metro system even though the almost entire region depends on it. That said, if they actually had gone through with the plan to build freeways across DC, what kind of nightmare would have resulted from that? DC at least dodged a couple bullets there. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 18:53
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FISHMANPET posted:A bike is a poor replacement for a car. If you try and replace a car with a bike and make literally no other changes in you're life, you're going to have a bad time. Granted, the question is if the changes you make are clearly that important. For example just ordering paper towels/boxes of wine/furniture online rather than driving out to Costco/whatever big box store. If anything the time and effort saved is probably worth more than what ever shipping/fees are involved. Well, to be honest, if I am on the train I am doing something semi-productive [email] as well if not outright working. In reality it is pretty easy to live without a car, you just spent the time and effort on a car [like trying to find parking in any major metropolitan area] and use it elsewhere. Ultimately, the issue is that a lot of American cities just have such terrible non-car infrastructure because any alternative was purposefully destroyed for largely ideological reasons. There are probably about what half a dozen cities in the US you can get by without a car and they are almost consequently the ones with the highest competition for housing. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Apr 28, 2016 |
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Apr 28, 2016 22:39
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sincx posted:Good analysis, although there are two factors that do decrease the cost of owning a home. This is why if you are thinking about staying in a location for thirty years, it often makes sense to build that equity and then take the tax write off. However, if you are constantly moving every 3-5 years, as many Americans do, it becomes more dicey especially since there are transaction costs to selling/buying houses and if you get caught in a bad market...there isn't much do it about it. More or less, it often makes more sense to rent until you are in a position in your life you are going to want to stay in a place at least a decade or more and you have everything lined up to make that happen. Also, while your rent goes up in smoke, the other money you save not having a house can be saved and reinvested which may balance how much you are "losing in rent." Moreover, in his analysis he forgets to calculate property taxes and local bonds which often add up depending on where you settle down. It really comes down to labor flexibility/life style versus modest equity savings. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:24 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 22:16
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Grey Fox posted:https://twitter.com/nbcwashington/status/733751489110364161 Granted, it always seem that the core issue boiled down to cash not mismanagement. I mean it is expected heads are going to roll but I don't think it is the core of the dysfunction.
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May 20, 2016 23:54
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Are there any cities in the world with an extensive subway system that's totally free for the riders? I can't imagine it happening in the US since the massive screaming about unfairness from non-riders would drown it out. On a weird level, I could see DC being vaguely able to argue it since their ridership is spread out over multiple states even for "locals" plus huge numbers of temporary riders for gov/biz/tourism. DC clearly can't afford it alone, but it could be allotws funds in a way similar to how DC gets a federal disbursement for all the tax-free federal land it has that it has to indirectly support and can't raise revenue from. There are "trust" based fare systems out there like in Portland Oregon or Tallinn but I think in both cases they are still fare inspectors. As for DC, I actually doubt the union is the key issue compared to such a lack of funding/deferred maintenance for decades. Fares are going up because there is no other way to operate the system.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:52
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