Did BART Cause Traffic?
David Kaye
On May 9, 11:26 pm, John David Galt <j...@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
wrote:
> On the contrary. If BART had not won that first election, the federal
> share of its construction costs would certainly have gone into freeways
> that are still needed today, and they would carry at least 20, maybe 50
> times the person-miles per day per dollar.
>
> Conditions ARE awful today, and in large part it's BECAUSE BART won.
Are you so sure of that? Los Angeles has had a car-first attitude in
its planning since the 1940s. You can find a freeway about every 5
miles from Glendale to Long Beach, the ocean to Pasadena, and yet they
still have so much traffic congestion it's often faster taking surface
streets than the freeway. Or am I missing something here?
It appears to me that the more freeways are built the further and
further away people will move and the longer commutes they have.
I'm wondering what freeways would you propose be built in the Bay Area
today? About the only one I can think of that would have made any
sense would have been the extension of the MacArthur from Castro
Valley to San Jose. Aside from that, where would you put freeways?
David Nebenzahl
> I'm wondering what freeways would you propose be built in the Bay Area
> today? About the only one I can think of that would have made any
> sense would have been the extension of the MacArthur from Castro
> Valley to San Jose. Aside from that, where would you put freeways?
Sheesh, David, do you realize who you're talking to (OK, writing to) here?
Might as well ask "Where would you put more death camps, Mr. Hitler?"
--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism
Jym Dyer
character. On this issue he has yet to show any indication
that he pays attention to anything that doesn't fit into his
already-entrenched opinions.
=v= He argues that money for BART should have gone into
freeways and that the lack of freeways have caused traffic.
If this is true in any respect, it's not in the way that
he thinks: BART was designed to co�nable suburban sprawl
patterns by easing the commute from suburban stops into
downtown San Francisco. To the extent that this supports
those patterns, it supports car traffic.
=v= But his proferred "solution" is even worse. Building
more freeways and widening existing ones doesn't relieve
traffic, except temporarily. What you end up with is even
more congestion, sitting there idling and polluting more.
<_Jym_>
Bill Z.
> =v= But his proferred "solution" is even worse. Building
> more freeways and widening existing ones doesn't relieve
> traffic, except temporarily. What you end up with is even
> more congestion, sitting there idling and polluting more.
> <_Jym_>
The other part of reality he is ignoring is the political
opposition to more freeways in the Bay Area. Look at the
reaction to the high speed rail project (just in the
planning stage) which will go down the Caltrain right of way.
Then ask what sort of opposition you'd get to new freeway,
which would take up far more space and impact far more homes.
--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604
There were many more freeways planned for San Francisco.
There's even a wikipedia article about freeway revolts in many cities.
It's an amazingly big stretch, well into paranoid fantasy, to blame
BART for those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_and_expressway_revolts
73, doug
cph
serves the suburbs. I've been on trains to Walnut Creek that have been
jam-packed
in the midday, while the adjacent freeway (SR-24) is absolutely
empty....If you put good transit out there, people will use it!
David Kaye
wrote:
> There's even a wikipedia article about freeway revolts in many cities.
> It's an amazingly big stretch, well into paranoid fantasy, to blame
> BART for those.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_and_expressway_revolts
I happen to know Zoanne Nordstrom, who should probably go down in
history as the originator of the freeway revolt. She certain was
instrumental in blocking the freeways in SF, most notably the one
through Glen Canyon Park.
It must have been an amazing time, fighting off freeways.
What's funny in all of this is that it's faster during rush hour using
surface streets to get from the ocean to the Mission district (about 5
miles) than using the Nimitz freeway to go the 5 miles from downtown
Oakland to San Leandro. I know because I have driven them both
numerous times.
David Kaye
> BART was designed to coënable suburban sprawl
> patterns by easing the commute from suburban stops into
> downtown San Francisco.
I'm not so certain this was the case. For one, both SF and Oakland
have 8 BART stations, and BART serves Oakland more extensively than it
serves SF. It didn't have to be that way.
Also, the original BART plans called for tracks down the Peninsula and
deep into Marin. It's not Bechtel's fault that people voted down the
plans in those counties.
Also, isn't it really a red herring argument that BART serves to bring
people from the burbs into the cities? Public transit goes where it's
most efficient to move people. It's more efficient to move people
through populated areas, thus public transit becomes a de facto urban
mover.
John David Galt
> This was begun in another thread but deserves its own thread:
OK.
> John David Galt wrote:
>> On the contrary. If BART had not won that first election, the federal
>> share of its construction costs would certainly have gone into freeways
>> that are still needed today, and they would carry at least 20, maybe 50
>> times the person-miles per day per dollar.
>>
>> Conditions ARE awful today, and in large part it's BECAUSE BART won.
> Are you so sure of that? Los Angeles has had a car-first attitude in
> its planning since the 1940s. You can find a freeway about every 5
> miles from Glendale to Long Beach, the ocean to Pasadena, and yet they
> still have so much traffic congestion it's often faster taking surface
> streets than the freeway. Or am I missing something here?
Your information is old. LA stopped building new freeways about 1972,
and now has the fewest freeway-lane miles per capita (and highest
density) of any major city in the US. That's why it's congested.
> It appears to me that the more freeways are built the further and
> further away people will move and the longer commutes they have.
Most people don't live that far away voluntarily. They move because
local homeowners use zoning laws to make nearly all remaining unbuilt
land off-limits for building, usually for reasons of racism/classism
(they don't want "riff raff" like you and me to be able to move in
next door) as well as selfishness (they want to keep good homes scarce
so their investment will increase in price forever).
> I'm wondering what freeways would you propose be built in the Bay Area
> today? About the only one I can think of that would have made any
> sense would have been the extension of the MacArthur from Castro
> Valley to San Jose. Aside from that, where would you put freeways?
I lived most of my life in the Bay Area, mostly in San Jose but also
5 years in SF and two in the East Bay. Here's where I'd build today.
1. Build a freeway, partly or mostly underground, through SF from the
Golden Gate Bridge to I-280, probably using the Sunset Blvd. corridor.
2. The Devil's Slide Tunnel.
3. The Mission Freeway (an upgrade of CA-238 from Hayward down to
I-680 near Mission San Jose).
4. Extend CA-237 southwest to meet I-280 and northeast to meet I-680.
5. Widen 880/17 to at least eight lanes all the way from Oakland to
San Jose (if this hasn't already been completed), and to freeway status
and at least six lanes from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
6. The Southern Crossing.
7. Close the gap in CA-84 between Livermore and Rio Vista by so labeling
Vasco Rd. and the "Hwy 4 Bypass".
8. Extend the CA-152 freeway west to meet 101 in Gilroy.
9. Extend I-680 west from Cordelia Junction to meet 101. This is an
upgrade of CA-12. Especially needed: bypass the city of Sonoma.
10. The east-west freeway that Mr. Pombo proposed between San Jose and
the Central Valley.
While I'm at it, I'll also propose one for metro Sacramento:
Extend the CA-65 freeway south to connect to, and include, Hazel Ave.
at least to US 50, and preferably all the way south to I-5, thus
alleviating the awful bottleneck on I-80 through Citrus Heights and
Roseville.
John David Galt
> =v= But his proferred "solution" is even worse. Building
> more freeways and widening existing ones doesn't relieve
> traffic, except temporarily. What you end up with is even
> more congestion, sitting there idling and polluting more.
Saying that building freeways doesn't solve congestion, because it only
enables more driving, is like saying that growing food doesn't solve
hunger, because it only enables more eating. Get real.
John David Galt
> The other part of reality he is ignoring is the political
> opposition to more freeways in the Bay Area.
I'm not ignoring that fact at all. I'm fighting against it.
David Kaye
wrote:
> Saying that building freeways doesn't solve congestion, because it only
> enables more driving, is like saying that growing food doesn't solve
> hunger, because it only enables more eating. Get real.
It's a known fact that our abundant food does indeed cause people to
eat more. We have plentiful food available at cheap prices.
Americans are fat, in case you haven't noticed.
We can get meat at a reasonable price anytime. In my parents' day,
this was not so. In fact they had only one major meat meal a week,
and that was Sunday. The rest of the time it was largely vegetables
and a few scraps of meat or soup bones.
When I was a kid, a 1/4 burger was a big deal since most burgers were
1/8 pound or less. Now, a 1/4 burger is considered small. Likewise,
a soft drink was a 12-ounce can. Today, it's a 16 or a 20-ounce
bottle.
So, JDG, get real.
John David Galt
>> Saying that building freeways doesn't solve congestion, because it only
>> enables more driving, is like saying that growing food doesn't solve
>> hunger, because it only enables more eating. Get real.
David Kaye wrote:
> It's a known fact that our abundant food does indeed cause people to
> eat more. We have plentiful food available at cheap prices.
And that is a good thing. And when people drove more after road
construction, that was similarly beneficial.
> Americans are fat, in case you haven't noticed.
So?
> We can get meat at a reasonable price anytime. In my parents' day,
> this was not so. In fact they had only one major meat meal a week,
> and that was Sunday. The rest of the time it was largely vegetables
> and a few scraps of meat or soup bones.
>
> When I was a kid, a 1/4 burger was a big deal since most burgers were
> 1/8 pound or less. Now, a 1/4 burger is considered small. Likewise,
> a soft drink was a 12-ounce can. Today, it's a 16 or a 20-ounce
> bottle.
Those are good changes. But it sounds like you don't like them. Why?
David Nebenzahl
> On May 16, 4:59 pm, John David Galt <j...@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
> wrote:
>
>> Saying that building freeways doesn't solve congestion, because it only
>> enables more driving, is like saying that growing food doesn't solve
>> hunger, because it only enables more eating. Get real.
So, David, you just did the equivalent of writing a "Hello, world"
program. You ran it and it dutifully said "Hello, world". Are you happy now?
David Kaye
wrote:
> And that is a good thing. And when people drove more after road
> construction, that was similarly beneficial.
But you claimed that road construction does not increase traffic. So,
which is it?
John David Galt
It does not "induce" traffic; it satisfies demand that already exists
and should have been satisfied years earlier.
David Kaye
wrote:
> It does not "induce" traffic; it satisfies demand that already exists
> and should have been satisfied years earlier.
If that were the case then freeways would never have traffic jams. I
remember when 680 was built and there was no traffic on it. It seemed
bizarre that such a large freeway had been built when the surface
street (old highway 21) was perfectly adequate. I-680 crossed 580 and
there was little traffic on 580, either. Today, the major bottleneck
in the Bay Area is the 580/680 interchange.
Splain that, Lucy.
John David Galt
>> and should have been satisfied years earlier.
> If that were the case then freeways would never have traffic jams.
Freeways have traffic jams all the time, *because* the demand for them
exists before they are built. If they induced traffic, then newly built
freeways would be nearly empty (or at least, opening one should cause a
miraculous "uncrowding" of parallel surface streets) until the induced
traffic has time to form, however long that takes in your theory.
> I
> remember when 680 was built and there was no traffic on it. It seemed
> bizarre that such a large freeway had been built when the surface
> street (old highway 21) was perfectly adequate. I-680 crossed 580 and
> there was little traffic on 580, either. Today, the major bottleneck
> in the Bay Area is the 580/680 interchange.
>
> Splain that, Lucy.
I-680 (north of Mission San Jose, anyway) opened in the mid sixties,
when freeways were being built at a rate that kept up with demand.
The green and "freeway revolt" movements stopped that practice about
1975. The awful traffic of today is a direct result of stopping it.
David Kaye
wrote:
> Freeways have traffic jams all the time, *because* the demand for them
> exists before they are built. If they induced traffic, then newly built
> freeways would be nearly empty (or at least, opening one should cause a
> miraculous "uncrowding" of parallel surface streets) until the induced
> traffic has time to form, however long that takes in your theory.
But this was exactly the case regarding 680 through the Diablo
Valley. The freeway went years before the jams started. Likewise the
80 Sacramento bypass freeway (originally known as 880 before that
number was moved to the Bay Area). That freeway had no traffic when
it was built, and it didn't for years. People went along 80 (now
Business 80 or something). Now they use both freeways, and 80 (the
bypass) is jammed a lot of the time.
You simply don't want to admit that freeways cause traffic by
encouraging people to move further and further away from work, and
developers to develop land they otherwise wouldn't have. How many
home and office developments advertise "easy freeway access"? Most
do.
John David Galt
>> exists before they are built. If they induced traffic, then newly built
>> freeways would be nearly empty (or at least, opening one should cause a
>> miraculous "uncrowding" of parallel surface streets) until the induced
>> traffic has time to form, however long that takes in your theory.
> But this was exactly the case regarding 680 through the Diablo
> Valley. The freeway went years before the jams started.
A many-year delay certainly casts doubt on cause and effect.
> Likewise the
> 80 Sacramento bypass freeway (originally known as 880 before that
> number was moved to the Bay Area). That freeway had no traffic when
> it was built, and it didn't for years. People went along 80 (now
> Business 80 or something). Now they use both freeways, and 80 (the
> bypass) is jammed a lot of the time.
It's been decades, and Sac has grown. Naturally a lot of the new
development came to the new freeway route. That's where I would have
built, too.
> You simply don't want to admit that freeways cause traffic by
> encouraging people to move further and further away from work, and
> developers to develop land they otherwise wouldn't have. How many
> home and office developments advertise "easy freeway access"? Most
> do.
Building freeways certainlys make living farther from work more
convenient, but it's mostly zoning authorities who FORCE employed
people to do that. Unprotect all the "open space" in the bay area
and let homes be built on it, and nobody would be commuting there
from Tracy or Sacramento.
If authorities are going to dictate an upper limit on the housing
that will exist in an area, they should limit jobs to the same
number. Otherwise they are literally forcing people to commute
(yes, it's force even though they don't choose the specific people
who end up compelled to do it).
David Kaye
wrote:
> It's been decades, and Sac has grown. Naturally a lot of the new
> development came to the new freeway route. That's where I would have
> built, too.
So, finally you're admitting that building freeways CAUSES traffic.
It's about time. It only took a dozen posts.
> Building freeways certainlys make living farther from work more
> convenient, but it's mostly zoning authorities who FORCE employed
> people to do that. Unprotect all the "open space" in the bay area
> and let homes be built on it, and nobody would be commuting there
> from Tracy or Sacramento.
Uh, WHAT open space? You want open space, consider Portland, Eugene,
and Salem. About 30 years ago, open space protections were put in
that restricted parcel splitting outside a ring around those 3 metro
areas. What resulted was that farm and open space parcels were left
intact outside the zone, and within the zone, infill began to happen.
And from a traffic standpoint those areas did not experience the
massive traffic tieups we see here. People don't need to commute 40
miles each way.
But, back to the Bay Area, what open space are you referring to? Mt
San Bruno? That area was not developed mainly because the Crocker
family had no need or desire to develop it. Sure, some of it is now
deeded to the county as open space, but that was done quite
recently.
There is little development along the Coastside specifically BECAUSE
there is no improved road going from SF to Santa Cruz. There had been
proposals to make Highway 1 into a freeway between those cities, but
it was fought back many times. Had a freeway been built on the
Coastside there'd be as much congestion going past Pescadero as there
is today going past Mountain View.
Patrick Scheible
> On May 21, 6:27=A0pm, John David Galt <j...@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
> wrote:
>
> > It's been decades, and Sac has grown. =A0Naturally a lot of the new
> > development came to the new freeway route. =A0That's where I would have
> > built, too.
>
> So, finally you're admitting that building freeways CAUSES traffic.
> It's about time. It only took a dozen posts.
>
> > Building freeways certainlys make living farther from work more
> > convenient, but it's mostly zoning authorities who FORCE employed
> > people to do that. =A0Unprotect all the "open space" in the bay area
> > and let homes be built on it, and nobody would be commuting there
> > from Tracy or Sacramento.
>
> Uh, WHAT open space? You want open space, consider Portland, Eugene,
> and Salem. About 30 years ago, open space protections were put in
> that restricted parcel splitting outside a ring around those 3 metro
> areas. What resulted was that farm and open space parcels were left
> intact outside the zone, and within the zone, infill began to happen.
> And from a traffic standpoint those areas did not experience the
> massive traffic tieups we see here. People don't need to commute 40
> miles each way.
I have been to Portland at rush hour, and it's quite bad enough. Yes,
there's an open space zone around it, but suburbs instead sprang up
beyond the open space zone to the west and across the Washington
border. Still, perhaps better than if they'd done nothing.
> But, back to the Bay Area, what open space are you referring to? Mt
> San Bruno? That area was not developed mainly because the Crocker
> family had no need or desire to develop it. Sure, some of it is now
> deeded to the county as open space, but that was done quite
> recently.
Also, the Mt. San Bruno tends to slide. For a long time, it was
impossible or impractically expensive to build on it. Fortunately,
that protected it until legal protection was put in place.
> There is little development along the Coastside specifically BECAUSE
> there is no improved road going from SF to Santa Cruz. There had been
> proposals to make Highway 1 into a freeway between those cities, but
> it was fought back many times. Had a freeway been built on the
> Coastside there'd be as much congestion going past Pescadero as there
> is today going past Mountain View.
It's a difficult tradeoff. It's nice having the woods and countryside
uphill of 280, close enough that people living all along the peninsula
can visit easily. Yes, developing it would mean more housing and less
commuting distance.
-- Patrick
David Kaye
> It's a difficult tradeoff. It's nice having the woods and countryside
> uphill of 280, close enough that people living all along the peninsula
> can visit easily. Yes, developing it would mean more housing and less
> commuting distance.
The point is exactly the opposite: Developing the Coastside would mean
more housing and MORE commuting distance. This is because people
would move further away from their Santa Clara Valley jobs to the
Coastside.
George
BART has been the biggest factor in Bay Area sprawl. Though the
construction of highway 24 and the added tunnel(s) at the Caldecott
contributed greatly to the growth of Walnut Creek and the rest of
Central and East Contra Costa county, it is the existence of BART that
really made all that growth (sprawl) possible. I suppose that's
progress, and I certainly took advantage of it, looking back I'm not
so sure it was a good thing. I sure would have never come out here if
my only option was 24, so BART bears a big responsibility for what has
transpired.
George
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yeah, there was a big freeway revolt in San Francisco. The dreaded
Embarcadero freeway was supposed to connect the Bay and Golden Gate
bridges, taking all of that traffic off the city streets. There was
even a supervisor ( William Blake) who wanted a tunnel under the
Panhandle to keep autos out of the GG Park and the western part of the
city, which have made 19th Ave a hell of a lot safer than it is today.
They say we should beware of unintended consequences, which our
freeway revolt surely brought on.
George
Serving the suburbs ( yeah...BAD) is exactly what BART's mission was
supposed to be! SF had (has) Muni to serve the locals. Unfortunately,
all homage was paid to BART and Muni was allowed to swirl down the
toilet.
John David Galt
>> development came to the new freeway route. That's where I would have
>> built, too.
> So, finally you're admitting that building freeways CAUSES traffic.
> It's about time. It only took a dozen posts.
It doesn't cause traffic, it enables it. That's what roads are
supposed to do. They're man's greatest enabling technology. Anyone
who's against that, I dismiss as a Luddite and human-hater.
>> Building freeways certainly makes living farther from work more
>> convenient, but it's mostly zoning authorities who FORCE employed
>> people to do that. Unprotect all the "open space" in the bay area
>> and let homes be built on it, and nobody would be commuting there
>> from Tracy or Sacramento.
> Uh, WHAT open space?
* Alviso
* The brown foothills east of San Jose and Milpitas
* The Coyote valley
* Palo Alto's reserved area above Foothills Park
* The Sunol area
* The Diablo Valley area (north of Livermore and south of Antioch)
* The area along Skyline Blvd. for just about its entire length
* Huge chunks of Marin, especially near the Bay
* Southern Napa county
* And even the bay itself (the landfill process that was stopped by
the creation of BCDC should have been allowed to continue).
> You want open space, consider Portland, Eugene,
> and Salem. About 30 years ago, open space protections were put in
> that restricted parcel splitting outside a ring around those 3 metro
> areas. What resulted was that farm and open space parcels were left
> intact outside the zone, and within the zone, infill began to happen.
And huge shortages of both parking and decent housing deliberately
resulted, making Portland a pain to live in, a pain to visit, and
even a hindrance to through traffic on I-5. No city like Portland
would ever have been built without government force, and I avoid
any commerce that would result in tax revenue to such places.
> And from a traffic standpoint those areas did not experience the
> massive traffic tieups we see here. People don't need to commute 40
> miles each way.
Traffic is worse than in the Bay Area. People need to commute farther
than they would without "smart growth", because development has to
"leapfrog" the "protected" areas. And people burn a lot more gas per
mile, because the road shortage makes them idle longer in stopped
traffic AND drive farther looking for a parking place.
When you make a city hard to drive to (or in), you make it more of an
ordeal to get there. It's like building your city in some primitive
part of Africa or South America. Don't be surprised if people start
ignoring your "smart growth" city as if it were one of those places.
> But, back to the Bay Area, what open space are you referring to? Mt
> San Bruno? That area was not developed mainly because the Crocker
> family had no need or desire to develop it.
As home prices rise over the long term, and property gets divided among
each generation of heirs, it would eventually have wound up in the hands
of someone who needed to sell or develop it. Instead it's now a waste.
"Open space" land, and most park land too, is really a taxpayer subsidy
to rich people like Oprah who can afford to live next door to it. They
get a free preserved view AND isolation from potential neighbors like
you and me, without even having to pay taxes on the land. Only a leftist
would have the gall to demand that working class people give that kind of
huge subsidy to the rich -- for the purpose of elitist segregation! --
and pretend that they're helping "save the earth" by doing so. Puh-leeze!
> There is little development along the Coastside specifically BECAUSE
> there is no improved road going from SF to Santa Cruz. There had been
> proposals to make Highway 1 into a freeway between those cities, but
> it was fought back many times. Had a freeway been built on the
> Coastside there'd be as much congestion going past Pescadero as there
> is today going past Mountain View.
And so that land, too, is mostly a waste, and the residents of Half Moon
Bay and Pacifica are forced to sit in idling traffic longer, polluting
the air. Why weren't the people who blocked the road projects forced to
file Environmental Impact Reports for *their* activity and mitigate the
pollution that results from it?
John David Galt
> BART has been the biggest factor in Bay Area sprawl. Though the
> construction of highway 24 and the added tunnel(s) at the Caldecott
> contributed greatly to the growth of Walnut Creek and the rest of
> Central and East Contra Costa county, it is the existence of BART that
> really made all that growth (sprawl) possible. I suppose that's
> progress, and I certainly took advantage of it, looking back I'm not
> so sure it was a good thing. I sure would have never come out here if
> my only option was 24, so BART bears a big responsibility for what has
> transpired.
The growth would have occurred regardless. If you want to stop growth,
regulate births the way the Chinese do. Once somebody is born, he/she
has the right to the same level of wealth his parents enjoy.
Sprawl is the creation of that wealth. We need more sprawl and lots of it.
David Kaye
wrote:
> It doesn't cause traffic, it enables it. That's what roads are
> supposed to do.
Freeways were built to relieve congestion. The assumption was that X
amount of traffic is going to travel a certain route. It will
bottleneck using 2-lane surface streets, but zoom on access-controlled
6-lane freeways. This is true, UNTIL X amount of traffic doubles and
then triples as always happens when you build freeways. Then the 6-
laner becomes congested, too. Even the 280 freeway, which some people
say "goes nowhere to nowhere" because it doesn't hit any major towns
between SF and SJ, gets congested!
> And huge shortages of both parking and decent housing deliberately
> resulted, making Portland a pain to live in, a pain to visit, and
> even a hindrance to through traffic on I-5.
I lived in Portland for 6 years and owned a business there. I left my
car parked most of the time and walked. It was a pleasure to live
there. I lived off SW 21st. My business was near SW 11th. I'd also
walk downtown and into NW and SE PDX across one bridge or another as
well.
I couldn't imagine doing such a thing in car-centric towns like
Hayward, Livermore, Concord, or especially Pleasanton where not even
BART is ped-friendly.
> No city like Portland
> would ever have been built without government force, and I avoid
> any commerce that would result in tax revenue to such places.
PDX is doing quite nicely without you.
> As home prices rise over the long term, and property gets divided among
> each generation of heirs, it would eventually have wound up in the hands
> of someone who needed to sell or develop it. Instead it's now a waste.
Uh, real estate does not actually rise over the long term, not in
terms of actual value. For the most part, real estate prices are the
key that creates inflation. Go back over the decades and you'll see
that the inflation rate is identical to the real estate price
acceleration rate. Real estate is a zero-sum game.
Notice also that as real estate prices have declined the last year, so
has inflation. In fact we're in a deflationary period, which is why
banks are going bust. Banks always go bust during deflation.
> "Open space" land, and most park land too, is really a taxpayer subsidy
> to rich people like Oprah who can afford to live next door to it.
I'm not rich and I live next door to open space. Well, a few blocks
away at any rate.
> Only a leftist
> would have the gall to demand that working class people give that kind of
> huge subsidy to the rich -- for the purpose of elitist segregation! --
> and pretend that they're helping "save the earth" by doing so. Puh-leeze!
I'm proud to be a leftist, but I don't believe in any subsidy for the
rich. I'm all in favor of returning to the 90% tax rate of my youth,
when taxes supported the public schools and teachers didn't have to go
to yard sales begging for supplies for their classes.
> And so that land, too, is mostly a waste, and the residents of Half Moon
> Bay and Pacifica are forced to sit in idling traffic longer, polluting
> the air.
Oh? The only time I see bad congestion in the HMB area is on weekends
when everybody wants to go to the beach. I visit the coastside from
time to time.
David Kaye
wrote:
> The growth would have occurred regardless. If you want to stop growth,
> regulate births the way the Chinese do. Once somebody is born, he/she
> has the right to the same level of wealth his parents enjoy.
California has 38 million people, but it is concentrated in the
freeway-laden communities. Go to eastern California, anywhere from
Susanville to Alturas, or into the Sierras, or Mendocino, Humboldt,
and Del Norte counties where roads are scarce and you don't see much
population at all. Clear Lake was pretty much bypassed by the
building boom of the 1960s because no freeway went anywhere near it.
John David Galt
>> supposed to do.
> Freeways were built to relieve congestion. The assumption was that X
> amount of traffic is going to travel a certain route. It will
> bottleneck using 2-lane surface streets, but zoom on access-controlled
> 6-lane freeways. This is true, UNTIL X amount of traffic doubles and
> then triples as always happens when you build freeways. Then the 6-
> laner becomes congested, too. Even the 280 freeway, which some people
> say "goes nowhere to nowhere" because it doesn't hit any major towns
> between SF and SJ, gets congested!
Solving congestion by providing roads is like solving hunger by
providing food: you can't just do it once, you need to keep doing it
permanently, and if the population is increasing then you'll need to
provide more of it each year.
This is why the whole transport industry should be privatized. If
we had to rely on federal and state Departments of Food, there would
be widespread starvation in America, along with lots of government
funded busybodies telling everyone what he should eat and how much.
It's not governments' place to be making such choices. It's each
individual's place.
>> And huge shortages of both parking and decent housing deliberately
>> resulted, making Portland a pain to live in, a pain to visit, and
>> even a hindrance to through traffic on I-5.
> I lived in Portland for 6 years and owned a business there. I left my
> car parked most of the time and walked. It was a pleasure to live
> there. I lived off SW 21st. My business was near SW 11th. I'd also
> walk downtown and into NW and SE PDX across one bridge or another as
> well.
If you enjoy walking, then have fun, but don't presume to tell the
rest of us that we shouldn't be driving merely because it makes it
less pleasant for you to walk.
> I couldn't imagine doing such a thing in car-centric towns like
> Hayward, Livermore, Concord, or especially Pleasanton where not even
> BART is ped-friendly.
Waah!
>> As home prices rise over the long term, and property gets divided among
>> each generation of heirs, it would eventually have wound up in the hands
>> of someone who needed to sell or develop it. Instead it's now a waste.
> Uh, real estate does not actually rise over the long term, not in
> terms of actual value.
How you define value? It's demand divided by supply, and the supply
of land doesn't increase (though development can increase its quality),
but demand increases with the population.
> For the most part, real estate prices are the
> key that creates inflation. Go back over the decades and you'll see
> that the inflation rate is identical to the real estate price
> acceleration rate. Real estate is a zero-sum game.
"Urban planning" is a scam in which zoning agencies -- OPEC-like bodies
owned and operated by existing homeowners -- impose severe artificial
limits on the supply of land available for housing (and on the quantity
and quality of housing that can be built). Its real purposes are class
segregation (as discussed in my previous post) and keeping the price of
housing super-outrageously high so that those who already own it will
always make a profit. In effect, they are a cartel.
As a result of that scam, housing prices rose at about double the rate
of inflation from about 1970-2005. The only reason they (temporarily)
stopped then was the credit crisis, caused primarily by the "Community
Reinvestment Act" which requires banks to offer mortgages to people who
can't be trusted to pay them back, under threat of being put out of
business for "redlining". The banks naturally responded to this by
writing mortgages with booby-traps in them (balloon payments or interest
rate hikes that effectively make it impossible for the borrower to pay
them except by refinancing after a few years). Now a bunch of those
traps have been triggered at once, and the banks have had to foreclose
on a huge number of homes. This problem will certainly repeat itself
again and again if CRA is not repealed, and the Democrats certainly
won't repeal it.
> Notice also that as real estate prices have declined the last year, so
> has inflation. In fact we're in a deflationary period, which is why
> banks are going bust. Banks always go bust during deflation.
Banks are going bust for two reasons. One, the fractional-reserve
system means bank deposits are highly leveraged: every dollar you have
in your checking account allows the bank to lend about $8. This helps
expansion during boom periods, but it also works in reverse when job
cuts force a lot of people to start spending their savings.
The other reason banks are in trouble is that many of them have relied
on "credit default swaps" to protect them against borrowers not paying.
A CDS is like an insurance policy on a bond -- but it's not regulated
as insurance, so a lot of CDSes were issued by companies which can't
pay the claims when the bond issuers default. This is one area where I
call for more regulation: define CDSes as insurance policies, and the
problem goes away.
>> Only a leftist
>> would have the gall to demand that working class people give that kind of
>> huge subsidy to the rich -- for the purpose of elitist segregation! --
>> and pretend that they're helping "save the earth" by doing so. Puh-leeze!
> I'm proud to be a leftist, but I don't believe in any subsidy for the
> rich.
But you see no problem in supporting it, right? To a leftist, hypocrisy
is only wrong when a right winger does it.
> I'm all in favor of returning to the 90% tax rate of my youth,
> when taxes supported the public schools and teachers didn't have to go
> to yard sales begging for supplies for their classes.
The NEA's demands that classes be kept small, that pay and promotion not
be linked to test results, and above all that it be impossible to fire
teachers even for serious criminal behavior, are responsible for public
schools' lack of funds. A voucher system would show them up and put the
union leaders out of business, which is why they can't stand the idea.
Better still would be to eliminate public schools and school taxes.
Non-parents should not have to subsidize parents. Anyone who can't
afford to pay for his own kids' education should not be allowed to have
kids.
> Oh? The only time I see bad congestion in the HMB area is on weekends
> when everybody wants to go to the beach. I visit the coastside from
> time to time.
Try driving north or east from HMB during morning commute hour.
David Kaye
wrote:
> Solving congestion by providing roads is like solving hunger by
> providing food: you can't just do it once, you need to keep doing it
> permanently,
This is the most absurd reasoning you've come up with yet. Is the
rest of your post worth reading?
> This is why the whole transport industry should be privatized. If
> we had to rely on federal and state Departments of Food, there would
> be widespread starvation in America, [....]
No, it's not worth reading. Bye.
Keith Keller
Thank Bog, you finally figured it out!
--keith
--
kkeller...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information
David Kaye
francisco.ca.us> wrote:
>
> Thank Bog, you finally figured it out!
Just like a stopped clock, a crazy person can be right twice a day. I
am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and consider that I've
witnessed one of those times, but no....
Jym Dyer
> the construction of highway 24 and the added tunnel(s) at the
> Caldecott contributed greatly to the growth of Walnut Creek
> and the rest of Central and East Contra Costa county, it is
> the existence of BART that really made all that growth (sprawl)
> possible.
=v= I think that's backwards. BART was designed for a 1960s
commute pattern, to help white-flight suburbanites get to their
jobs in San Francisco's financial district, so by design it was
mostly intended to help sprawl, but I wouldn't say it caused it.
=v= It's the highways and roads that make sprawl possible. The
pattern afflicts every highway corridor in the Bay Area, whether
or not BART goes there.
=v= BART has also promoted driving in these suburbs by having a
sea of parking around most stops. This parking has been free of
charge (i.e. subsdized by the rest of us) for decades; now it's
a small fee in places (i.e. still subsidized by the rest of us).
By using this pattern rather than a transit-oriented development
approach, BART perpetuates reliance on cars. Also, even though
those cars are driven relatively short distances, it generally
means two cold starts every day, when the cars pollute the most.
=v= Even the so-called transit-oriented BART stops do the exact
opposite of transit-oriented design: parked cars are closer to
the station than anything else.
<_Jym_>
Kirk_Diggler
<snip>
>
> 1. Build a freeway, partly or mostly underground, through SF from the
> Golden Gate Bridge to I-280, probably using the Sunset Blvd. corridor.
Building on Sunset Blvd will be a cinch: the folks in the Sunset district on
the "frontage" streets of 36th and 37th Avenues will easily allow a freeway to
be built without ANY questions..... and the corridor thru the Richmond
district - be it via 25th Avenue or 34th Avenue - will be a breeze cause
everyone knows that the folks in the Richmond district are nothing but
sheep...... and ESPECIALLY there will be no problems - N-O-N-E - with the
residents of the Sea Cliff neighborhood allowing a freeway thru their
neighborhood as they'll see the freeway in their neighborhood as increasing
the property values.....
>
> 2. The Devil's Slide Tunnel.
NEVER in out lifetimes will the thing EVER be built....
> 5. Widen 880/17 to at least eight lanes all the way from Oakland to
> San Jose (if this hasn't already been completed), and to freeway status
> and at least six lanes from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
The gazillions of homes/business/dwellings that are butted up RIGHT against
the existing freeway corridor from Oakland to Milpitas should cost NO MORE
than a couple to a few hundred thousands of dollars to clear out via eminent
domain right? This one is a no brainer!
>
> 6. The Southern Crossing.
An 8 mile long corridor that will HAVE TO cross thru the dirt poor town of
Alameda - which will, OF COURSE, just roll over and allow it - and thru a
State Beach? NO PROBLEM!
> 10. The east-west freeway that Mr. Pombo proposed between San Jose and the
> Central Valley.
Well, let's see: given that the terrain/land between San Jose and Patterson -
the
town in the Central Valley directly in line to the east of San Jose - consists
of series of ridges that rise RAPIDLY to around OVER 3,000 feet that are
followed by DEEP valleys that fall down RAPIDLY to below 1,000 feet; and that
these ridges and valleys make up the terrain/land between San Jose and
Patterson for around 50 miles or so...... I figure the cost of building a fast
smooth 8 lane freeway thru that kind of terrain/land as no more than a few
millions dollars AT MOST..... but then again maybe I'm not doing my
calculations correctly.....
David Kaye
wrote:
> 1. Build a freeway, partly or mostly underground, through SF from the
> Golden Gate Bridge to I-280, probably using the Sunset Blvd. corridor.
No way will people allow 5 years of construction, or maybe closer to
10 along Sunset. BART construction on Market Street took 5 years and
ruined it for 20 years. In fact, Civic Center still hasn't recovered
from BART construction 40 years ago.
>
> 2. The Devil's Slide Tunnel.
Okay.
> 3. The Mission Freeway (an upgrade of CA-238 from Hayward down to
> I-680 near Mission San Jose).
Since the original proposal, the Garin Ranch property has been built
up as has the Meyers ranch, and you won't get the cooperation of the
people along Highland and Cal State Univ. Also, north of downtown is
all freshly built in the past 15 years or so.
> 5. Widen 880/17 to at least eight lanes all the way from Oakland to
> San Jose (if this hasn't already been completed), and to freeway status
> and at least six lanes from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
That stretch is already 8 to 10 lanes (10 south of Davis Street in
SL). How're you going to widen it any more? That stretch goes back
more than 50 years. Homes are build right up against the freeway for
30 miles. Take a drive out along there.
>
> 6. The Southern Crossing.
To me the Southern Crossing makes sense given how much traffic goes
between the Eastbay and the Peninsula. Also, given the biotech campus
of UCSF this is probably a good idea. Put it from the foot of Cesar
Chavez to Bay Farm Island or Hegenberger.
> 10. The east-west freeway that Mr. Pombo proposed between San Jose and
> the Central Valley.
There really is no good way to go between SJ and the Valley, except to
go south to 152 and then use 33. As it is 152 is a nightmare and it's
not been healthy for cyclists.
But all a connection beween the Central Valley and SJ is going to do
is encourage more and more people living in SJ to keep their jobs but
move to Manteca.
spamtrap1888
To avoid some of the 152 headache, I've been driving 25 to 156, which
merges with 152 at Casa de Fruta. But cycling up over the hill would
be nightmarish.