Build it and they won't come

[Frank Krygowski]

Build it and they will come? Sorry, no.

Here's a new article dispelling the myth that segregated facilities
generate tremendous bike mode share.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage?

Unless motoring is actively dissuaded, almost all people who have cars
will drive cars.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B.]

One might speculate on how many of the posters here, who are gainfully
employed, do not own a car, do not use public transportation, and rely
solely on a bicycle for transportation?
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Joy Beeson]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 09:32:50 +0700, John B. <sloc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> One might speculate on how many of the posters here, who are gainfully
> employed, do not own a car, do not use public transportation, and rely
> solely on a bicycle for transportation?

I'm giving serious thought to joining the "drive someplace to ride a
bike" crowd.

Driving my own vehicle a long distance on a straight road is right out
because of the rotator cuff -- oh, rats, I rode right by the KABS
office *twice* today, and didn't think of stopping in to ask whether I
could take my bike with me on the "bus".

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

[Tim McNamara]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 21:47:25 -0400, Frank Krygowski
<frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I remember seeing period BBC footage about this, describing the
innovations in place at the time. Now, maybe it's what you're used to;
I grew up in a very bikeable suburb of Chicago and all us kids just got
around on bikes. So I looked at infrastructure like this and was
puzzled as to why.

Apparently I wasn't alone.

In the Minneapolis-St Paul area we have been building out both
on-street and separated bike facilities. While I find much of the
design of the on-street facilities to be objectionable and even
downright stupid, there has been a noticeable increase in bike riding.
Most of them are young uns and are not wearing the pseudo-pro clown
suits (I'm still wearing mine, although I've reached an age and a body
composition where that's probably ill-advised). The separated
facilities- which are pretty extensive- get a whole lot of use; the
on-street facilities seem to get a lot of use too although not quite as
much.

But this doesn't seem to work everywhere. Denmark made it work by
taxing cars at an astonishing rate- owning a car is an economic
hardship for many if not most Danes due to the tax structure- and
pairing that with extensive on-street bike facilities. There would be
no way to accomplish something like that in the US, where owning a car
and having cheap fuel is effectively part of the Bill of Rights.

[Tim McNamara]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 09:32:50 +0700, John B <sloc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One might speculate on how many of the posters here, who are
> gainfully employed, do not own a car, do not use public
> transportation, and rely solely on a bicycle for transportation?

LOL. My two person household owns three cars, eight bikes. My wife
walks to work practically every day (3 miles each way) and takes the
bus if she doesn't walk. She probably drives to work less than 5 times
a year and that is for a specific reason like having to leave from work
to do something for which the bus, riding or walking is impractical. I
ride to work or walk to work about 25% of the time (I work in two
locations a day- the closest are less than a mile from home and the
farthest are 30 miles from home; several are within feasible riding
distance from home and from each other so I *could* ride to work more
than I do).

[James]

This is a hot topic in Australia at the moment. The largest
recreational bicycling organisation (Bicycle Network), is conducting a
review of their helmet policy which currently is in support of mandatory
helmet laws.

The helmet law supporting researchers (Jake Olivier, Raphael Grzebieta,
Soufiane Boufous, Rebecca Ivers, Royal Australian College of Surgeons,
etc.), are all trying to "move on" from discussing helmet laws, spouting
the need for protected biking infrastructure. They know the health
benefits of cycling, but reject the evidence that the helmet law stops
many people from cycling. They think that by building infrastructure
that somehow cycling will blossom regardless.

Fools.

--
JS

[John B.]

Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it
did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today
a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the
first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[John B.]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:27:18 +1000, James <james.e...@gmail.com>
wrote:

(big smile) When we were working at the Freeport copper mine we staged
through Darwin and a bloke I worked with had to spend a week in Darwin
as the crew change airplane broke or something. Anyway he rented a
mini moke and met a Sheila (in a pub I guess) and the next day they
are motoring around Darwin (pre hurricane) and he sees a sign Alice
Springs -> and Says "Hey! Want to go to Alice Springs" and the Sheila
says O.K. and off they go. An hour later he hasn't seen anything but
bush and says "how far is this Alice Springs?". They turn around and
go back to Darwin :-)

Now... if there had only been a bike path...

--
Cheers,

John B.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

That's hardly an example now is it? It's ALWAYS raining in England and people will always opt for comfort over convenience. I will only on very seldom occasions go to San Francisco by car because it's such a pain in the ass. But if it's raining there's no way I'm riding a bike.

[Tim McNamara]

Holy crap! That's what my house cost in 1993.

[Tim McNamara]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:27:18 +1000, James <james.e...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>

> The helmet law supporting researchers (Jake Olivier, Raphael
> Grzebieta, Soufiane Boufous, Rebecca Ivers, Royal Australian College
> of Surgeons, etc.), are all trying to "move on" from discussing helmet
> laws, spouting the need for protected biking infrastructure. They
> know the health benefits of cycling, but reject the evidence that the
> helmet law stops many people from cycling. They think that by
> building infrastructure that somehow cycling will blossom regardless.

Well, that actually has worked here where I live. The numbers of people
using bikes as transportation rather than recreation has doubled or
trebled (although is still only 1-2% of trips at best). A few years
back when gas nearly hit $5 per gallon bumped up the numbers of folks on
bikes and it seems like many of them kept riding.

For the public cost in terms of building out cycling infrastructure, I
think the return on investment has been paltry. We've spent hundreds of
millions of dollars to gain a few thousand cyclists. Perhaps the number
of riders replacing drives with rides will grow more over time; the
millenials in particular seem more likely to ride, but my guess is that
as they get older, have kids, buy houses, etc., the bikes will end up
gathering dust. By comparison, the ridership performnce of the light
rail facilities we've built out have been surpassing expectations
handily, despite the conservative ire about "social engineering" via
transit (I find it interesting that *increasing* the citizen's options
for getting around is "social engineering" to some).

Around here I think one of the real purposes of bike infrastrcture is
really just to get them out of the way of cars- driving is still the
real focus of transportation policy.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Looking it up I discovered an interesting statistic: England has something like 10,000 cold related deaths every year. So do you really think that bicycle facilities would increase cycling?

[jbeattie]

It was raining this morning (and yesterday, and the day before and the day before that), and it looked like ridership dipped a bit. Nonetheless, I had to dodge a bunch of bicyclists this morning. I got a late start to work and beat traffic by probably ten minutes on my five mile commute. It was also cold, but it's going to warm up again and dry out for a while until fall hits for real. Then its piles of sludge-leaves and then ice and then probably snow this year. We've already got snow on Mt. Hood, which is pretty weird. Time to wax the skis.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B. <sloc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it
>did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today
>a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the
>first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem.

Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
<https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore&tracking=getDispatchComparison>
A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A.
Gasoline is 92% more expensive.

Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles:
<https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen&tracking=getDispatchComparison>
A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A.
Gasoline is on 110% more expensive.

Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
<https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore>
Bicycle as the main means of transportation:
L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35%

From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that
L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their
rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities.

To be uncharacteristically fair, this web site partly uses crowd
source input for data, which makes me suspect that the numbers have
been tweaked. Even if wrong, they're still interesting.

I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such
dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby
carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts,
electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is
using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to
not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to
nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are
undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might
discourage its use.

Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt. I did
that once when I passed judgment on personal music players. At the
time, the only example was the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP 300 digital
media player. I bought one and it stunk in every possible way. So, I
declared the idea to be worthless, only to have the iPod appear 2-3
years later, which demonstrated conclusively that it was a good idea
and that my evaluation stunk as badly as the Diamond Rio.
<https://maas.museum/event/interface/object/rio-pmp-300-digital-media-player/index.html>
The moral is that innovators have to get everything right or the idea
won't work. Like the media player, the bike paths are part of a
system. Something is fundamentally wrong with some part of the system
at Stevenage. However, from here, I can't tell what it might be.

--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[jbeattie]

The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine the effect of additional infrastructure. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/545858

-- Jay Beattie.

[James]

Yes, some people will begin to ride if subjective safety concerns are
addressed, but if they continue to build more and bigger roads in a bid
to reduce congestion, that only breeds more car use and the congestion
returns - if it was ever diminished.

The problem is that many advocates are focused on fixing one cause for
lack lustre bicycling mode share. Usually the argument is that
infrastructure is the key. Where in reality there is a whole raft of
changes that need to be made, and one without the rest really doesn't
help significantly.

It's like having advanced stopping lines for cyclists (bike box at a
road junction) without a separate green light phase for cyclists.

The intent of the bike box is to get cyclists ahead of traffic so they
can clear the intersection safely. Without the separate green phase
they just piss the drivers off more as they all race from the lights at
the same time.

--
JS

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:52:55 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
<jbeat...@msn.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 12:35:36 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

(Rant, rave, mumble, speculate, etc...)

>The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other
>flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the
>influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the
>later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked
>like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine
>the effect of additional infrastructure.
>https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/545858
>-- Jay Beattie.

Nice tangled mess of statistics. In order to preserve my sanity, I'll
refrain from tying to correlate that report with whatever might he
happening in Stevenage UK.

Maybe a back of the envelope sanity check might help.

Stevenage seems to have 13 bicycle shops:
<http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bike-shops/>
of which only 4 offer repairs:
<http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bicycle-repairs/>
For a town of 84,000 population, that's one shop for every 6,500
residents.

For a population of 84,000, how many bicycles per year could these
bicycle shops expect to sell? For all of England:
<http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics>
<http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics#How%20many%20cycles%20are%20sold%20in%20Great%20Britain?>
Not counting e-bikes, that is 3.5 million bicycles sold per year for a
population of 53 million. So, everyone gets a new bicycle every 15
years. Either UK bicycles have a very short half life, a few people
buy hundreds of bicycles, or everyone owns more than one bicycle.
Assuming the same rate of replacement for Stevenage, 1/15th of the
population will be buying a new bicycle every year or:
84,000 / 15 = 5,600 bicycles
sold each year in Stevenage. However, there are 13 bicycle shops,
each of which will sell:
5,600 / 13 = 430 bicycles/year
or
430 / 12 = 36 bicycles/month
Not very good but possibly survivable for a small shop, especially if
they are expensive machines.

So, with 430 new bicycles being added to the Stevenage ridership every
year, where do these bicycles go? I find it difficult to believe that
the trails are empty when there 1.2 new bicycles added to the
ridership every day. Do they only ride at night when nobody will
notice? Or are the bicycles stolen immediately after they're sold?
Or, perhaps something is wrong with the original story?

[Duane]

Bike paths in Montreal are pretty busy. Hard to say if those people would
not be riding on the roads if the paths didn't exist but cycling numbers
are increasing here so the implication is there.

For club rides we head out of town toward eastern Ontario where the roads
are better and there's not much auto traffic.

--
duane

[AMuzi]

First off, I don't know.
But another factor is that even within a city there are
neighborhoods with virtually zero new bike sales and others
with very heavy purchases year after year.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[John B.]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 12:35:36 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B. <sloc...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it
>>did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today
>>a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the
>>first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem.
>
>Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
><https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore&tracking=getDispatchComparison>
>A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A.
>Gasoline is 92% more expensive.
>
>Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles:
><https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen&tracking=getDispatchComparison>
>A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A.
>Gasoline is on 110% more expensive.
>
>Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
><https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore>
>Bicycle as the main means of transportation:
> L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35%
>
>From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that
>L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their
>rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities.
>

You apparently missed the part where it said that:
Bus/Trolleybus (LA) 2.90% (SNG)29.41%
and:
Train/Metro (LA)1.45% (SNG)28.24%

Or to put it another way, 57.65% of Singapore commuters use public
transportation.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/21/2017 3:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>
> I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such
> dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby
> carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts,
> electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is
> using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to
> not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to
> nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are
> undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might
> discourage its use.

It's incorrect to say that in every other town, the paths would be
heavily used. Stevenage is not the only "new town" that was built in
Britain with designed-in bike facilities. Milton Keynes is similar, with
similar failure of bike mode share. There are others as well.

> Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt.

Again, this wasn't the only attempt in Britain or elsewhere. And on a
smaller scale, one can look at lesser networks of bike lanes or bike
paths in many other towns and see very little use. One town I visit at
least weekly has bike lanes on at least three of the four main highways
approaching the town. (They are two-lane highways.) I've driven there
regularly for probably 8 years. In all those years, I've seen a total of
perhaps 15 cyclists on those bike lanes.

I think that in those U.S. cities where cycling mode share is a bit more
than 2%, the main factor is simply fashion. The city itself, for
whatever reason, attracts a population tuned to trendiness, and
bicycling somehow becomes a fashionable trend. (Remember that San
Francisco had a big surge in bike mode share during a time when a
lawsuit prevented installation of ANY bike facilities.)

In other places (like Amsterdam and Copenhagen) bike mode share is
helped by a cluster of other influences: flat terrain, mild climate,
short travel distances, etc. coupled with a history of utility biking.
And to further boost bike share (as well as transit share) the
government takes a critical step: they dissuade motoring.

If you don't dissuade motoring, people will buy cars, and people who buy
cars will drive them.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 18:57:12 -0500, AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

>But another factor is that even within a city there are
>neighborhoods with virtually zero new bike sales and others
>with very heavy purchases year after year.

Sure, but I think I can make a fairly simple assumption. 13 bicycle
dealers in a town of 85,000 is going to take some level of sales to
keep them in business. The sales are not going to be uniform in both
number of bicycles or gross revenue. I don't know exactly what those
numbers might be, but with 13 stores, it must be substantial enough to
fill the local infrastructure with bicycles, and not produce a ghost
town devoid of bicycles. People ride those bicycles somewhere. If
not the dedicated cycleways, then where do they ride?

The Stevenage bicycle paths were built in the late 1970's making them
about 37 years old.
<https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage>
<http://www.stevenage.gov.uk/52710/>
<http://www.stevenage.gov.uk/content/15953/16118/33198/Stevenage-Cycling-Map-with-Key.pdf>
However, there are older dedicated bicycle paths in UK such as those
built in the 1930's:
"A 5-minute journey on a kerb-protected British cycleway ... built in
1937"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIGM6yVVrkg> (4:53)
So maybe the problem is not unique to Stevenage?

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 07:26:07 +0700, John B. <sloc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>>Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
>><https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore>
>>Bicycle as the main means of transportation:
>> L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35%
>>
>>From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that
>>L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their
>>rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities.

>You apparently missed the part where it said that:
>Bus/Trolleybus (LA) 2.90% (SNG)29.41%
>and:
>Train/Metro (LA)1.45% (SNG)28.24%
>
>Or to put it another way, 57.65% of Singapore commuters use public
>transportation.

Sure. L.A. is a disaster from the standpoint of public transit. I
used to live there. It's also much larger than Singapore making a car
a necessity.

Under the same "Main Means of Transportation" heading:
Car (LA) 79.71% (SNG) 17.65%
I'm not sure what "main" really means. Is it the sole means of
transport meaning that one does not own an automobile or bicycle? Or
is it just which means of transport used most often or for the longest
distance? I couldn't find a definition on the web site.

[John B.]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 20:33:12 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 07:26:07 +0700, John B. <sloc...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>>Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles:
>>><https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore>
>>>Bicycle as the main means of transportation:
>>> L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35%
>>>
>>>From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that
>>>L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their
>>>rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities.
>
>>You apparently missed the part where it said that:
>>Bus/Trolleybus (LA) 2.90% (SNG)29.41%
>>and:
>>Train/Metro (LA)1.45% (SNG)28.24%
>>
>>Or to put it another way, 57.65% of Singapore commuters use public
>>transportation.
>
>Sure. L.A. is a disaster from the standpoint of public transit. I
>used to live there. It's also much larger than Singapore making a car
>a necessity.

Way back in the very late 1960's and very early 1970's I lived in
Riverside and I remember that L.A. in at least two elections proposed
a bond issue to fund a proper public transportation system... which
the voters turned down twice.

After all, it would have resulted in an increase in taxes to redeem
the bonds and to pay the interest.

>
>Under the same "Main Means of Transportation" heading:
> Car (LA) 79.71% (SNG) 17.65%
>I'm not sure what "main" really means. Is it the sole means of
>transport meaning that one does not own an automobile or bicycle? Or
>is it just which means of transport used most often or for the longest
>distance? I couldn't find a definition on the web site.

Having lived in Singapore for a number of years I can assure you that
the bulk of the population goes to work by public transportation which
in Singapore is comprised of bus routes and a subway (SMRT) system
that allows travel over the entire island. In addition there are very
large numbers of taxi's.

Additionally there is essentially no parking on the streets in the
business districts and parking lots are monitored by the police and
failure to pay the parking fee... in the range of $1.00 an hour is
rather severely dwelt with, a $50 fine for first offense.


--
Cheers,

John B.

[AMuzi]

Singapore wouldn't know an authoritarian regime if it bit
them in the ass:

http://theexpiredmeter.com/2008/09/parking-ticket-101-welcome-to-chicago-a-beginners-guide-to-driving-in-chicago/

[John B.]

I think that "city sticker" is a great idea. How about a "bicycle
sticker" to defray the cost of building these bicycle lanes I read
about.

--
Cheers,

John B.

[David Scheidt]

AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

:http://theexpiredmeter.com/2008/09/parking-ticket-101-welcome-to-chicago-a-beginners-guide-to-driving-in-chicago/


That's horribly out of date. All of the fines and fees have gone up,
but the restrictions on parking non-commerical trucks on residential
streets is gone.



--
sig 106

[AMuzi]

Thanks for that. I know a little about this from customers
and relatives in The City That Doesn't Work but that link
was all I could find in a quick search.

[Frank Krygowski]

OK, let's talk about parking on streets.

So when society builds a street, isn't it generally intended for the
movement of people and goods? So how is it that someone gets to store
their personal property on it for free?

And if that somehow makes sense, why is that permission limited only to
motor vehicles? If (say) a person moves out of one apartment but has to
wait a month before moving into his next apartment, why isn't he allowed
to store all his furniture in a "parking place"?

--
- Frank Krygowski

[David Scheidt]

AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

:On 9/24/2017 8:48 AM, David Scheidt wrote:
:> AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
:>
:> :http://theexpiredmeter.com/2008/09/parking-ticket-101-welcome-to-chicago-a-beginners-guide-to-driving-in-chicago/
:>
:>
:> That's horribly out of date. All of the fines and fees have gone up,
:> but the restrictions on parking non-commerical trucks on residential
:> streets is gone.
:>
:>
:>

:Thanks for that. I know a little about this from customers
:and relatives in The City That Doesn't Work but that link
:was all I could find in a quick search.

In my experience, most people parking illegally have made an economic
decision that the risk of getting caught is small enough that it's
cheaper to take it than to pay for legal parking. And given that I
could write 20 parking tickets on my ride to work, every day, they're
probably right.



--
sig 86

[Tim McNamara]

On Sun, 24 Sep 2017 12:49:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
<frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> So when society builds a street, isn't it generally intended for the
> movement of people and goods? So how is it that someone gets to store
> their personal property on it for free?

Ah, you'd love St. Paul MN. The City Council and mayor absolutely hate
the taxpaying citizens parking their cars on the streets. Especially in
neighborhoods where employers and apartment buildings don't have off
street parking sufficient for every vehicle owned by employees or
tenants. They looooove ticketing those folks for various reasons, like
their car isn't pretty enough. Of course, they have no intention of
telling landlords and employers that they have to provide sufficient
off-street parking. That would eat into the revenue stream. One of our
city councilmen even publicly stated that people have no right to expect
to park in front of or near their homes, nor ostensibly even on the same
block, or even in the same city. Of course, if you park in your
driveway and your car is visible from off your property, that's against
an ordinance as well.

BTW, St. Paul's city council and mayor also pride themselves for the
city being allegedly named "the most livable city in America" or some
such bullshit. In the mean time, hate crimes and violence have ticked
up dramatically this year- but local governments are rightfully more
concerned on what color people paint their houses... after all, that's
what really counts. Not crumbling public infrastructure, rising
property and violent crimes, the complete failure of the city to enforce
even basic sanitation practices in restaurants, students acting out with
no consequences to the point of assault, etc.

I really need to get a cabin built on my property up north and get the
hell out of town the moment I retire.

[Frank Krygowski]

On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 10:54:43 PM UTC-4, Tim McNamara wrote:

Crumbling public infrastructure is a problem. Basic sanitation is important.
Some students' behavior is out of control.

But I still think it's weird that people are allowed to store their vehicles
in public rights-of-way for free. I doubt I'd be able to do that with either
of the two trailers I own.

The redneck family on our street has three drivers and four vehicles, last time
I counted. But the police have apparently told them they couldn't park on the
street, so the extra pickup truck lives on their front lawn. (I may be out
of date on the vehicle count; I try hard to pretend those guys don't live
there.)

- Frank Krygowski

[sms]

On 9/24/2017 7:54 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Sep 2017 12:49:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> So when society builds a street, isn't it generally intended for the
>> movement of people and goods? So how is it that someone gets to store
>> their personal property on it for free?
>
> Ah, you'd love St. Paul MN. The City Council and mayor absolutely hate
> the taxpaying citizens parking their cars on the streets. Especially in
> neighborhoods where employers and apartment buildings don't have off
> street parking sufficient for every vehicle owned by employees or
> tenants. They looooove ticketing those folks for various reasons, like
> their car isn't pretty enough. Of course, they have no intention of
> telling landlords and employers that they have to provide sufficient
> off-street parking.

Well it depends on the City. In my area, San Jose is famous for
approving developments with insufficient parking, while my city is more
responsible.

What residents don't like is when their streets are filled with vehicles
from underparked businesses, hotels, and high-density housing projects.
The theory of some cities is that if they allow insufficient parking
then people will walk, bicycle, or take non-existent mass transit. The
even more clueless theory is that "mixed-use" will result in people
living, working, and shopping in the same place, and this NEVER works,
but city planners love to promote this idea.

In Cupertino, we recently added permit parking to another neighborhood
that was plagued with Apple employees parking there
<http://oi64.tinypic.com/ae5jdi.jpg>, and it was not like Apple did not
have enough parking, it was that the traffic to get in and out of the
Apple campus was so bad that it was easier to park in the adjacent
residential neighborhood. Apple had told employees not to park in the
neighborhood, to no avail, since it was not illegal--now it is. Apple
agreed that the city should do permit parking. Of course the problem
with this is that it just pushes the parking problem a couple of streets
further out, and soon those residents will ask for permit parking.
Permit parking with no exceptions for limited time parking, i.e. two
hours with no permit, is easier to enforce. But this is not a
money-maker for cities because few motorists are dumb enough to risk a
ticket.

It's a different situation in Palo Alto, which has been illegally
allowing retail buildings (where there is a lot of parking turnover) to
be used as commercial office (where there is no turnover during the
day). Businesses that adjoin residential areas complain that their
employees have no place to park when permit parking is instituted.

In San Francisco, there are a few places that still have free parking
with no permit or time-limit. I use one of those often, and take the
streetcar downtown. These are generally not in front of residences. But
increasingly, the high cost of public transit makes it cheaper and
faster to drive and pay for parking.

[Tim McNamara]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 10:51:44 -0700, sms <scharf...@geemail.com>
wrote:

>
> What residents don't like is when their streets are filled with
> vehicles from underparked businesses, hotels, and high-density housing
> projects. The theory of some cities is that if they allow insufficient
> parking then people will walk, bicycle, or take non-existent mass
> transit. The even more clueless theory is that "mixed-use" will result
> in people living, working, and shopping in the same place, and this
> NEVER works, but city planners love to promote this idea.

We're in the midst of that here. We had a Ford plant (built the Ranger
mini pickup truck) that shut down and Ford has cleaned up the site.
It's 122 acres (IIRC) and the city of St. Paul is just rabid to put
7,000-10,000 housing units in there... smack into a neighborhood with a
couple of bus lines and no access to public highways for anywhere from a
mile to three miles.

They are touting that very same mixed-use "hey, millenials will move in
and they ride fixies everywhere" BS. And, being that our city council
knows better than everyone else, they will ignore every piece of
evidence and testimony to the contrary. And we'll be stuck with another
tax increment financed boondoggle that makes a developer a billionaire
and saddles the rest of the city with the bill.

Problem is, whether we vote in Republicans or Democrats they still do
the same bullshit.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Agreed. With my bunged up memory I can't remember when places like city councils gained the money and power to put in huge housing units on any piece of empty land within city limits.

Around here they closed a marina and were going to plow a couple of semi-famous restaurants under and put in huge housing units to block the view of those housing units that were purchased because of the view.

At least the environmentalists accidentally supported stopping that by talking about rising sea levels destroying them.

Hint - most of the sea level rise since 1995 has been in the utter imagination of NASA. They introduced a "correction" that had to do with the idea that as the Earth's core cools the mantle shrinks. So if the sea level remains the same it actually has been rising. Suddenly in 1995 when they went from measuring the sea levels with tidal gauges to satellites the growth in sea level doubled. Nothing like real science to show you how to make money.

[SMS]

On Monday, September 25, 2017 at 7:22:29 PM UTC-7, Tim McNamara wrote:

Millenials are now being used like veterans have been used, as a way to promote bad public policy.

Read: <http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/real-estate/sd-fi-millennial-study-20170302-story.html>

Not sure about where you are, but in my area the revenue from property taxes on residential property does not cover the cost of providing services.

Developers give a lot of money to politicians. I was amazed recently when my city (and me since I'm on the City Council) was able to stop an extremely bad development from going forward (for now). It was a 4-1 vote against, and the only vote in favor was from someone who took more than $25,000 in campaign contributions from the developer. The last time the developer tried, before I was elected, it was also 4-1 against, and I replaced an extremely pro-developer council person who had even voted against it.

Mixed use almost never works. Read: <http://cumbelich.com/blog/the-inconvenient-truth-about-mixed-use>. My group of trouble-makers met with him a month ago to talk about how to convince our city to stop this insanity.

What my group of trouble-makers have learned is that to be effective you can't sit on the sidelines and complain. You have to get people elected that aren't owned by developers. I didn't want to run, I agreed to because we had been complaining for 15 years about the developer-owned city council and had done nothing other than temporarily stop two bad developments through referendums.

Amusingly, the developers helped fund my campaign, unintentionally, by spending $30,000 sending out clumsily designed hit pieces against me--that's six times what I spent on my campaign! When one of them congratulated me I responded graciously: "thank you, I couldn't have won without your help," and they at least said "touche."

[cycl...@gmail.com]

The government was never suppose to provide for you what you should be capable of providing for yourself. This constant taxing away people's income for government services is a large part of why inflation is so high.

[AMuzi]

On 9/25/2017 9:22 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 10:51:44 -0700, sms <scharf...@geemail.com>
> wrote:

-snip end of civilization-

> Problem is, whether we vote in Republicans or Democrats they still do
> the same bullshit.
>

Pal, you are singing my song.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/26/2017 1:35 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> The government was never suppose to provide for you what you should be capable of providing for yourself. This constant taxing away people's income for government services is a large part of why inflation is so high.

https://www.statbureau.org/en/united-states/inflation


--
- Frank Krygowski

[russell...@yahoo.com]

On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 9:54:43 PM UTC-5, Tim McNamara wrote:
>
> BTW, St. Paul's city council and mayor also pride themselves for the
> city being allegedly named "the most livable city in America" or some
> such bullshit. In the mean time, hate crimes and violence have ticked
> up dramatically this year-

Trump.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Here we go again with your idiotic ideas of how to hide inflation. Yesterday I bought one lb of skirt steak. This is not an especially expensive piece of meat since it is the part that is cut off when they are butchering steaks.

One lb of beef - almost $34. Two market steaks that were about 3/4 lb. $13. I was afraid to ask them how much New York cuts would cost.

Yeah, there isn't any inflation. Four zucchini squash - SMALL - $5 ($2.99/lb) A can of diced tomatoes that you have to buy because it is the season when tomato flies will invade your home if you leave ripe tomatoes out.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

That must be it. They just announced this morning that four of the bay area cities have had a marked growth in crimes of violence - three of them turn out to be what were the safest cities in the bay area before Obama. They also turn out to be the towns that had the smallest police forces because they were safe.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/26/2017 4:18 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 11:20:06 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
>> On 9/26/2017 1:35 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The government was never suppose to provide for you what you should be capable of providing for yourself. This constant taxing away people's income for government services is a large part of why inflation is so high.
>>
>>
>> https://www.statbureau.org/en/united-states/inflation
>
> Here we go again with your idiotic ideas of how to hide inflation.

Tom, I just gave a link to data. Yes, I should have remembered how
actual data makes you furious... but I didn't even make a comment about it!

> Yesterday I bought one lb of skirt steak. This is not an especially expensive piece of meat since it is the part that is cut off when they are butchering steaks.
>
> One lb of beef - almost $34. Two market steaks that were about 3/4 lb. $13. I was afraid to ask them how much New York cuts would cost.

You paid $34 per pound for meat???

Look, the Free Market mechanism works like this: If the price is too
high, you don't buy it. This sends the message that prices are too high,
and tends to cause price drops.

We biked to the grocery today. We bought some lean ground beef and a
package or pork chops. I just checked, and both cost within a dime of
$5.50 per pound. If you're foolish enough to pay seven times as much for
meat, that's not a problem with the government; that's your own problem.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

OK, finally something I know something about. Store-brand
diced tomatoes are 79c/can around here. What's the
California price?

[jbeattie]

Pray tell, how did Obama caused crime to skyrocket in the Bay Area? Is it the Kenyan mafia, the reptilians? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_5VtoysNFs With your help -- and the help of Alex Jones -- we can ferret out the evil-doers, trace them back to Obama, and then let him feel the righteous wrath of the American people (who elected him twice)! My sense is that the whole Obama crime syndicate is being run out of a ping-pong and pizza joint in Fremont. You should check it out. Report back and together, we will vanquish the Kenyan, reptilian dark overlord!

-- Jay Beattie.








-- Jay Beattie.

[Frank Krygowski]

Our store's advertising $1.00 for 28 ounces.

I hope your cans are smaller than ours; I don't want to have to gripe
like Tom.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

>> California price?

>
> Our store's advertising $1.00 for 28 ounces.
>
> I hope your cans are smaller than ours; I don't want to have
> to gripe like Tom.
>

14oz/79cents here.
I am being exploited by the Ohio Tomato Cartel.

[sms]

About the same for non-organic store brand on sale. Organic are more,
about $1.35.

The amusing thing is that Tom picks one item, beef, that happens to have
increased a lot in price, and bases his inflation claim on that.

The reality is that inflation is extremely low.
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yellen-federal-reserve-perplexed-by-chronically-low-inflation/>

[Frank Krygowski]

Well, don't feel bad. I'm pretty sure mine was a sale price. They're
probably not much different in their regular prices.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B.]

>>>> California  price?

>>>
>>> Our store's advertising $1.00 for 28 ounces.
>>>
>>> I hope your cans are smaller than ours; I don't want to have
>>> to gripe like Tom.
>>>
>>
>> 14oz/79cents here.
>> I am being exploited by the Ohio Tomato Cartel.
>
>Well, don't feel bad. I'm pretty sure mine was a sale price. They're
>probably not much different in their regular prices.

Tomato's you can raise in the back yard and "can" them for use all
winter.

--
Cheers,

John B.

[Tim McNamara]

I was gonna go with the opioid epidemic and a jump in meth use around
here as being among the key drivers, as well as gang-on-gang violence.
There has also been something of a boom in the "club scene" in downtown
Minneapolis which seems to have led to increased violent crimes
(apparently young drunks wandering about at 2:00 AM are a bit
irritable).

Not sure that Trump has had a direct effect. He certainly doesn;t seem
to have had a positive effect here (or much of anywhere) but there's not
really a discernible negative effect I can point to. Wish I could, the
dude is *such* a wanker.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

At the same market I paid about $5.50 a lb for pork as well.

I'm having my brother over for dinner tonight and decided that since he assisted my cop best friend in saving my life that nothing is too good for him.

But these are REAL prices and not your "real data". In this same market I paid about 2% more for products than I would in a cut-rate place and the quality is 100% better.

I know how it infuriates you when government reports are entirely wrong but then we've discussed how they cheat on calculating inflation before and apparently that doesn't change your opinion of those reports.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

$0.89 but cheaper for Safeway brand which is close in quality to Hunts.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

No, I've based my ideas of inflation on real prices and not some indirect measure that was fiddled with to make it look a great deal less than it really is.

1 ld of coffee for $9.99? FOLGERS?? That's double the price it was as Obama came into office.

Dinner out at a medium grade restaurant - before Obama - $40 for two. Now? $100 for a main course and a glass of wine - one glass. And this is California where the wine comes from. Since I take out my brothers and their wives on their birthdays I have that well known. My wife has a million children so we put a party on for everyone and I buy and cook. My wife baby sits the grandchildren all day so I do all of the shopping and all of the cooking.

I have a lot of trouble understanding you people. My guess is that you simply never did shopping.

Now if I were you I would have actually thought about that CBS report instead of doing absolutely nothing but trying to discover something with which to use as a counter argument.

Ask yourself - WHY should there even BE a target of 2% inflation per year?

Do you even understand what causes inflation?

As the gross national product increases we have to have enough paper money to cover this. This means that they have to print sufficient money to cover that increase. But since you have to have the money BEFORE the GNP increases you have to take a guess at what it will be and print sufficient funds. In order to be on the safe side you ALWAYS print slightly more than you have approximated. This puts more money in circulation which in turn causes prices to rise because people have more money supposedly.

During Obama the printing presses ran overtime to pay the bills for that gigantic national debt.

Ask yourself - HOW can inflation be caused by slight over printing of money and not be caused by huge overprinting?

I have held this F'ing argument with Berneke and all he could say was crap about how the value of the dollar was being used as the backing for overprinting money. Gee, do you suppose that is why for the first time in American history the dollar was devalued? Not once but twice?

Frank would make a wonderful economist with his great knowledge of finance.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Words from a real farmer there.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

A lot of big money backed Trump because they never in a million years believed that he would be elected. The idea was to kill off the Republican competition. It seems to have blown up in their faces. This next election you can expect the Democrats to lose another 37 or so seats.

The liberals are dying. The idea that race and mental disorder divisions can be used to control people missed the point that race and mental disorders are a minority in any country.

[AMuzi]

>>>>> California price?

>>>>
>>>> Our store's advertising $1.00 for 28 ounces.
>>>>
>>>> I hope your cans are smaller than ours; I don't want to have
>>>> to gripe like Tom.
>>>>
>>>
>>> 14oz/79cents here.
>>> I am being exploited by the Ohio Tomato Cartel.
>>
>> Well, don't feel bad. I'm pretty sure mine was a sale price. They're
>> probably not much different in their regular prices.
>
> Tomato's you can raise in the back yard and "can" them for use all
> winter.

Girlfriend can put up 24 pints of tomatoes from her garden
in a day. They are excellent (more appreciated because I
don't do the actual work!).

That's a long day in a steamy kitchen in already hot weather
not counting the gas or tilling, planting, staking and
especially weeding. Plus a box of rings and lids. At market
rates, I assume about $50 per pint.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 2:03:07 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:

OK Andrew - I JUST got the sales sheet from Safeway: I was quoting prices from the store labels. Here is the normal labels:

Hunts 14.5 ounce diced tomatoes: normally $1.79 and on-sale $1.48
White Potatoes: normally $1.99 lb and on-sale $1.63
A bag of potato chips: $4.49 and on-sale $4.06

[russell...@yahoo.com]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 3:18:20 PM UTC-5, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> Here we go again with your idiotic ideas of how to hide inflation. Yesterday I bought one lb of skirt steak. This is not an especially expensive piece of meat since it is the part that is cut off when they are butchering steaks.
>
> One lb of beef - almost $34. Two market steaks that were about 3/4 lb. $13. I was afraid to ask them how much New York cuts would cost.
>

Where the FUC- are you buying your meat, boy? You obviously have no clue how to shop for groceries. If you buy bike parts the same way you buy meat, you must have the most expensive bike on earth. At my grocery store up on the corner, your steak is about $5 per pound. Of course I do live amongst the cows, so when they are slaughtered, its just a couple miles of transport to get them in my store.

[AMuzi]

OK, Tom, clear evidence that Safeway hates you and doesn't
want you buying their damned tomatoes (or certainly not at
$1.79!)

I don't know what else it might mean if anything.

One might posit property values, property taxes, wage and
hour regulation, obamacare, sunspots or California trucking
regulations (which have increased the cost of absolutely
everything this year, but not 2x). I have no way to know,
nor any opinion, about relative weights or significance of
those factors or ones I haven't thought of yet but $0.79 to
$1.79 is a big spread for a commodity like canned tomatoes.

[jbeattie]

O.K., so the BLS should have the Tom Kunich Price Index which measures the price of certain goods purchased by Tom Kunich? Like the price of beef at some meat boutique?

The Jay Beattie Price Index (JBPI) plummeted when tires went on sale at Western Bikeworks. It ticked-up when they started charging for chips and salsa at my neighborhood Mexican restaurant.

The JBPI is the only true measure of inflation (to me), but Obama hid that from the American public! He tried to fool us with the CPI, just like all the other modern presidents. Liars! Drain the swamp! We should go back and un-president those presidents -- like taking the TdF titles away from dopers.

-- Jay Beattie.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Or one might possibly posit that inflation is present and that it is being falsely reported. Safeway was just bought by Albertson's I believe and they are a nationwide chain.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/27/2017 12:41 AM, Tim McNamara wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Sep 2017 11:47:50 -0700 (PDT), russell...@yahoo.com
> <russell...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 9:54:43 PM UTC-5, Tim McNamara wrote:
>>>
>>> BTW, St. Paul's city council and mayor also pride themselves for the
>>> city being allegedly named "the most livable city in America" or some
>>> such bullshit. In the mean time, hate crimes and violence have
>>> ticked up dramatically this year-
>>
>> Trump.
>
> I was gonna go with the opioid epidemic and a jump in meth use around

> here as being among the key drivers...

That's certainly true near my home. Well, not hate crimes; just crime in
general, especially theft. Prostitution is up, too, according to police.

> There has also been something of a boom in the "club scene" in downtown
> Minneapolis which seems to have led to increased violent crimes
> (apparently young drunks wandering about at 2:00 AM are a bit
> irritable).

Ya think?

I'm reminded of an incident from my college days. About five college
friends and I went to a resort town for a couple days. We were walking
the boardwalk at night just before everything shut down, and another
crew of six guys walking the other way accosted us, pushing and cussing
and trying to start a fight.

Why? It turned out precisely the same thing had happened to them a few
minutes before. They lost that little skirmish, and were looking to
regain their sense of toughness.

Amazingly, I was able to talk the entire thing down, calming both my
guys and their guys. We didn't part as good friends, but we parted
peacefully.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

An old friend of mine, also a Raleigh dealer, used to get a
call quarterly from the US Commerce Department starting in
the Nixon administration and continuing through the GHW Bush
years. They wanted the current retail price of a Raleigh
Gran Prix.

They wouldn't accept any explanations or qualifiers when
those were Dutch built versus British, nor when they were
made in Taiwan, then Kent WA USA, nor even China. To the US
of A they were all officially a "Raleigh Gran Prix" for
statistical purposes.

Or as Jay suggests 'garbage in, garbage out'. It's run like
a government program or something.

[Frank Krygowski]

Well, we bicycle aficionados understand that there's a world of
difference between a 1973 British made Raleigh Grand Prix, and a 2017
one made ... um, wherever they make them these days.

The same is true of cars. There's very little technology that hasn't
changed between a 1965 Ford Mustang and the current offering with the
same name. Hell, same is true of motorcycles, baby strollers, washing
machines, lawn mowers, TVs, etc.

So what items should be in the list that's surveyed to determine inflation?

Personally, I don't think Tom's boutique meat should be part of it.
Sorry, Tom.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[cycl...@gmail.com]

On the third when I did that overly hot ride I came to a spot I don't normally go. I had to go through a three block area and I saw three people openly selling dope. My guess is that the cops don't go there.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/27/2017 11:06 AM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
>>
>> The reality is that inflation is extremely low.
>> <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yellen-federal-reserve-perplexed-by-chronically-low-inflation/>
>
> No, I've based my ideas of inflation on real prices and not some indirect measure that was fiddled with to make it look a great deal less than it really is.

:-) The Tom Kunich Reality Scale!

> 1 ld of coffee for $9.99? FOLGERS?? That's double the price it was as Obama came into office.

Do you file all your sales slips? IOW, got data? Or is that statement
based on the same memory you complain about so frequently?

> Dinner out at a medium grade restaurant - before Obama - $40 for two. Now? $100 for a main course and a glass of wine - one glass. And this is California where the wine comes from. Since I take out my brothers and their wives on their birthdays I have that well known.

It's possible to spend $100 on a nice sit-down dinner for two where I
live. It's also possible to spend about $25. My favorite restaurant
(small, independent, nicely unique decor, good chef, good wait staff, a
place our guests enjoy a lot) costs about $45 for two. I think you need
to learn to shop around.

> I have a lot of trouble understanding you people. My guess is that you simply never did shopping.

I posted yesterday about the price I paid for meat when my wife and I
went shopping. Perhaps you've forgotten?

> Now if I were you I would have actually thought about that CBS report instead of doing absolutely nothing but trying to discover something with which to use as a counter argument.

Tom, you repeatedly and routinely make claims from memory, in between
making claims about how terrible your memory is. Your own testimony
leads people to question your accuracy.

So why not give links to demonstrate what you believe the rate of
inflation really is? I mean, SOME whacko website out there must agree
with you!

>
> Ask yourself - WHY should there even BE a target of 2% inflation per year?
>
> Do you even understand what causes inflation?
>
> As the gross national product increases we have to have enough paper money to cover this. This means that they have to print sufficient money to cover that increase. But since you have to have the money BEFORE the GNP increases you have to take a guess at what it will be and print sufficient funds. In order to be on the safe side you ALWAYS print slightly more than you have approximated. This puts more money in circulation which in turn causes prices to rise because people have more money supposedly.
>
> During Obama the printing presses ran overtime to pay the bills for that gigantic national debt.
>
> Ask yourself - HOW can inflation be caused by slight over printing of money and not be caused by huge overprinting?
>
> I have held this F'ing argument with Berneke and all he could say was crap about how the value of the dollar was being used as the backing for overprinting money. Gee, do you suppose that is why for the first time in American history the dollar was devalued? Not once but twice?
>
> Frank would make a wonderful economist with his great knowledge of finance.

I understand that you know more than anyone with degrees in economics
actually working in the fields of economics and finance. I just don't
understand why you haven't yet received something like a Nobel Prize for
your great knowledge and analytic ability.

Sure, I understand that the Nobel Prizes are socialist crap. But surely
there's a conservative committee that evaluates such groundbreaking
contributions to economic knowledge. Why are they ignoring you??

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Frank Krygowski]

... but it's present to a huge degree only where you live, not where
Andrew and I live?


--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B.]

Nope, not me. I left home as soon as I could and never weeded another
row. But my folks had a garden until they were in their 80's and my
mother canned food for the winter during most of that period.

You see Tom, back in the day, New Englanders assumed that you must be
feeble minded to actually pay for something that you could do your
self.

--
Cheers,

John B.

[John B.]

My mother always used the jars with the glass tops with a sort of
spring latch. that way you only had to buy the rings :-)

Good Lord! I just found them on Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/ycjw5oyz
and they were $10 each.

I guess Tom was right. You got inflation there!
--
Cheers,

John B.

[John B.]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 13:48:49 -0500, AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

>On 9/27/2017 12:51 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 2:03:07 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
>>> On 9/26/2017 3:18 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 11:20:06 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
>>>>> On 9/26/2017 1:35 PM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The government was never suppose to provide for you what you should be capable of providing for yourself. This constant taxing away people's income for government services is a large part of why inflation is so high.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.statbureau.org/en/united-states/inflation
>>>>

>>>> Here we go again with your idiotic ideas of how to hide inflation. Yesterday $34/I bought one lb of skirt steak. This is not an especially expensive piece of meat since it is the part that is cut off when they are butchering steaks.

>>>>
>>>> One lb of beef - almost $34. Two market steaks that were about 3/4 lb. $13. I was afraid to ask them how much New York cuts would cost.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, there isn't any inflation. Four zucchini squash - SMALL - $5 ($2.99/lb) A can of diced tomatoes that you have to buy because it is the season when tomato flies will invade your home if you leave ripe tomatoes out.
>>>>
>>>
>>> OK, finally something I know something about. Store-brand
>>> diced tomatoes are 79c/can around here. What's the
>>> California price?
>>
>> OK Andrew - I JUST got the sales sheet from Safeway: I was quoting prices from the store labels. Here is the normal labels:
>>
>> Hunts 14.5 ounce diced tomatoes: normally $1.79 and on-sale $1.48
>> White Potatoes: normally $1.99 lb and on-sale $1.63
>> A bag of potato chips: $4.49 and on-sale $4.06
>>
>
>OK, Tom, clear evidence that Safeway hates you and doesn't
>want you buying their damned tomatoes (or certainly not at
>$1.79!)
>
>I don't know what else it might mean if anything.
>
>One might posit property values, property taxes, wage and
>hour regulation, obamacare, sunspots or California trucking
>regulations (which have increased the cost of absolutely
>everything this year, but not 2x). I have no way to know,
>nor any opinion, about relative weights or significance of
>those factors or ones I haven't thought of yet but $0.79 to
>$1.79 is a big spread for a commodity like canned tomatoes.

I've a good friend who is from Perth, Western Australia, who tells me
that nearly all the vegetables sold in Perth are actually Chinese
grown and shipped to Australia via refrigerated containers, as they
are cheaper then veggies grown in Australia.

If beef is $34/lb. then it might pay to source it in China.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Berneke also retired in disgrace. As no doubt did you.

And your $25 sit-down dinner for two wouldn't happen to have a clowns head at the entrance would it? At a VIETNAMESE restaurant locally a dinner will cost $33 apiece without drinks. A cup of coffee at any of the local shops is $2.50 or more.

Let's face it Frank - someone that asks for "links" and then repeatedly uses a government site that is so obviously in error has a screw loose.

I just gave you prices off of a sales sheet from Safeway and the people here treated that as if it was some sort of upscale specialty store.

The only answer to the comments here is that either you are all rich and don't have to worry about any of these things or that you are willing to lie in order to maintain your position.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

I would be interested in knowing where Andrew lives. Since he said that the same can of diced tomatoes cost half of what they do here that generates a lot of curiosity.

Since I paid $55 for two flank steaks (which is a cheap cut of meat for the uninformed), two market steaks (a cheap sort of New York cut) and two boneless pork chops and everyone here treated it as some sort of lie or again some outrageously priced high end place instead of a normal butcher shop one can only assume that none of you actually shop or cook. It must be nice not to have to worry about the price of things. Tell me - do you people put your wive's on a budget and then complain that they can't handle money? This certainly sounds like the sort of thing that Frank would do.

Or are other people paying your way?

[cycl...@gmail.com]

You see, back in the day my grandfather was the smarty pants and got to this country as chief engineer on a steam ship. Jumping ship and riding the rails he then became the chief engineer at the Salinas sugar mill. Everyone else in the family were farmers. So don't give me this crap about what you know about farming or the same stupid crap about not having scheduled maintenance on mission critical components on bombers or your stupid crap about there not being regulations about both seats for the pilots being filled when pilots were known to be so frightened of flying into enemy territory in WWII that they would drop their load before getting there even on our own troops.

We had to have backyard gardens in order to have fresh produce until our wonderful Democrats let the Americans of Japanese descent out of the concentration camps and they managed to set up greenhouses so that stores could get year round produce.

Oh, wait, that couldn't have been the case could it? That must be my failing memory. The Democrats have pushed that under the rug as well. Frank will demand a citation.

[AMuzi]

Arlington WI:
http://www.yellowjersey.org/maps.html

Canned tomatoes are 79c at the Piggly Wiggly, the
Pick-N-Save and other groceries within the general area.

They were not more expensive even in high-zoot high-cost
Madison for the past several years, at least in downscale
neighborhoods where I shopped. I assume there are artisan
selected, organic, blessed by The Dalai Lama tomatoes at
some ridiculous price but I don't visit that sort of place
myself.

[jbeattie]

Interestingly, the price of Folgers Coffee dropped when Obama took office -- for the first time in 2 1/2 years. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/30/business/fi-consumerbriefs30.S2

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/money/price-folgers-coffee-dropping-article-1.290925

But, with that said, it has almost doubled since 2008. The price of shitty Folgers Coffee is quite volatile: 2008 $5.49 2009 $7.98 2010 $8.78
2011 $12.98 2012 $8.98 2013 $7.98
2014 $8.98 2015 $10.63 2016 $9.48
2017 $10.05

None of the price fluctuation, however, had to do with federal policies. https://nationalcoffeeblog.org/2016/02/23/why-are-coffee-prices-so-volatile/ -- except to the extent that federal policies can be tied to volatility in the currency market, and as we have discussed at length before, QE has not hurt the dollar. In fact, the dollar has been very strong which, supposedly, held down coffee price increases (according to the linked article).

I get cheap Mexican beans from Costco for $4 lb and more exotic Costco beans for maybe $5-6 a pound -- and super-premium from one of the zillion local roasters for >$16lb or cat-shit beans for $200lb. http://www.most-expensive.coffee/ Folgers isn't the only game in town.

BTW, you need to move out of the Bay Area -- take the whole family. I was in SF a month ago, and the prices were staggering. I just refused to pay and drank office coffee. There is a point at which I just say "f*** that!."

-- Jay Beattie.

[sms]

On 9/28/2017 8:47 AM, jbeattie wrote:

<snip>

> BTW, you need to move out of the Bay Area -- take the whole family. I was in SF a month ago, and the prices were staggering. I just refused to pay and drank office coffee. There is a point at which I just say "f*** that!."

Costco has high quality Colombian Arabica beans for about $5 per pound.
Who the heck would buy Folgers? Some Costcos still roast in the store
but some have removed the roasters after what happened in Livermore
<http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/02/01/coffee-roaster-catches-fire-clears-out-livermore-costco/>.

No real reason to buy the $3 per cup coffee from Starbucks or Peet's,
brew your own. On vacation bring a cone filter and an immersion heater,
and buy some ground coffee at Trader Joe's when you arrive.

SF restaurant prices are not representative of the whole Bay Area, and
even in San Francisco, when you leave the tourist centers and go out to
the neighborhoods, things are different. I.e. when we take people hiking
along the coast from The Cliff House to the Marina Green, we stop at the
same neighborhood Chinese restaurant and it's still less than $8 for
lunch
<https://b.zmtcdn.com/data/menus/201/16852201/ab470540d85ef6a5afe4d52bcf030469.jpg?output-format=webp>
plus the lunch specials are good seven days a week.

Even in Chinatown, if you get off the main street there are very good
deals. My wife's late grandfather's favorite restaurant in Chinatown is
one I still go to if in the Financial District
<https://www.zomato.com/san-francisco/kam-lok-chinatown/menu#tabtop>
though they recently increased prices by 50 cents. You can still get a
good Chinese dinner for 4 for $25 in the suburbs.

[sms]

Depending on the quality, you can get store brand diced tomatoes for as
little as 79¢ for a 14.5 ounce can, but the best rated were Trader Joe’s
Organic Diced tomatoes for $1.99 for a 28 ounce can. Hunts Organic Diced
Tomatoes are 99¢ for a 14.5 Ounce can. Sprout's routinely sells theirs
for 99¢ a can.

The problem here is that for those that aren't good shoppers, they pay
too much for everything, canned food, beef, etc., and try to extrapolate
their poor shopping skills onto others. And of course blame Obama for
their lack of knowledge in how to shop.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Yeah, but it's my guess that you wouldn't be paying $2,500/mth for a one room apartment either.

The inflation here is absolutely through the ceiling. You can pay $4,000/mth for a lousy one bedroom apartment in San Francisco. Or you can commute from around here. It would only take 1 1/2 hours each way plus $6 bridge toll IF you don't have any traffic problems. And I'm only 25 miles away. To work 25 miles the other way would be a two hour commute each way.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Did you go out to dinner in the city? I simply cannot believe the priced over there.

Check out the menu at Chez Pannise in Berkeley:

Wednesday, September 27 $100
Little Gems lettuce with summer vegetable salsa and Meyer lemon
Spaghetti alla chitarra with braised Monterey Bay squid, tomato, pancetta, and basil
Rack, loin, and leg of James Ranch lamb cooked in the fireplace with roasted garlic and savory, fresh shellbeans, and eggplant gratin
Bronx grape granita with pear and blackberry sherbets

A cheap bottle of wine is about another century note.

Now this is the biggest name outside of the city but look at what you're getting. This means that dinner for two with a bottle of wine goes for $300. And you're likely to get rolled from your parking spot.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

I make my own. There is an old coffee company called Hills Bros. and in the cheap store I can get it for $8 a can. It is as good as anything anywhere. Though since I only drink a couple of cups every morning it tends to get stale near the bottom of the can.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

I thought you lived in the bay area somewhere? If so you aren't getting Trader Joes anything but wine cheap. I just bought two lemons for 50c each. Do you suppose that you're some sort of super shopper that is going to drive 12 miles and walk through 5 stores to get the cheapest price on each item you need?

[Joerg]

On 2017-09-20 20:57, Tim McNamara wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 21:47:25 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Build it and they will come? Sorry, no.
>>
>> Here's a new article dispelling the myth that segregated facilities
>> generate tremendous bike mode share.
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage?
>>
>> Unless motoring is actively dissuaded, almost all people who have
>> cars will drive cars.
>
> I remember seeing period BBC footage about this, describing the
> innovations in place at the time. Now, maybe it's what you're used to;
> I grew up in a very bikeable suburb of Chicago and all us kids just got
> around on bikes. So I looked at infrastructure like this and was
> puzzled as to why.
>
> Apparently I wasn't alone.
>
> In the Minneapolis-St Paul area we have been building out both
> on-street and separated bike facilities. While I find much of the
> design of the on-street facilities to be objectionable and even
> downright stupid, there has been a noticeable increase in bike riding.
> Most of them are young uns and are not wearing the pseudo-pro clown
> suits (I'm still wearing mine, although I've reached an age and a body
> composition where that's probably ill-advised). The separated
> facilities- which are pretty extensive- get a whole lot of use; the
> on-street facilities seem to get a lot of use too although not quite as
> much.
>
> But this doesn't seem to work everywhere. Denmark made it work by
> taxing cars at an astonishing rate- owning a car is an economic
> hardship for many if not most Danes due to the tax structure- and
> pairing that with extensive on-street bike facilities. There would be
> no way to accomplish something like that in the US, where owning a car
> and having cheap fuel is effectively part of the Bill of Rights.
>

That is what many people who never lived there think but that isn't the
way it is. Nearly all adult Danes own cars, just like the Dutch, the
Germans, and so on. All countries where car ownership isn't cheap but
you've got to have one. They generaly have smaller more economical cars.
Not a monstrous SUV with a 5-liter engine but a compact car with a
1.5-liter engine.

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
cycling.

My wife and I lived in Europe for decades so we know a thing or two
about it. Here in the US we have two cars. In Europe we had only one and
sometimes it sat in the garage for more than a month without having
rolled one lone kilometer.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again. Pointing
to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do isn't going
to change that fact.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure in
this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only in
areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others. Personally I was
down to 757 miles total on my car including business use for 2016,
dropping further. About 4000 miles between the road bike and the MTB. I
do not even remember the last time I bought gas and the tank is still at
more than 3/4. Of course, now I am gong through MTB tires like popcorn.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/28/2017 9:56 AM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> The only answer to the comments here is that either you are all rich and don't have to worry about any of these things or that you are willing to lie in order to maintain your position.

I quoted prices from the meat I purchased, still sitting in packages in
our refrigerator. I quoted others from the grocery store's sale ads. And
to help your desperately ailing memory, I'll remind you that my wife and
I bought that meat together, having ridden our bikes to the grocery store.

I gave links to inflation data from a government website. Yes, I know
that you are a nut who claims that all official data are lies, lies,
lies, and you can prove it by telling us what you remember... just after
telling us that your memory is gone. You don't even seem to remember
telling us you have no memory!

But I'll remind you that you don't seem to have linked to any contrary
data on inflation.

Yes, I am apparently rich compared to you. We don't live extravagantly,
but I have no trouble buying food, and I eat out at restaurants perhaps
too often. (Today, a light meal and drinks for two after the club bike
ride, $28.) Apparently almost everyone on the club ride today was also
rich compared to you, because almost everybody chose to eat together
instead of heading straight home.

I've got a pretty good retirement pension. Perhaps that's because I made
better career choices than you did. Possibly my choices were easier
because I actually completed my degrees. IME that helps, although I'm
sure you'll say otherwise - after complaining that you have not enough
money and nobody will hire you.

I could claim every problem in my life is because of Obama, as you do.
But I'm not that stupid. And I have very few problems. I don't think
those two facts are related only by coincidence.

Sorry things aren't going as well for you.

And BTW, there are medications that aid memory at least a bit, and there
are medications that help with depression and the resulting bitterness.
I don't happen to require any of those meds, but I seriously think you
should look into them.

(P.S. I've got a really good medical plan too.)

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/28/2017 10:05 AM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> It must be nice not to have to worry about the price of things.

Yes, it is. I was careful about spending all my life. It took me a while
to change my habits and spend money without worry, but I do.

My wife has pretty much the same attitude I do. When we went to Paris, I
actually had to convince her to shop for clothes. I don't think many
wives say "My husband _made_ me buy clothes in Paris!"

> Tell me - do you people put your wive's on a budget and then complain that they can't handle money? This certainly sounds like the sort of thing that Frank would do.

No, Tom.

> Or are other people paying your way?

Hmm. Well, I'm covered partly by Medicaid. Jay may be able to answer
your question. I don't pay much attention to that, because aside from
the insanity of trying to fill out forms, catch insurance mistakes, etc.
it just works for me. Sorry it doesn't work so well for you.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Frank Krygowski]

The Free Market is telling you to sell your place for a fortune and move.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:
>
> Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
> facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
> obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
> cycling.
>

> Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.

In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable in your
area."

> Pointing
> to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do isn't going
> to change that fact.

But the examples I've given _did_ build it, and they _didn't_ come.
Don't pretend that's false.

> Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure in
> this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only in
> areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others.

Significant? What are the numbers?


--
- Frank Krygowski

[jbeattie]

I think you mean Medicare (not Medicaid) and yes, Frank, you are a welfare king -- sucking off the public teat. A dead weight on society. Please exit left through the gift shop and down the dark shaft to the right.


Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Thump!

That's the solution to the looming SS and Medicare Hospital Trust insolvency. Alternately, we need to reintroduce smoking, drinking and driving fast (all at the same time). Or, maybe after Trump builds the wall, get all the old SS retirees to pick the crops and drop dead in the fields. The options are legion. I'm going to start a think-tank or maybe a 501(c)(4) with a catchy name like "Americans for a Darker Future for Old People". We'll solve this old person problem and make America Great Again!

-- Jay Beattie.

[AMuzi]

One of my closest friends has a feisty bitchy opinionated 98
year old mother who has had (free) Hospice Care for almost a
year but they are discontinuing service because, well, she's
not dying. Or not dying as much as she was last year, anyway.

Then the Assisted Living facility (her fifth residence)
evicted her, effective next Monday, because she is too
infirm for their care without assistance from Hospice Care.

Add in that about 1/4 of all Medicaid recipients are
prescribed opiate drugs (gee, what could go wrong?) and I
gotta say it's wonder I can afford all of you and your
benefits! So die already!

http://www.gao.gov/cghome/nationpress52206/img10.jpg

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2017/06/23/nearly-one-in-four-medicaid-members-given-opioid.html

[John B.]

Yes, you keep on and on. In fact you appear to be the typical
Corporate Warrior. Go to meetings, stand tall, shoulders back, head
erect, nose in the air and spout the most ludicrous bullshit in a loud
and confident voice.

Examples above: Mission Critical.... I've mentioned that I never heard
that description in a 20 year career but tell us what it means? You
mean that the wings gotta be firmly attached to the fuselage? Or that
every engine nacelle needs to have an engine in it?

And pilots so frightened that they dropped their bombs... I can't say
for all WW II aircraft but the B-17 had no facility for dropping bombs
from the pilot's stations.

As you tell us a bomber has to have both seats occupied so I assume
that a WW II bomber crew must have included an extra man who could sit
in the pilot's seat while the pilot was scrabbling around down in the
nose to drop the bombs early.

See, I am acquainted with the crew members called Bombardier,
Navigator, Radio Man, Flight Engineer, Armbardier, Aircraft Commander
and Pilot, and the various gunners, but I never heard of a crew member
called a "Sit In The Seat Guy".

Good God! You are pathetic.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Tim McNamara]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 09:46:04 +0700, John B <sloc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've a good friend who is from Perth, Western Australia, who tells me
> that nearly all the vegetables sold in Perth are actually Chinese
> grown and shipped to Australia via refrigerated containers, as they
> are cheaper then veggies grown in Australia.

Slave labor saves money, keeps costs down *and* boosts profits:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394565/chinas-slaves-josh-gelernter

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1635144,00.html

If we get rid of enough government regulation, maybe we can do that in
the US too! Hey, wait, we've got a start on that already:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/06/06/the-invisible-army

[Frank Krygowski]

On 9/28/2017 9:20 PM, jbeattie wrote:
> On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 5:37:38 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
>> On 9/28/2017 10:05 AM, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> It must be nice not to have to worry about the price of things.
>>
>> Yes, it is. I was careful about spending all my life. It took me a while
>> to change my habits and spend money without worry, but I do.
>>
>> My wife has pretty much the same attitude I do. When we went to Paris, I
>> actually had to convince her to shop for clothes. I don't think many
>> wives say "My husband _made_ me buy clothes in Paris!"
>>
>>> Tell me - do you people put your wive's on a budget and then complain that they can't handle money? This certainly sounds like the sort of thing that Frank would do.
>>
>> No, Tom.
>>
>>> Or are other people paying your way?
>>
>> Hmm. Well, I'm covered partly by Medicaid. Jay may be able to answer
>> your question. I don't pay much attention to that, because aside from
>> the insanity of trying to fill out forms, catch insurance mistakes, etc.
>> it just works for me. Sorry it doesn't work so well for you.
>

> I think you mean Medicare (not Medicaid) ...

You're right, which shows how much attention I pay to this. For me, it
just works.

> ... and yes, Frank, you are a welfare king -- sucking off the public teat. A dead weight on society. Please exit left through the gift shop and down the dark shaft to the right.

We should all do our part. Tom's not very happy here, so he can go first.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B.]

http://tinyurl.com/ya4w4ojz
Well, given that the U.S. has a prison population of 693/100,000
population while China has 116/100,000 it appears that just maybe the
Chinese are doing something right.
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Joerg]

On 2017-09-28 18:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
> On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:
>>
>> Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
>> facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
>> obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
>> cycling.
>>
>> Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.
>
> In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
> maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable in your
> area."
>

In some areas a lot more came but 1.5% is a respectable number for the
US. To repeat your own words: Calculate the longterm health benefits
from that 1.5% increase in Dollar numbers.

>> Pointing to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do
>> isn't going to change that fact.
>
> But the examples I've given _did_ build it, and they _didn't_ come.
> Don't pretend that's false.
>

You can always find an example where they screwed up. Conceptually that
proves nothing. Just like the ridiculous "bullet train" the leftists
want to build in California. It (hopefully) will never be built but if
it does the initial segment will run from nowhere to nowhere. Therefore,
ridership would be miniscule.

>> Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure
>> in this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only
>> in areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others.
>
> Significant? What are the numbers?
>

Over 1% which is a lot for the US, a society that unfortunately is
car-centric and not very keen on more healthy modes of transportation.
Best of all we now have some longhaul riders like myself, people who
cycle to places like Intel despite each trip being two-digit miles.
Before they bnuilt out bike lanes on the county road towards the west
the number of cyclists there was close to zero. Now you always see
cyclists and despite the significantly higher number there has not been
one new cross with a spoke wheel in front.

I clearly see that among neighbors and friends. "Hey, you've got a nice
bike in the garage. Want to ride?" ... "Nah, too dangerous" ... "How
about we truck them to the trail head and ride from there?" ... "Yes!"

Bringa trail head to their neighborhood and they'll ride a lot more,
without first using their cars. The city of Folsom has proven it. During
rush hour some of segregated their bike paths are now so full that I
avoid going through that area during the evening hours.

Bike paths are a good thing.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

The US is an EXTREMELY healthy country. The problem is that immigrants both legal and illegal pull the average health down. The fact is that the life expectancy of the white anglo-saxon race is longer than most others. Only the Japanese exceed them. This is NOT because of health services because this has always been the case throughout history.

[jbeattie]

On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 7:30:45 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
> On 2017-09-28 18:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
> > On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:
> >>
> >> Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
> >> facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
> >> obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
> >> cycling.
> >>
> >> Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.
> >
> > In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
> > maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable in your
> > area."
> >
>
> In some areas a lot more came but 1.5% is a respectable number for the
> US. To repeat your own words: Calculate the longterm health benefits
> from that 1.5% increase in Dollar numbers.

We can't calculate the health benefit. How would you even do that? You assume that there is this magical group of couch potatoes just waiting for a bike path -- and when it appears, they materialize in droves -- clearing out their arteries and living for decades longer in perfect health. We could put ear tags on them and follow their every move to determine their outcomes -- maybe get a control group of couch potatoes.

Alternate and more likely reality is that some people decide to ride around on the new bike path, and if it goes in the general direction of their work, they may even ride a few days a week instead of going to the gym. They may run into each other and get hurt, strain a knee -- who knows. Medical usage may rise or fall.

European cities are different. People live close to work. The average bicycle commute distance in Amsterdam is a few miles. Bicycle facilities work in these environments, and they certainly make riding more pleasant in all environments (except for dangerous MUPs). NYC would work with millions of bike paths, at least during the parts of the year -- although dirt is too expensive for that to happen soon, and they would be overrun with pedestrians. But there are places where you could make the Amsterdam thing work.

Personally, all the attempts to Amsterdamify or Copenhagenize Portland have made it less rideable for me. The congested cycle tracks and weird facilities with ten times the numbers of lights and dangerous road furniture don't entice me to ride my bike. I chose to ride on the super-scary roads to avoid the facilities. OTOH, the rail-trail out to Boring and on the east side of the river are convenient for weekend rides -- except when they are used for charity walks (like last week) or cargo bike disaster drill races (a few months back) or what-have-you.

I still think the very best facilities are wide clean shoulders or bike lanes. You can sweep them, and they aren't full of dogs and walkers, etc., etc. They allow for passing other bicyclists without hitting some on-coming cyclist like the dopey two way cycle tracks -- which are fine if you like conga lines or bike herds. Not my cup of tea.

-- Jay Beattie.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/09/the_great_inflation_fraud.html

https://dailyreckoning.com/misrepresentation-of-economic-numbers/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/washingtons-great-no-infl_b_100719.html


You ought to like that one Frank since it's from a source nearly as left wing as you.

http://econintersect.com/pages/opinion/opinion.php?post=201606221842

What does the government tell us inflation has been? Less than 1% from the start of Obama till now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/perianneboring/2014/02/03/if-you-want-to-know-the-real-rate-of-inflation-dont-bother-with-the-cpi/#726665ee200b

"However, according to the USDA, beef prices have increased 26 percent over the past five years." Frank the liar strikes again.

"On 01/07/2013 M2 was $10.452 trillion. On 01/06/2014 M2 grew to $10.962 trillion. That’s a 4.9% increase in the monetary base in just one year. Conversely, a 4.9% decrease in the value of the US dollar."

But Frank will worship the Obama government as the most truthful since George Washington sat in the office.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

That shows that the Obama regime actually carried a 6% average inflation rate.

Even the investment calculator shows almost 15% during Obama:

https://smartasset.com/investing/inflation-calculator

The asinine stupidity of Frank's liberalism and left wing socialist tendencies is pretty plainly observable by all.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Jay - the other day on TV they said that one hour a day of sitting at your computer would completely stop any health benefits you'd gain from ANY exercise. I think that we're all about to die.

[cycl...@gmail.com]

Torturing prisoners so that they don't want to go to jail again is what you're looking for? Underfed to the level of starvation? No health care whatsoever? Work the same as a healthy, well fed person expected of them?

I do believe that the punishment should fit the crime and that if it did we'd have a great deal less crime.

[sms]

On 9/29/2017 7:30 AM, Joerg wrote:

<snip>

> Over 1% which is a lot for the US, a society that unfortunately is
> car-centric and not very keen on more healthy modes of transportation.
> Best of all we now have some longhaul riders like myself, people who
> cycle to places like Intel despite each trip being two-digit miles.
> Before they bnuilt out bike lanes on the county road towards the west
> the number of cyclists there was close to zero. Now you always see
> cyclists and despite the significantly higher number there has not been
> one new cross with a spoke wheel in front.
>
> I clearly see that among neighbors and friends. "Hey, you've got a nice
> bike in the garage. Want to ride?" ... "Nah, too dangerous" ... "How
> about we truck them to the trail head and ride from there?" ... "Yes!"
>
> Bringa trail head to their neighborhood and they'll ride a lot more,
> without first using their cars. The city of Folsom has proven it. During
> rush hour some of segregated their bike paths are now so full that I
> avoid going through that area during the evening hours.
>
> Bike paths are a good thing.

Last night we had a "Transportation Seminar" in my city. I had voted
against spending $25,000 for a series of "seminars" because I knew that
they would be packed with faux consultants and developer hacks, and I
was not disappointed. Bicycles must have been mentioned ten times. I was
also amazed to hear these consultants mention Frank, Lou, and Jay.

Summary.

1. Increase density, or "Build it and we'll figure out later how to get
them to come and go."

First build high-density housing, and when the traffic congestion
becomes unbearable then maybe someone will build mass transit, with
non-existent money. I don't think that a single person in the room
believed this tripe, yet there are YIMBY groups that promote this approach.

What HAS worked in this area, and which the single experienced person on
the panel explained, is to build mass transit and then wait for higher
density housing and commercial office to be built next to it, but it
takes several decades for this to happen, and building mass transit is
enormously expensive. In Silicon Valley, the old tilt-up one and two
story buildings along rail lines are coming down, and higher buildings
are replacing them, but it took decades of terrible ridership numbers
before this happened.

2. Spend billions of dollars of non-existent money on mass transit.

"There's no more land for freeways so we can take the billions of
dollars we would have spent on freeways and spend it on mass transit."
What?! Where are those billions of dollars coming from? They don't
exist! This reminds me of checking out at Safeway where the cashier is
required to tell you "how much you saved." You saved fifteen dollars and
forty-five cents today Mr. Scharf." I reply, "well give it to me then,"
and, not sure if I'm serious, they begin to explain how I'm not actually
getting that money, it's just money that I didn't spend, and now I have
it to spend on other things, even though it's money I never actually had.

When the faux consultant said this, you could see people in the audience
looking at each other in bewilderment.

3. Bike mode share has doubled. Okay, fair enough, but going from 1% to
2% is not exactly a big accomplishment. In an area with mild weather,
and where most large employers provide shower facilities and secure
parking, the share should be much higher. But there are good reasons why
more people don't bicycle to work, especially people with young children
where both parents work. As empty nesters, we bicycle a lot, but when
our kids were young we had to rush from work to pick them up from
after-school care.

4. Uber/Lyft. These faux consultants think that Uber/Lyft are the
solution to "the last mile" between mass transit (trains, since no one
will take public buses). Yet they don't understand, or won't admit, that
the Uber/Lyft business model of subsidizing 50-60% of the cost of each
ride (or even 25%) can't continue indefinitely, and once these services
have to end predatory pricing, and price their product so they can at
least break even, their product will have a much smaller market. Uber
and Lyft also causes more traffic congestion and hurts mass transit
ridership.

If you have to pay for a Lyft or Uber ride for the last mile, four times
a day, plus pay the train fare, you're just going to drive. In San
Francisco, there used to be privately-owned jitneys that took people to
the train station, but those disappeared, but are now coming back
<http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-planning-first-kind-laws-jitney-private-bus-system-chariot/>.

5. The panel was moderated by someone from the San Jose Planning
Commission, which is adopting plans that will greatly increase traffic
congestion by adding massive amounts of housing and commercial space
along corridors with no mass transit, and she previously worked for the
Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which has been instrumental in
preventing any taxes on their member businesses to pay for transit,
instead lobbying for extremely regressive sale taxes to fund mass
transit, with most of the money going just to San Jose. She is also the
director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Not an impartial
moderator, and she carefully picked the questions that were submitted by
the public to advance the agenda of those that selected her.

6. Electric bicycles. As Lou pointed out, and was pointed out last
night, electric bicycles are extremely popular in Europe and Asia but
not in the U.S.. Electric bicycles extend the distance that
non-hard-core riders are willing to commute, from 5-6 miles to 10-15
miles. This could actually increase the bicycle mode percentage by a few
percent when coupled with better bicycle infrastructure, which is
comparatively cheap to build, compared with freeways or light rail
lines. Maybe employers could subsidize the cost of electric bicycles, or
buy a fleet of them for employees to use.

As the cost of electric bicycles continues to fall, I think the adoption
rate in the U.S. will go up. If you could buy a quality electric bicycle
for under $1000, and there's no reason this is not doable, they would
sell better, but now we're seeing prices of $2000-5000 for good electric
bicycles in the U.S..

7. Buses on shoulders. OMG, this insanity is spreading. The idea is that
since the HOV lanes are congested with Teslas, plug-in hybrids, Leafs,
and solo drivers willing to pay to use these lanes, we should allow
buses to drive on the left shoulder of freeways. Well this actually
might help Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. buses, but it's not
going to get the remaining commuters onto public buses.

8. I about fell out of my chair when they mentioned Frank. Well not by
name. One of the panelists said that we should be happy that we have so
much traffic congestion because it was caused by a healthy economy, and
that cities like Youngstown Ohio would love to have the problems that we
have, and he put up a slide of traffic in that area (none).

I thought that it was in poor taste because the struggles of
post-industrial cities are not a joking matter, and what really needs to
happen is that the tech companies need to stop putting every new job in
Silicon Valley, and spread out across the country. There are plenty of
tech workers that would love to live in a place where they can afford a
house instead of paying $3.5K per month for a one bedroom apartment.

9. They also talked about Jay in Portland, and how the bicycle mode
share has increased, and how well mass transit is working. No one must
have told them about declining mass transit ridership in Portland
<http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2017/09/trimet_report_rising_housing_c.html>.
And while Portland has a very high bicycle commuting share, they
recently reduced their goal of bicycle commuting from 25% to 15%.

10. Self-driving cars and ZOVs (Zero Occupancy Vehicles). Uber and Lyft
believe that the key to profitability is in eliminating having to pay
drivers, which is why they are willing to lose billions of dollars of
investors money in the short term. But self-driving cars will only add
to congestion. Instead of parking at the destination, the self-driving
car will go back on the road empty, and either drive to the outskirts of
a city where there is sufficient free parking, or will just drive around
empty until it is summoned by another user. In large cities, Uber and
Lyft are greatly increasing traffic congestion, not just by drivers
aimlessly driving around waiting for a fare, or parking illegally, but
because the subsidized fares are taking people off of mass transit.

The real solution was never mentioned of course. There are two things
that have been proven to work:

A. Fast rail transit to outlying areas with more land for housing. There
is actually slow rail transit that was started to do this, the ACE train
but it's a long ride because they are using very old rail infrastructure
with diesel locomotives. And like all mass transit, every additional
train requires more subsidies, so there is a reluctance to expand or
improve the service. Caltrain runs only four of their trains a day (two
in the morning and two in the evening) to the outlying areas of Morgan
Hill and Gilroy, and the last evening train leaves San Jose too early
for most tech workers.

B. Reducing demand. It's heresy to ever say that perhaps not every new
tech job needs to be in Silicon Valley. Cities love commercial office
buildings because of the taxes they receive, while taxes on housing
don't cover the cost of providing services.