2023 Dead Pool

[MusicMan (Michael Shopoff)]

@Limey

Also, on hot days, standing outside a pub with a cool beer watching the scantily-clad Essex girls tottering along to the station on their white FMPs was a fine way to pass time and allow the crush on the trains to die down.

Any comments I might make about this could end up with me in the 2023 dead pool.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

Also, on hot days, standing outside a pub with a cool beer watching the scantily-clad Essex girls tottering along to the station on their white FMPs was a fine way to pass time and allow the crush on the trains to die down.

What every God-fearing Texas soccer mom dreams of.

[Limey (Ray Ward)]

@HudsonHawk

I could easily argue that if people wanted to live in a biker’s paradise they should pay for the privilege.

Right. Bike paths are a lot cheaper to build than roads. But if you could live in such a neighborhood, they’d still tax you to pay for all the stroads they’re building out to new, car-dependent sub-divisions in BFE.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

@HudsonHawk

I could easily argue that if people wanted to live in a biker’s paradise they should pay for the privilege.

Right. Bike paths are a lot cheaper to build than roads. But if you could live in such a neighborhood, they’d still tax you to pay for all the stroads they’re building out to new, car-dependent sub-divisions in BFE.

Sometimes being in the minority sucks ass.

[Waldo]

@JBM

I’m wouldn’t characterize myself as “anything but cars,” but there hasn’t been a balance between facilitating auto traffic and bicycle traffic in a long fucking time. During that time, I have seen a ton of bike lanes added, a completely empty train that I wait on almost daily, and a ton of measures to slow traffic down. These urban planners are adding new tricks to slow my car down as we speak.

Meanwhile, I haven’t seen the percentage of bike use increase since my college days in the 80s where I went everywhere by bike. Imposing this “vision” has been a gigantic waste of public wealth.

Those are fair criticisms, but where you see too much of a commitment to alternative transportation I see two things:

1. Overall lack of commitment toward alternative transportation. Major surface roads like Lamar and Burnet are still largely devoid of bike lanes, making it difficult, inefficient, and/or unsafe to travel north/south by bike in much of the city. Even some newer master-planned developments like Mueller lack bike lanes. The MetroRail Red Line, while a good first step for rail in the city, serves a relatively limited population and has been undercooked since day one due to penny pinching. We can say these things aren’t good enough, but that doesn’t make them bad, and the upcoming Project Connect stuff actually looks promising w.r.t. filling in a lot of the gaps. (As an aside, CapMetro rider ship was growing pretty much across the board before COVID dropped a nuke on it. My MetroExpress bus was almost always full.)

2. Local opposition to the city having any coherent transportation plan whatsoever. The city as a whole has spent decades in denial about how fast it’s growing, or has simply hoped that people would stop moving here. As a result the infrastructure has fallen way behind. There’s an explanation for I-35 being largely unchanged between Round Rock and the river since the 70s, or taking 40 years to add just two lanes on Mopac between Parmer and Ben White (and tolled lanes, at that), or 360 being an evergreen hopeless clusterfuck when the sun is up, but I don’t think bike lanes is that explanation.

[HudsonHawk]

@Waldo

2. Local opposition to the city having any coherent transportation plan whatsoever. The city as a whole has spent decades in denial about how fast it’s growing, or has simply hoped that people would stop moving here. As a result the infrastructure has fallen way behind.

I saw this when I lived in Raleigh. People complained about how bad the traffic was getting, so in response they thought “if we stop building and maintaining roads, people will stop driving”. It was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

[MusicMan (Michael Shopoff)]

See, for example, the conversion of 2 lanes of 11th street into bike lanes. The desired effect from the planners was not so much “add bike lanes” as “slow down traffic that speeds through this area”.

[HudsonHawk]

“There are too many cars on this 4-lane road. If we make it a 2-lane road, there’ll be half as many cars on it.”

Brilliant.

[SidDithers]

@Limey

This is how getting in and out of a city like London, which is multiples larger than Houston, is achievable, because you don’t have to drive.

We lived in Kent for a spell, near Maidstone (second only to Crawley in chavness) and one day i decided I’d drive my wife all the way to her office in Hammersmith, which was an incredibly stupid idea. Took hours and eventually I dropped her off at a train station somwhere inside the M25 so she could get to work in the same decade we left the house. A comlete nightmare, I don’t know how anyone does it.
But, to be honest, I grew up in the Spring area, moved to Tomball, lived in Katy so I’ve been a suburbanite all my life (even overseas we lived outside the cities rather than in them) and everytime I have to go into town in Houston now I can’t understand how people live like that, with narrow streets, lots of traffic, all those people…

[Limey (Ray Ward)]

@HudsonHawk

Residential suburbs didn’t spring up in a vacuum.

Actually, they did. American cities did not used to be like this, what we have now was created by commercial interests pushing money-spinning development projects (and a splash of racism). People were sold on the American dream of having a big house and space with all the freedom of unfettered travel by car.

Now, getting around by car is a dawn 'til dusk nightmare of gridlock - and fluctuating gas prices - so that freedom is gone. But we are still stuck with the now-indoctrinated dream of owning a suburban home - because we have generations who have grown up knowing nothing else - and cities/developers continue to indulge that dream despite it not being really what people want.

If people didn’t like walkable, mixed use neighborhoods, it wouldn’t be so expensive to buy a house in one of those, suburban shopping malls wouldn’t be designed to look like historic downtowns, mixed use developments like City Center wouldn’t be the overcrowded mints they are, and people wouldn’t flock to actual old towns like Old Town, Spring or vacation in somewhere other than North America and love those quaint little foreign cities.

Would You Fall for It? [ST08]

[SidDithers]

@Limey

suburban shopping malls wouldn’t be designed to look like historic downtowns,

We have one of those near us (called La Centera) and it’s great. But don’t you think that this is more a reflection of these suburban areas becoming towns in their own right rather than subdivisions?

[Limey (Ray Ward)]

@HudsonHawk

What every God-fearing Texas soccer mom dreams of.

Soccer moms might like (1) not having to be soccer moms because their kids could get around on their own; and (b) not having their travel time triple because of a sprinkling of rain.

[Limey (Ray Ward)]

@HudsonHawk

Sometimes being in the minority sucks ass.

That’s why government, eventually, enacts policies to help minorities achieve equality. And, again, this hypothetical situation involves people asking the city to spend less on their neighborhood’s infrastructure.

[VirtualBob]

@JBM

During that time, I have seen a ton of bike lanes added, a completely empty train that I wait on almost daily, and a ton of measures to slow traffic down. These urban planners are adding new tricks to slow my car down as we speak

Not to mention that the “mobility bond” package advertised (by council with your $$$) as a solution to the traffic problem funded a lot of those “tricks”. They are trying to make cars so inconvenient people will quit using them. They are not really interested in solving any problems.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

Actually, they did. American cities did not used to be like this, what we have now was created by commercial interests pushing money-spinning development projects (and a splash of racism). People were sold on the American dream of having a big house and space with all the freedom of unfettered travel by car.

Exactly. They are by design, not random happenstance.

[Limey (Ray Ward)]

@MusicMan

See, for example, the conversion of 2 lanes of 11th street into bike lanes. The desired effect from the planners was not so much “add bike lanes” as “slow down traffic that speeds through this area”.

If they made biking a viable alternative - which is a much more workable proposition these days with e-bikes - this makes sense. Just choking off traffic without offering a alternative is just stomping on your own dick with the foot you just shot.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

@HudsonHawk

What every God-fearing Texas soccer mom dreams of.

Soccer moms might like (1) not having to be soccer moms because their kids could get around on their own; and (b) not having their travel time triple because of a sprinkling of rain.

Do you seriously think parents would let their kids “get their on their own”?

[Waldo]

@HudsonHawk

I saw this when I lived in Raleigh. People complained about how bad the traffic was getting, so in response they thought “if we stop building and maintaining roads, people will stop driving”. It was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

The booming metropolis of Temple, TX now has four mainlanes each direction on I-35. Over 30 miles of I-35 through Austin, only about five miles of that (183 to 12th St.) is four lanes each way, and part of that is broken up into the upper/lower decks. Mopac has four lanes each way but one is tolled.

I’m not saying that Austin needs a Katy Freeway but come the fuck on.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

@HudsonHawk

Sometimes being in the minority sucks ass.

That’s why government, eventually, enacts policies to help minorities achieve equality. And, again, this hypothetical situation involves people asking the city to spend less on their neighborhood’s infrastructure.

The vast majority of people aren’t interested in spending less on infrastructure, they’re interested in having a yard and not living around bus stops. I get that bike lanes are cheaper than roads. It’s just not what the overwhelming majority of people want.

[HudsonHawk]

@Limey

@MusicMan

See, for example, the conversion of 2 lanes of 11th street into bike lanes. The desired effect from the planners was not so much “add bike lanes” as “slow down traffic that speeds through this area”.

If they made biking a viable alternative - which is a much more workable proposition these days with e-bikes - this makes sense. Just choking off traffic without offering a alternative is just stomping on your own dick with the foot you just shot.

You know where else has bike lanes? Venezuela.