However, if someone wants to move to an area and pay the taxes to build the infrastructure necessary to support his chosen lifestyle, should we be in the business of telling him to find somewhere else to live?
I thought the gist of this article was that the government was using tax dollars to fund public transportation which would not meet the needs of the community but would instead try to channel the citizens into living a lifestyle they would not normally choose. And, allowing the govenment tell us how to live is a bad thing.
As for curing the traffic problem, I prefer to look for solutions that decrease government involvement in our lives and increase personal freedoms. The idea of a sliding-scale charge for the use of roads based on peak traffic times sounds interesting.
If I want to spend the $$ to commute two hours each way, why is it your business?
If I want to spend the $$ to commute two hours each way, why is it your business?
I don't disagree with anything you say. I don't care if you spend any amount of money to get to and fro. All I am saying is that we, as a society, bitch-bitch-bitch about traffic, yet propose the very thing that is guaranteed to make it worse. The problem is not enough roads, but too many people.
You can move wherever you want. If you want to drive two hours in clutch-grinding traffic, that's your problem. Asking the taxpayers to fund a 4 lane highway out into the hinterlands for your McMansion, and then 15 years later asking for it to be expanded to 8 lanes is not really using the ol' noodle.
Yes, I don't want to see the remaining asthetic beauty of our nation ground up into yuppie slums. I know that is counter to every FReeper notion in the book, but I really don't want Seattle looking like NYC with mountains, just so we can make room for Californians and Cambodians who dicked up their part of the world and now bring their expertise to my area. LA , Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas all have the same endless paving that provides endless development, and a festering slum of a city. Mexico City is not what I aspire to.
Yes, freedom dictates that we allow our cities to look like Mexico City or Sao Paulo or Beijing. Is that what we want? I say no. If that makes me an elitist, so be it. Some things are worth preserving. Sustainable population is going to be forced upon us either by ourselves or by nature. Nature will be far more brutal.