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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 23:16:06 -0800, The Real Bev
wrote: How many times has this argument been performed? Has anybody ever changed his/her mind or are we all just circle-jerking? Actually, we're really just trying to avoid talking about bicycles. -- Rick Onanian |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:56:38 GMT,
, "Buck" s c h w i n n _ f o r _ s a l e @ h o t m a i l . c o m wrote: "Zoot Katz" wrote in message ... Devoting so much space to the car spreads the city out further and makes car ownership even more necessary and inevitable. As we spend more on roads, bridges and overpasses, we have less to spend on public transit infrastructure to nodes of higher density mixed use developments. There could have been more pumpkin patches in green belts between population nodes instead of strip mall parking lots. Even when we have public transportation in place, people don't want to use it. Look at the failure of the BART system, or the more recent light-rail system in Dallas. This is a situation of media created and pervasively reinforced cultural bias. Cars got popular when the population became hypnotised by television. As a test, count the car ads versus adds for public transit in any prime-time hour of television. Analyse the characterisations of transit riders versus car drivers in any popular TV program that even acknowledges that some people may in fact ride buses. Trying to superimpose a functional light rail system or transit system on an existing urban form that's been shaped by the car will pay dividends when the urban form adapts to the new transportation link. We also know that preserving open space, while necessary, comes at a social cost that many cities were unwilling to pay in times past. It's hard to ignore property owner's rights, especially in the U.S. Forcing an owner to give up the economic value of his inner-city property so it can become a park is a sticky political issue that many aren't willing to tackle. And the city's coffers aren't big enough to provide fair-market value. As it now stands almost every city already owns thirty percent or more of the inner city land. It's under asphalt. Now we can agree on the need for more mixed-use development. There are some market segments that can utilize it. But if you are thinking that we should have scrapped suburbia in favor of only mixed-use development, you are ignoring market needs. On the ownership side, there is a market desire for homes with private yards. Row housing offers the same privacy in ones yard as the typical suburban home. It's the same hedge, chain-link or board fence dividing the plots. Try playing bag-pipes nude in your backyard. On the commercial side, there will always be a market need for high enough traffic voumes (whether by foot, bicycle or auto) to support the businesses, especially in these markets with smaller margins. This is why businesses are concentrated around larger collector roads. Place them on a smaller secondary road and unless they are within a niche market which will seek them out, the business is doomed to fail because the competition is on the main road. Substitute "larger collector roads" for "convenient public transportation" and you don't need huge parking lots to support a business. When the adjacent secondary roads are walkable, they can be full of life too. When the houses are all spread out to make room for streets and driveways, the land requirements are greater, therefore more expensive. Because the building lots and houses are larger to accommodate the cars, they're more expensive too. There may be slightly higher costs in infrastructure and materials, but the land costs at the periphery are so low that you can buy much more home per dollar in suburbia than you can in the inner loop. And then you spend two hours a day getting back and forth to work to pay for the car you must have to live there. Sprawl is subsidised so it appears cheaper than it actually is. It's most expensive and detrimental in the long-term when it paves over farm land. You also ignore the increased costs of building materials and construction complexity when building multi-story housing in an urban area. The only way to offset the increased costs of building and land is to increase density (greater number of living units per lot). Four story frame housing construction is pretty much the same as single story except it requires less material. More than five stories puts people out of touch with what's happening on the ground. Except for monumental buildings that create centres, four stories is generally high enough to support densities worthwhile for local businesses and public transit without having the negative psychological impacts or cost of high-rise living. This results in a living situation that is obviously undesirable to a majority of the population. A bare majority that will become a minority as the world's population continues to urbanise at exponential rates. And if we have to build at higher densities, we cannot include those gardens that our houses are supposed to be designed around! Not with our presently instituted method of plunking down cookie cutter buildings on a suburban grid imaginatively overlayed with some cutesy new designer version of cul-de-sac hell. When the first household expenditure surveys were conducted in 1901, (cycling's heyday) transportation accounted for less than 2 percent of the family budget - now it is 18 percent and rising. With transportation costs eating up a bigger percentage of household budgets, saving for a home becomes increasingly difficult. We can blame much of this on the manufacturer unions and our general greediness in this modern society. Everyone wants to make as much money as possible, Enron was a union shop? and unions can enforce pay rates. This is why a guy who picks up a brake caliper and bolts it onto a car can make $35 an hour. While his wife has to work too so they can afford their pre-packaged version of the "American Dream" the television is selling them. And we wonder why our manufacturing base is leaving the country? It's so executives can earn 450% more than the guy making a measly $35.00 an hour. The utopia that a few people around here envision is not the utopia for everyone. I like cycling and even commuting by bike, but I'm not willing to give up the amenities of suburbia. I think that small-town USA is more like what everyone wants. It's small enough to have few traffic problems, small enough to bike in, small enough to know your neighbors, but needs to be big enough to have a local economy of some measure. I grew up in a town like this. Living in the suburbs of a big city is not quite the same, but is close enough for now. The malls serving sprawl killed the small town main-street. Now the big box stores are killing the malls as sprawl reaches ever further. Check what's happening in Duncanville, TX. Christopher Alexander, who is perhaps even more contemptuous of the disneyland style 'new urbanism' architecture than you or I, has been asked for a proposal to re-make the downtown area. It was his work that has influenced the building forms this generation of 'new urbanist' architects are plopping down on the same old grid. They're merely paying lip-service to the concepts he distilled and codified. He identified features that appeared across all history and all building cultures, features that gave real buildings and cities their quality for fostering life. See if you can get your head around what he's talking about. I laughed when he related that during discussions one of the Duncanville city officials asked if he was a communist. Thinking about all of this does make me wonder about your living situation, Zoot. Does your home share a wall with someone else's? Two and a ceiling. But my neighbours are quieter, smell better and are less likely to kill me than the cars going by my front door. Do you have any kids to think about? Not mine, but yeah, I work toward making this a better place for them to grow up. How much access to open space do you really have? The same as the coyotes that also inhabit this city. But I have a bicycle so I can go anywhere. Check a map of Vancouver. There's a relatively huge amount of open green space when also considering the other available amenities of a world-class city. -- zk |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:39:09 -0500,
, Rick Onanian wrote: Zoot, it sounds to me like you dislike the culture and the legal system, as well as the masses, in your country. That's a lot to dislike and still stay. What's so compelling about it that you stay despite those major issues? Well, at least I don't have to drive thirty miles before finding somebody who doesn't think I'm an asshole. The cops call me 'sir' and I return the courtesy. I just had to pedal 9 km to downtown and found plenty of bike-culture with the Critical Mass folks. We talk and joke with the mayor when he rides. Then there's lots of regular cycling club's rides too, plus the chopper rides, fetish rides, naked rides, raptor raids, holidays, fund-raisers, festivals, parties and just helping out at OCB! Why stay? It's the only English speaking city in the top three worldwide. And it's a nicer climate than other possible contenders in the top ten. Vancouver is developing a transportation infrastructure that, by officially adopted policy, prioritised pedestrian and bicycle amenities, public transit, and the movement of goods ahead of private automobiles. The regional district and outlying towns are adopting plans limiting sprawl. There's constantly work to be done toward that end and it's the citizens' responsibility to create the reality. So what if we're also known as 'la-la-land'. -- zk |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:29:34 -0500,
, Rick Onanian wrote: What do you think would make it illegal for the driver to park on that street? By-law ordinances. On-street parking is prohibitted in many areas outside Dogpatch. Traffic flow, street sweeping and snow removal are some reasons on-street parking is regulated. And here, if the tags or insurance have expired, the car can't be on the street at all - not even parked. All the residents without cars should be allowed to park their sofas on their streets and let's see how drivers would like that. -- zk |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
Zoot Katz wrote:
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:29:34 -0500, , Rick Onanian wrote: What do you think would make it illegal for the driver to park on that street? By-law ordinances. On-street parking is prohibitted in many areas outside Dogpatch. Traffic flow, street sweeping and snow removal are some reasons on-street parking is regulated. And here, if the tags or insurance have expired, the car can't be on the street at all - not even parked. All the residents without cars should be allowed to park their sofas on their streets and let's see how drivers would like that. I saw a van for sale for $500 a couple of weeks ago. I thought briefly about buying it solely for use as a low-cost storage space, but then I figured it would be a real pain to move it twice a week for street cleaning, plus it might have been tempting to drive it somewhere, so I decided against it. -- Steven O'Neill www.bridgetolls.org |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:57:36 -0600, Kevan Smith
wrote: Because cars are the bigger and worse offenders on public roads. As cyclists, we see the carnage cars produce every day in the form of road kill. The only real difference between animal road kill and humans is we clean up human bodies. Aw, geez, Smith, now you're gonna get an "equal rights for animals" thread started... -- I accidentally reversed the polarity on my cable modem. With a single click of my mouse, I just enlarged my mortgage and refinanced my penis. |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
David Kerber wrote:
Where do you live that you get your streets cleaned twice a week!!!??? Around here, it's normally twice a year if we're lucky! Brooklyn, NY. That's just the side streets. I live on 7th Avenue, which has meters and is cleaned every day but Sunday (in theory). The sidewalks, however, are another story. -- Steven O'Neill www.bridgetolls.org |
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)
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Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsibleidiot parents refuse to pay)
Rick Onanian wrote:
I know that my Pontiac Grand Am v6 was only listed for 1000 pounds -- wtf can I tow with that? Sorry, a utility trailer weighs most of the capacity of a compact car's towing ability (the 4 cylinder version, btw, is not rated to tow _anything_). Sorry, a utility trailer can be very light. The one I built weighs roughly 300 pounds and has a tongue weight of just a few pounds, yet it's carried many hundreds of pounds of rocks, soil, etc. It's been a big help with at least three moving projects. And my other post mentions towing a camping trailer coast to coast with a Honda Civic. I understand that everybody who buys a pickup just knows they'll need to haul two tons of stuff weekly. But in _real_ life, a light duty trailer is a perfectly workable solution to almost all hauling needs. It's just that it doesn't occur to most people. It's not trendy enough. -- Frank Krygowski |
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