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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup
Contributed by Fred Camino on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:29 am
- Valley residents to Metro: We Imagine a future without growth.
- Peter Gordon vs. Bart Reed: Blah blah blah, city planning, blah blah blah, congestion pricing, blah blah blah, sprawl, blah blah blah.
- Gold Line to Montclair bill working its way through Washington.
- Yet another article about the unfairness of congestion pricing. Yawn.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
How unfortunate that the congestion pricing advocate had this to say:
All hail the car! I find this particularly annoying because Gordon jumps to the conclusion that car=freedom. As Fred has pointed out, cars don’t simply grant you freedom, they also shackle you with liability. In densely populated areas, this liability becomes greater, and more and more people will not want to deal with it.
This debate would have been much better if they had tapped Pete McFerrin instead of the narrow-minded Gordon.
Auto ownership around the world would rise much more slowly if the congestion externality were priced. Since drivers only perceive their average social cost, not their marginal social cost, the motor vehicle purchasing decision is distorted in favor of “yes.” This is pretty much a moot point for all but the poorest people in the developed world, but for the average car buyer in India or China a doubling of operating costs might well push them into the “no” column. (Let’s not even get into those countries’ outright subsidy of motor fuels.)
That said, having a motor vehicle does offer massive increases in mobility, which is why even residents of cities with superb transit systems often have scooters (gas or electric), motorcycles, or cars. If I lived in New York or Chicago I would still keep my car; I just wouldn’t use it to commute into Manhattan or the Loop. My brother’s commute is a two-minute walk to a CTA station and a ten-minute ride on the Blue Line, but he still keeps his Subaru.
You know what the best part of the anti-congestion pricing movement in LA is? They all just repeat one of the following three arguments.
1) Think of the poor!
2) Think of the carpoolers (who may not even be charged anything depending how it’s set up)
3) They’re called FREEways for a reason.
I tried taking a shot at them this week at Em.City. You all will have my back if they start beating me up, right?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/05/heated-anti-hot.html
Interesting you should mention this; motorcycles and scooters seem to be neglected as urban transit in the U.S. In Paris, many motorcycles are equipped with windshields and sound systems, and “2 wheel” parking is offered on nearly every block. In New York, scooters seem less prevalent, whereas this
happens much more frequently. Closer to home, a motorcycle can avoid congestion by lanesplitting, but motorcycle usage is generally frowned upon. I personally have been advised never to get my motorcycle license by numerous (female) friends, and motorcycles - despite being just as personal and just as motorized as cars - just aren’t an acceptable way to get around here. Fred, in his letter to the Metro Imagine campaign said:
I think that this is a great list, but motorcycles and scooters should also be considered. I’d put them between transit and ride share.
My main issue with motorcycles is the safety issue. You’re wide open like a bicycle but at automobile speeds.
When I went to Tokyo, my friend had a family friend who was Japanese and he was able to show us the whole city. He was a rich guy, works for video games, nice place, travels a lot, etc. He does not own a car, but he does own a very nice scooter [an expensive one at that]. He takes public transportation everywhere, but when he knows that he is going to be out all night and doesn’t want to catcha taxi, he drives his scooter. Way better than owning a car.
Peter Gordon is so damned annoying. I swear, the LA Times lets him post twenty articles on transportation a year, and every one of them is a libertarian rant with no real solutions.
If you read his articles, you get the impression that all we need to do to fix every problem in Los Angeles is sit back and do nothing and the market will magically fix things. He talks about subways as if they’re supposed to be purely profit oriented businesses, and he says things like “X city has a subway and they still have traffic.” Yeah, they still have traffic. There’ll always be traffic, but X city has alternatives and its citizens are probably happier.
“When I went to Tokyo, my friend had a family friend who was Japanese and he was able to show us the whole city. He was a rich guy, works for video games, nice place, travels a lot, etc. He does not own a car, but he does own a very nice scooter [an expensive one at that]. He takes public transportation everywhere”
A rich guy taking public transit on a regular basis?! WHA WHA WHAAAAAT?!
Yeah, that’ll never happen in LA unless it’s the mayor and there’s a photographer following him.
Simon, thank you for saying that. I officially hate Peter Gordon. Once anyone starts talking about the “housing stock” like it’s a bushel of wheat in the field is out of touch with the true costs associated with real estate development (true costs for society, not for developers or homeowners).
Peter Gordon is one in a long chain of transportation know-nothings - people who spend their time selectively spouting bullshit in the service of making consumer culture and cars seem like the bedrock of American civilization.
Here’s the goddamn fact. CAR CULTURE IS NOT FREE MARKET. Nor is sprawl or anything else these so called libertarians promote. If the car culture was free market we wouldn’t have the U.S. Interstate System we’d have the Ford Interstate System. But guess what, Ford didn’t want to pay for the auto-roads for his cars to drive on. He knew he couldn’t make a profit doing that.
The single-use zoning LAWS and minimum parking REGULATIONS that create and sustain sprawl are an example of a FREE MARKET? Give me a FUCKING break.
The fact is, there are some private roads in the United States that are profitable… they are called the RAILROADS.
Peter Gordon is indeed a piece of work. I attended a transit seminar with him when Orange County was flirting with the CenterLine. By his own admission, his model for the best of all possible cities is an exploding agglomeration dependant entirely on the personal automobile, in which all healthy economic activity takes place out in the periphery while the inner core is left to do…what? When pressed on the point, Mr. Gordon struck a thoughtful pose. “Well,” he said finally, “I believe in helping people, not places.” Flabbergasting.