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To: Sherman Logan
This could easily be solved simply by mandating each subdivision connect to the adjacent ones with a sidewalk, not a street. Cars are still restricted from taking shortcuts through the neighborhood, but pedestrians and cyclists can get around without riding the highway.

I wouldn't mandate it but if the local communities want to pay for it, I'm fine with it as long as they use local funds to pay for it.

This country will never get out of this hole if everybody thinks their personal convenience of choice should be paid for by everyone. Keep taxes and services as local as possible and if the people of one town wants to pay for them, then they'll vote to pay for them. States and counties should pay for their own roads outside the interstate highway system.
72 posted on 08/17/2012 6:46:17 PM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: cripplecreek

When I say mandate I mean at the local level when a developer applies for permitting for his subdivision.


74 posted on 08/17/2012 6:51:25 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: cripplecreek
I'm about to quit on this thread, but you raise the point in a good way. Who should pay for whose "personal convenience of choice?"

The carheads on this thread have generally ignored the simple solutions that have been put forward. Build roads with ample shoulders or sidewalks, and provide enough crossings so that cross traffic by pedestrians and cyclists is reasonably convenient. I don't think these are radical suggestions. I'm not arguing for bikepaths everywhere (although more bikepaths would be nice.) I DO believe that in heavily urbanized areas, non-motorized movement should be accommodated.

So let's talk about personal conveniences of choice. A suburbanite chooses, for example, to live 30 miles away from his job. His personal convenience involves arterial commuter roads slashed through other people's neighborhoods. If those roads are improperly designed, they become major barriers to non-motorized neighborhood traffic. It is the BARRIER that I object to, not the cars per se.

"Complete roads" is a matter of internalizing the externalities. If the commuters want to drive noisome, dirty, and dangerous blight-inducing roads through other people's neighborhoods, it is not unreasonable to require mitigation. The cost of those offsets should be considered a cost of building the road.

Dagnabit, roads in the city should have sidewalks so that people on foot or bikes can get around without risking their lives. Roads in the suburbs and rural areas should have ample shoulders. This in fact is usually part of the original design of the road, or in theory should be. What happens is that eventually commuter traffic grows, another lane is needed, the shoulder gets taken, and now you've got yet another dangerous road with no accommodation for anything but cars. In other words, a barrier.

The extra lanes, the limited access, the high speed, cars-only roadways are all driven by the personal convenience of commuters who want to live ever further away from their jobs, out in cul de sac land, and shave time off their commutes by imposing these costs on other people. And then they rise up on forums like this and argue that it's an unreasonable request when people like me advocate sidewalks and more frequent crossings so that their commuter sluiceway doesn't become an impassable barrier in my neighborhood.

One size doen't fit all, but as a resident of a walkable, bikeable neighborhood, I will oppose any commuter highway "improvements" that would dump more commuter cut-through traffic onto residential streets. I will oppose any road-widening schemes that involve taking peoples' sidewalks and front yards; the city is blighted by corridors of formerly attractive residential streets that were destroyed in the 60's and 70's to create commuter racetracks, so no more.

There are great neighborhoods all over the city, both in the city and throughout the suburbs. In Washington, and I suspect in most major metro areas that are choking on traffic, people need to get over ingrained prejudices and adapt to living closer to their jobs.

One size doesn't fit all, but in the DC area, there is no way -- I don't care if you're liberal, conservative, or Martian, NO WAY -- that anticipated population and traffic growth can be met simply by increased roadbuilding. You cannot add enough lanes to I-66 or I-270 or I-95/395 or the beltways to handle all the people who want a half acre in the suburbs and a fast commute into town. It can't be done. So traffic just gets worse. This is what is driving gentrification in the city; people are already adapting. The city is already changing fast. If we could just voucher the schools, the rate of change would astound you, but that's a subject for another day. Around here, we are reaching the practicable limits of roadbuilding. Your situation may differ.

82 posted on 08/18/2012 4:57:09 AM PDT by sphinx
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