Sorry for the lack of posts last week: it turns out Las Vegas hotels would rather have their guests gamble than access the Internet. I don’t gamble, but I did enjoy early morning bike rides to the Red Rocks National Conservation Area.
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Since I had to get up at 5:15 am to beat the heat for those rides, and even earlier this morning to catch my plane, I’m too beat to write much of a post. So I’ll merely point to loyal ally Ron Utt’s recent article about Obama’s “Plan to Coerce People out of Their Cars.” I hope to have more interesting stuff later this week.
I wonder what our idiot paid blogger ws and highwayman will have to say.
Thanks
JK
Red Rocks is pretty. Did you check out the pictographs?
JK
I wonder what our idiot paid blogger ws and highwayman will have to say.
My, my! We’re grumpy on Monday mornings. No posts but JK is still surly.
Regarding the illogic of Utt’s article, here is a quite informed website that routinely and consistently rebuts Utt’s sort of logic:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
Here is their “About” statement, which reflects much wisdom borne of hard experience:
Low-tech Magazine refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution. A simple, sensible, but nevertheless controversial message; high-tech has become the idol of our society.
Of Utt’s article, he states: “Moreover, only 1.7 percent of Portland commuters to downtown use bicycles, an amount less than the share of Americans who walk to work.”
He then uses Wendell Cox’s article on New Geography as a source: http://www.newgeography.com/content/00818-portland-a-model-national-policy
I see nowhere any statistic in WC’s article that backs up that statement for bicycling – only the statistic he mentioned in the sentence before this one. I have not heard of any official statistic of “downtown” travel, but Portand’s biking rates are much higher than that for work commute.
Furthermore, Utt relied on data from the 2000 Census for this “factoid”. The recent ACS reveals a much higher level of bicycling for work commute.
JK:“I wonder what our idiot paid blogger ws and highwayman will have to say.”
ws: I wish I got paid.
Low-tech Magazine refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution.
I like that quote. I’m a child of the technology era, growing from boyhood to adulthood during the roaring Eighties, and if there’s one thing I appreciate as a solution, it’s technology… but sometimes “low-tech” is the best “high-tech” solution.
One example I can think of is eBooks. I am a professional writer, and I publish both in print and in eBook format. My sales ratio has been consistent with the adoption rate of eBooks as guesstimated by whichever pundit you like; this means it is small beans compared to print sales, but the cost of publishing is much friendlier so I have no complaint. The problem is that eBooks just aren’t THERE yet. We have multiple-hundred-dollar Kindle readers pushing into the marketplace, and they are a hard sell up against even an $8 paperback (the going rate these days). At long last there is some market penetration in Mobi for RIM devices and app support for iPhones, but that’s still just groping toward a solution like a pair of drunken undergrads trying to get friendly in the dark. Until they can publish eBooks on disposable pixeldye paper powered by light and motion, it will remain the most sensible option to go low-tech and just buy a book. As Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik adeptly pointed out, “Our platform of choice is Book. Book requires no charging and has an intuitive, touch-based interface. Best of all, Book works with the shelves you have at home!”
I hate to get OT more than I usually do, but why does one need a Kindle to read a digital format book? It seems like Amazon wants a stranglehold on the market by making digital books have to use a certain format only recognized by Kindle.
Ebooks are going to end up like digital music (you can’t play Apple’s ACC files you download on just any music player). Certain formats are only going to be read by certain programs/units, which I think is just going to hamper the development of digital books and media.
My main reaction to Dr. Utt’s piece is – wow! What an overblown mess.
“When asked if this was government intrusion into people’s lives, LaHood responded that “about everything we do around here is government intrusion in people’s lives,” a sentiment that would have certainly surprised the authors of the United States Constitution, a document whose major purpose was to restrain government.”
Untrue. Governments are supposed to govern. That’s the point. The constitution provides checks and balances – which is why the UK badly needs a constitution – but still intends for governments to govern. What would Dr Utt make of politicians who take money for not doing any work? Perhaps he admires our MEPs, many of whom seem to think they get paid just to turn up.
“For starters, how is it that getting people to walk or bicycle to work or to the grocery store will get them there faster? Other than infrequent situations in the center of a handful of dense urban areas in the middle of rush hour, this proposal to reduce travel time is naïve and inconsistent with common sense.”
Whenever someone uses ‘common sense’ as a justification for something, they have given up reasoning the point. So let’s have a go at reasoning the situation.
At 30mph, a car moves 1 mile every two minutes. At 20mph, a bicycle moves 1 mile every three minutes. So, for local trips, there isn’t a lot of difference in journey time – except that cycling improves physical fitness, and reduces cost, pollution, congestion and urban blight (unless people think that a flock of assorted multi-coloured metal boxes stuck in a traffic jam is pretty).
Moreover, at 20mph, most junctions work better. This is important because traffic spends a lot of time waiting at junctions. At 20mph, give-way/yield junctions have better gap acceptance. Traffic lights can be removed or have their intergreens severely pruned. So the few minutes extra journey time can be easily clawed back. Why not have a more rational and grown-up transport system, free of aggression, where everyone works together to make journeys happen?
Incidentally, that’s why we have professional transport planners to do this sort of work, instead of people stuffed to the gills with their ‘common sense’.
“LaHood’s implication that people in the Washington area spend one and a half hours getting to work and an hour getting to the grocery store is simply not true.”
I seem to remember Antiplanner arguing the opposite, that traffic was so bad that we needed toll lanes and double-decked roads. One of them is clearly wrong…
“In 1985, approximately 2.1 percent of motorized travel in the Portland urban area was on transit and it remained 2.1 percent in 2007, the latest year for which data is available.”
Because transit runs on only a few roads within this defined ‘urban area’. Corridor by corridor, what is the modal share of transit?
“Specifically, this retro approach to transportation would mean restoring animals–notably horses and oxen–to a central role in America’s transportation system.”
Bizarre. Next.
I find the whole “coerce people out of their car” argument to be so weak. If Utt and his ilk can use those arguments, I’m going to use the argument that I have been coerced into using a car for every trip due to municipal and federal policies that dictate an automobile built environment over a pedestrian oriented one instead.
JimKarlock said: I wonder what our idiot paid blogger ws and highwayman will have to say.
THWM: Sorry Karlock, I have to work at REAL job for a living.
Though I read Ron Utt’s rant before at Peter Samuel’s blog.
http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4257
I can’t explain his loopy mind set, maybe it’s libertarian magic dust?
I like ws’ take above: folks living in McSuburbs know, or they find out soon enough, that upon having kids they are now unpaid chauffers for more than a decade, due to the single-use zoning and distances to and betwee services, retail, and tortuosity involved in non-motorized (come now: is the suburb laid out for women?) . And, as Glaeser likes to say, homeowners move in then coerce their electeds to disallow any housing type that may decrease their property values.
These are folks coerced into cars, into being unpaid chauffeurs.
DS
“do, but why does one need a Kindle to read a digital format book? It seems like Amazon wants a stranglehold on the market by making digital books have to use a certain format only recognized by Kindle.” — ws
I can carry a slew of books, magazines and even a few select blogs with me in one little unit. A unit that is built to be easy to read in bright light (a huge problem even for the best of LCDs) and, at least for me, actually nicer to use to read than a book.
Will they corner the market? Maybe, maybe not. They don’t need to though to make huge amounts of money. It has the potential to be a major disruption to the current publishing business model. I’m glad someone finally made a serious attempt at it.
Dan: These are folks coerced into cars, into being unpaid chauffeurs.
Mike: You obviously have never become a father. Taking the bus/rail/etc with babies is not an option unless you can’t afford to do otherwise. The automobile is THE transportation device for families with babies, full stop, because no other option works a fraction as well and no other option puts you as much in control of your family’s safety. This is the case regardless of where you live, what density, etc. Just one of those things you won’t understand unless you have to do it personally…
I agree with prk, and we must consider that dead trees are an accessory to our daily clothes fashions – one cannot be impressed by what one is reading on a Kindle, but you certainly can advertise that you are hip and smart by carrying the latest NYT bestseller. Books are good social signals. That will be lost with technology and it will be Star Trek readers soon.
DS
Alarming but telling – is Frances King’s equating intrusion and coercion with governing. The inability to make such a distinction is at the root of so many policy problems today.
I’d rather have the freedom of a car to go to where I need to be, when I need to be there, carrying the things I need.
Than to be a slave to a transit schedule and it’s routes.
Uh, Dan, are you ignoring Mike? wtf?
Mike,
I much prefer to put my son in my bike trailer. I grew up on the back of my mother’s bike and my son, at five, on account of similar exposure, is the most skilled cyclist at the park (can you say five year old track stand?) No diabetes in our family, thank you cardio workout.
I believe Dan has a child, so….
Mike: You obviously have never become a father.
snork
Tell that to the 1st-grader learning gymnastics and lacrosse today. We take her via the train, and the gym is a 5-7 minute walk from the stop. Thursday she’ll be in the bike trailer as we ride to the stop.
You amuse me greatly, boy, with your silly-*ss assertions and presumptions. Are you a parody character, dreamt up by someone as e-performance art? Whichever, keep ’em coming.
DS
Sure thing, Dan. Whatever you say. After all, here on the Internets, we’re all black-belt test pilots with washboard abs. To put it another way, I doubt you have children, because you made your original statement without having reflected on the matter, and I called you on it. You had no response because you were caught cold. t g called you on THAT. Then, you made up a story.
The problem is that your story is implausible. No real parent would surrender control of their child’s transportation to a bus driver, etc, unless there was no other feasible option. Jesus, the train, then a walk, then a bike trailer? I’m sure you just stowed your bike and trailer in the train’s overhead compartment or something and nobody blinked an eye? (And what of those people whose child is an infant? Sure, you can fit car seat and diaper bag into stroller — most strollers these days are modular — but where are you going to put it once you get on the bus or train?… and that’s assuming you can even fit it through the aisles, which is no guarantee with older vehicles.) Your entire story fails for the simple reason that you could have kept control of your child’s safety AND accomplished all that stuff in a fraction of the time and with no equipment problems if you had used an automobile. And no real parent has the time or patience to dick around with options that aren’t the fastest and easiest and most controllable.
You fail. You haven’t been there, so you don’t know. You mispronounced “shibboleth,” Dan. You won’t admit it, but I know the truth… and so does every other reader who has been a parent.
t g, no argument with the bike trailer concept. It’s not too useful this time of year in this part of the country, but there are plenty of opportunities when things cool down.
Wow. Got it. No one is that .addled. “Mike” is a parody character.
So keep ’em coming. Mr/Ms Performance Artist!
Let’s see your creator’s riff on my complete streets/context-sensitive solutions work…um, “Mike” (wink, wink): so we are redesigning streets to deemphasize vehicular throughput and standardizing some concepts into design and infra rules.
What say you, “Mike’s” parody character creator? Do you want to contact me offline for context so you can do a realistic riff?
DS
Mike,
I wasn’t calling Dan on the child. I was corroborating that Dan has made several references to his child on here through the last year.
As far as the “shibolleth”…
I am in constant awe at how fat other people’s kids are when they are taught to reify the automobile. My son (again 5 years old) has no problem going on a 5-6 mile bike ride with me (in the desert heat of tucson). Why? Because not only does he think its normal, but he likes it. Why? Because we’ve ridden bikes since he was a baby. Sometimes with no helmets! Gasp.
Re: safety
What kind of Hayekian sounds like Ralph Nader? This isn’t a joke. Maybe it is. What’s the punchline.
Dan: so we are redesigning streets to deemphasize vehicular throughput and standardizing some concepts into design and infra rules.
Mike: Who’s going to pay for it? If the answer is anyone other than yourselves (whoever “we” is), pass. Not interested.
You will notice that even though you are absolutely over the top lately with the name-calling, I have yet to respond in kind. There is a reason for that, though I don’t expect you to recognize it.
You will notice that even though you are absolutely over the top lately with the name-calling, I have yet to respond in kind.
Yes, the subtle yet effective genius of not explictly saying that your implict implication that I’m a liar is so…so…Einsteinian in its proportionality to objectively assessing the objective situation contextually that, objectively, without morals or ethics, the Objectivist drivel…something…drivel Rand…Obje…Galt…
DS
Thank you, Dan. Once again, you have proven my point superbly.
Assuredly and certainly so, without any doubt.
Haven’t heard from the parody character’s creator yet, though.
DS
Mike: You obviously have never become a father. Taking the bus/rail/etc with babies is not an option unless you can’t afford to do otherwise. The automobile is THE transportation device for families with babies, full stop, because no other option works a fraction as well and no other option puts you as much in control of your family’s safety. This is the case regardless of where you live, what density, etc. Just one of those things you won’t understand unless you have to do it personally…
THWM: That’s why there are strollers!
People have functioned for a very long time with out cars.
Dan is right, people shouldn’t be coerced into driving.
craig said: I’d rather have the freedom of a car to go to where I need to be, when I need to be there, carrying the things I need. Than to be a slave to a transit schedule and it’s routes.
THWM: That’s your choice and so be it.
I drive some times too, though I don’t want to be tethered to a car.