Posted on 07/13/2019 6:11:52 AM PDT by NOBO2012
Let me posit this hypothesis, liberalism is the new secular Puritanism. Instead of believing in a just and almighty God they believe in government. Instead of basing their beliefs and religion on the Bible they base it on their own – ever expanding – belief system: the principles of government. The Puritan ideal of living a life of pious, consecrated actions translates for the new Puritans to insisting that YOU live a pious life, consecrated to THEIR principles. Because you were born too stupid to determine what’s best for you. Hence the need for social engineering; here’s an example of that at its finest:
Portland City Council approved a plan Wednesday to study short-and-long-term strategies to charge people to use city streets, an effort intended to reduce congestion and curb carbon emissions as the region expects as many as 500,000 new residents by 2040.
The city will create a Pricing for Equitable Mobility task force to study and recommend potential road user fees – such as cordons, where drivers are charged to use certain streets in the city center or potentially more robust freeway tolls in the area…
Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the transportation bureau, said the city must take bold steps to try and get people out of their cars. “We are going the wrong direction on transportation,” she said.
In other words, they are going to pursue (taxpayer funded) ways to manipulate you to do what we want you to do, which is “get our of your cars.” No matter how they attempt to package and sell it, its always about control. And it’s always them, controlling you.
Portland expects an increase of half a million people in the next 2 decades. I suspect more than half of that is due to illegal immigrants but that’s beside the point. If you’re expecting that kind of increase in population (Portland’s current population is 632,000, the whole county is 808,000) 500,000 is nearly an 80% increase. I don’t think bikes are the answer.
I would think they would be doing something more than figuring out how to legislate you out of your car. Like maybe adding new highways and/or expanding the ones you have to accommodate that kind of increase. How about expanding public transportation, the left’s normal go-to device to control your driving habits? But no, they prefer to manipulate you through taxes and regulation. It’s way more lucrative and fun.
To be fair Portland isn’t the only municipality failing to expand the road system to accommodate increased traffic due to population growth. Around here they are constantly doing construction but over the past two decades it has been predominantly repair and replace, not expand. So if we had 2 lanes in 1970 by 1990 we might have gotten 4 lanes. But now, if we had 4 lanes in 1990…we still have 4 lanes - unless they convert one of the traffic lanes to a bike only lane.
And whether the bureaucrats like it or not, traffic has increased geometrically since the 90s. Roads and highways around these parts are crazy. At any given hour the expressways and surface streets around here look like what was once only rush hour. Rush hour looks like LA, which is to say gridlock. Our construction budget has been diverted to patching and then eventually paving over existing roads and spending the rest on creating new roundabouts that everybody except traffic engineers, concrete contractors and road builders hate, hate, HATE!
Yeah, this makes more sense than a traffic signal. And look, a greenspace! (that nobody can get to)
Oh, and new bike lanes on existing roads which further deceases the traffic load they can accommodate.
I’ve got an idea: let’s take a 4 lane street and turn it into a 3 lane street with a bike lane! And concrete boulevard!
It’s no coincidence that you keep hearing that Millennials don’t want to own cars. It’s just something else they’ve been brainwashed into. Cars are bad! Therefore let’s not waste our time trying to figure out how to actually accommodate the traffic load that comes with an increasing population and a good economy. After all, getting new right-of-ways for new roads is hard! And new roads cost a lot of money we’d rather spend on other stuff, like welcoming illegal immigrants into our community. Besides, most problems can best be solved by writing regulations to control your behavior. It’s both fun and easy!
How about your communities? How much repair and replace v. expanding road capacity? Just curious.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
Realize that there is nothing Liberal about progressives and the left. Liberalism does have a definition and this definition does not include worshiping at the alter of Statism. — Captain Compassion.
bump
ff
They are WRONG!!
The problem is NOT the increase in population. This problem is current across the country and is the fault of merely ONE America, President Trump.
With UNEMPLOYMENT at an all-time LOW, the streets and highways are jammed beyond capacity by millions of people driving to WORK in the morning rush hour. White, Black, Men, Women and all minorities see their employment rates setting records virtually every day. Then, in latter afternoon they all finish work and drive home, jamming all tranportation routes once again. Blame Trump for something else he’s done.
The same occurs in supermarkets, restaurants, and other places where people with acutal SPENDING money congregate.
Put the blame where it really belongs.
This legislative session got soooo bad, the R's had to walk out for 8 days, the Governor sent the State Patrol after them, none were caught, the session ended, the R's saved taxpayers and small Oregon business, yay!
“...nothing Liberal about progressives...”
Freedom is a liberal.
Tyranny is the progressive.
>Freedom is a liberal.
Tyranny is the progressive.<
Just so.
I compare the Left for which there remains no part of the old extreme Left that’s extreme to them anymore to be like a flock of angry and canabalistic birds.
These birds sing (virtue signaling etc) not to find a mate or acquire / defend territory but to announce that they conform to the flock, and they eagerly tear into any bird that lets its song deviate too far from whatever the flock is doing at the moment.
Of course it goes without saying that these unwholesome and hyper-conformist brutes are not nice to any people / other critters outside of their flock.
Roundabouts: they’re like cloverleafs except instead of being designed to get you where you’re going they’re designed to suck by assholes who hate you, your car, the environment, their parents and cats.
Okay ... maybe not their parents and cats ... but you get the idea.
I read recently that, as places all over the US are switching from traffic lights to roundabouts for safety, in the UK they are switching from roundabouts to traffic lights. FOR SAFETY!!
Small roundabouts may be okay but the big ones with three or more lanes are just wrong. Even the two lane sort is annoying.
Around here the few one or two lane examples I’ve run across are often combined with speed bumps / humps and seem like they’re intended to replace stop signs with yield signs and slow you down or else have the crap in the backseat go for a bounce.
There used to be a larger roundabout on Harry Hines that I’ve been told was a real cluster **** by those old enough to have driven it.
Maybe it just comes down to people being dumb enough to forget what bad ideas look like every third generation?
Bkmk
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