Should SUV Driving amount to Drunk Driving?

"smn" wrote in message
news:lId8j.4678$ox1.1584@pd7urf3no...

.. Cyclists are doing you a favor
but are grossly unloved.

Right. By slowing a whole road down to 10 mph, they are doing no one a
favor. You are causing huge amounts of congestion.

"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
news:Aaf8j.3252$CJ.2575@trndny02...
Pat wrote:
On Dec 13, 10:52 am, wrote:

On Dec 13, 9:36 am, Pat wrote:


On Dec 12, 11:46 pm, wrote:

Oh, and another comment to a couple of you. I think it's somewhat
arrogant and mis-informed to think that all (or even many) of the
people who live in rural areas do so because they've "inherited the
family farm". You might find it hard to believe, but we have doctors
and lawyers and Indian Chiefs around here.

You misunderstood. Those who actually did inherit the family farm are
OK. They get my sympathy - in part, because they have to put up with
pampered ex-suburbanites adding to their traffic, complaining about
their agricultural smells, ruining their views, driving up their land
prices and taxes. In fact, they get my respect for having a less
greedy lifestyle.

The "Daniel Boone with an SUV and McMansion" pretenders are another
matter entirely. They move out to get away from the other SUVs and
McMansions. But of course, they bring their own with them. Why,
they're _special_, you see. Just ask them!


Farmers are a interesting lot. They despise social programs and want
lower taxes but also demand HUGE subsidies -- including subsidies for
not doing anything at all. Then they complain how poor they are while
arguing for reduced capital gains to protect their huge net worths.

I'm not certain most family farmers are that well off.
The fact that there are fewer and fewer of them probably
says their "huge net worths" aren't perhaps so huge.

Around here, it's tough for a farmer to stay farming. The
value of his land is potentially huge, but making a living
from farming doesn't pay the bills. So he sells off a chunk
of the cornfield for a few houses (*big* houses around here
these days), and farms a while longer. The kids don't want
to farm because, it seems they don't get paid enough for doing
nothing, so eventually, a developer ends up with the farm and
a bunch more big houses with attendant traffic and services
and shopping malls and fast food and suddenly, it ain't quite
so rural any more.

Even the corporate farms don't take the risks of farming on
to themselves. They more likely lease the lands from a family
farmer and pay him if the crop comes in, and don't pay him if
it doesn't. All the risks stay away from the corporation and
remain centered on a private farmer.


SMH

Farmers are land-poor. If they are lucky enough to sell to a suburban
development, they can retire. Otherwise, they are stuck.

"George Conklin" writes:

"smn" wrote in message
news:lId8j.4678$ox1.1584@pd7urf3no...

. Cyclists are doing you a favor
but are grossly unloved.

Right. By slowing a whole road down to 10 mph, they are doing no one a
favor. You are causing huge amounts of congestion.

Would you rather have a car in front of you or a bicycle in front of you
as you approach a hard-to-find free parking space?

We have lots of bicyclists in the town I live in and if anything they
reduce congestion. If Conklin has so much trouble passing a bicycle
safely, I suggest he do everyone a favor (bicylists and drivers alike)
and not drive at all.

In crowded areas, most of the delay in passing a bicycle is usually at
intersections where the road narrows to sqeeze in a turn lane, so a
driver will typically lose at most a few seconds in getting to the
queue of cars lined up at the next light, with no discernible impact
on overall trip time. Meanwhile, with one less car on the road,
there's one more available parking slot.

Finally, before the turned Route 237 into a freeway near Sunnyvale and
Milpitas, bicyclists could use it, mostly riding on the shoulders. If
drivers had any complaints, it was the embarassment of crawling along
at 2 to 3 mph while the bicycles were going at 10 to 20 mph.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

donquijote1954 WHO? wrote:
On Dec 12, 9:01 pm, Tom Sherman
wrote:

True. What many women really want is a provider for their children.

Not only that, women want their children not to be orphan. And with a
father that rides bike in traffic, there's a high likelihood that
they'll be in need of welfare. And Bush just denied healthcare to them.

Learn something about statistics. This slaughter of cyclists only exists
in your imagination.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"Localized intense suction such as tornadoes is created when temperature
differences are high enough between meeting air masses, and can impart
excessive energy onto a cyclist." - Randy Schlitter

donquijote1954 WHO? wrote:
On Dec 12, 9:13 pm, Tom Sherman
wrote:
Jack May wrote:
"donquijote1954" wrote in message
...
On Dec 11, 12:59 pm, "Jack May" wrote:
Having options is the brain dead cliché used by people that don't
understand
that funds are limited and options are often far more expensive than main
stream transportation. Options usually carry far too few people to be of
any real value.-
What's the cost of bike lanes? Or could it be that you are afraid of
the competition?
For example a bike path bridge over a major road or freeway is over $3M.
Bike paths are a fairly high percentage of transportation spending in the SF
Bay Area.
Bike use is down in the noise for commuting to and from work. It is not
real competition to anything. That is the problem with transportation
advocates. They seldom understand the tradeoff of money and usefulness.
Only because oil is subsidized well below its true cost. Put a fuel tax
in place to pay for the portion of the US military budget that goes to
controlling foreign hydrocarbon reserves, for illness caused by burning
oil based fuels for transit, for injuries caused by motorized transit,
and to compensate for the environmental degradation caused by motorized
transit infrastructure, and the smugness of the cagers would disappear.

Talk about a welfare state - the US has welfare at the pump!

And nothing indicates that that will change in the near future. It
would take a world war... or two.

If the US bombs Iran in an aggressive act of violence, we may well get
that world war.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"Localized intense suction such as tornadoes is created when temperature
differences are high enough between meeting air masses, and can impart
excessive energy onto a cyclist." - Randy Schlitter

George Conklin wrote:

Farmers are land-poor. If they are lucky enough to sell to a suburban
development, they can retire. Otherwise, they are stuck.

Quite the contrary. Farmers are land "rich". They've got
large acreage. They're farming it for a living and can't
do that with just a house lot size chunk of land.

The question is the value of the property. Due to spreading
suburbs, farm land has far more value as residential or
commercial property than it does as agricultural use.

This is one reason why Massachusetts has special programs
that allow farmers to put their lands in agricultural trusts
that preclude development, while giving them a bit of relief
from taxes.

If you're out in Iowa where everyone around you is farming,
then your land will more likely be bought from you by another
farmer doing a bit better a job of farming than you.


SMH

"Bill Z." wrote in message
...
"George Conklin" writes:

"smn" wrote in message
news:lId8j.4678$ox1.1584@pd7urf3no...

. Cyclists are doing you a favor
but are grossly unloved.

Right. By slowing a whole road down to 10 mph, they are doing no
one a
favor. You are causing huge amounts of congestion.

Would you rather have a car in front of you or a bicycle in front of you
as you approach a hard-to-find free parking space?

You will never get there if the bicycle crowd has its way.

"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
news:gHu8j.8032$1p.7091@trndny01...
George Conklin wrote:

Farmers are land-poor. If they are lucky enough to sell to a suburban
development, they can retire. Otherwise, they are stuck.

Quite the contrary. Farmers are land "rich". They've got
large acreage. They're farming it for a living and can't
do that with just a house lot size chunk of land.

Nonsense. If they sell the land, they are out of business. The have a
hard time making any useful cash on most of the land they own. They are land
poor.

George Conklin wrote:
"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
news:gHu8j.8032$1p.7091@trndny01...

George Conklin wrote:


Farmers are land-poor. If they are lucky enough to sell to a suburban
development, they can retire. Otherwise, they are stuck.

Quite the contrary. Farmers are land "rich". They've got
large acreage. They're farming it for a living and can't
do that with just a house lot size chunk of land.


Nonsense. If they sell the land, they are out of business. The have a
hard time making any useful cash on most of the land they own. They are land
poor.

Differing semantics I think.

Land "rich" meaning they have lots of land. Farms require that.

The money the land is worth depends on where they are. Farms
near cities get turned into suburbs at great profit to the individual
owning the land.

Farms amongst other farms, get the land bought (farmer out of business
or with enough cash to continue on a bit longer) or leased.


SMH

Pat wrote:

The whole "land trust" idea is pretty bad, if you ask me. It takes
farming from being an economic enterprise and makes it into a museum.
If the farm is small and economically obsolete, then it should go out
of business just like any other business. You don't put Ford or GM or
Microsoft into land trusts.

Think how different any major city would be: NY, LA, Chicago, Boston,
Houston or Miami if 100 years ago they had put small farms into land
trusts. Would you really want 4, 15-acre farms spread around
Manhattan. If anything, it contributes to sprawl because development
will happen, and if the farm is in the way it will just get pushed
that much farther into the undeveloped areas to compensate for it. Or
more likely, you'll get people moving to houses on big lots right
around the farm because of the open land, and you'll have to
compensate for those too.

Plus, now you have all of that vacant land you need to drive past,
which creates more and more pollution and encourages people to own
cars.

If you want to avoid/stop sprawl, take farms like that and zone them
multi-family, high desity and let the market do its job. Otherwise,
you're just encouraging sprawl.

I'm generally in favor of letting the market decide. For example
let the price of oil rise to the point that alternative energies
become viable on their own merit, rather than some system of regulation.
The market will come up with the right answer eventually.

However there are some things the market just doesn't do well, because
"costs" are not easily defined.

Pollution is an example. The market says dump your industrial wastes
into the nearby river. Unless one can better define economic reasons
for not doing this, dumping is the "right" market decision.

Preserving open land is another such example IMHO. It's a quality of
life issue that is difficult for the market to assess. Private, family
farms along with open land is of value in "quality of life" assessments.
The market knows or cares nothing about such assessment.

One needs to sometimes counter what the market would decide because,
at least in the short run, the market would make a bad decision.


SMH