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No, city planners have just realized what you have failed to realize: we can't solve traffic unless we get rid of the cars.

Citation?

First hit on Google - plenty of supporting information and real science out there if you are actually interested:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/20...

And by definition when people from the suburbs take the metro they aren't driving. So, yeah, it does cause a reduction in the number of cars on the freeways and surface streets.

Has anyone actually measured a long-term reduction in traffic? The freeways are still packed, so it seems that whenever somebody gets out of their car and gets on [transit], it's bringing up a little bit more room on the roads, and there's somebody out there waiting to use it.

The TGV cars donâ(TM)t meet antiquated US safety standards that require cars to be heavy steel cages instead of modern safety engineering ideas like crumple zones.

The regulations got updated, opening the doors for importing trains, but Trump blocked it until this past week because it was an Obama administration policy change.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/20...

Families don't want to live in high rise blocks.

Actually they do. Proof of the fact is that city governments must transfer a lot of wealth from high rises to single-family homes just to get people to live in the suburbs.

Don't be so mean to them. They are, after all, subsidizing your house!

Are roads any different? Texas couldn't find even one road that pays for itself. How can you expect transit to compete with that?

Yes, roads benefit people who don't use them, but so does transit by making room for more cars on the road. (People say that transit reduces traffic congestion but this is just as false as the idea that road projects reduce traffic congestion.)

Let the free market decide

The free market cannot provide decisions in a heavily subsidized market. Automobile travel is heavily subsidized; thus rail travel is competing with another transportation provider, private autos, that receives a near 50% subsidy.

This article presents an unusually low estimate of the subsidies that autos receive:

Over the last 40 years, gas taxes, tolls, and registration fees have covered only about 60 or 70 percent of roadway expenditures across all levels of U.S. government. The remainder has been paid using property, income, and other taxes not related to transportation. These subsidies for driving reduce its cost and increase driving demand in the United States.

from here: https://www.citylab.com/transp...

This article is much more in line with other articles:

A new report from the Tax Foundation shows 50.7 percent of America’s road spending comes from gas taxes, tolls, and other fees levied on drivers. The other 49.3 percent? Well, that comes from general tax dollars, just like education and health care. The way we spend on roads has nothing to do with the free market, or even how much people use roads.

“Nationwide in 2010, state and local governments raised $37 billion in motor fuel taxes and $12 billion in tolls and non-fuel taxes, but spent $155 billion on highways,” writes the Tax Foundation’s Joseph Henchman. Another $28 billion of that $155 billion comes from revenue from the federal gas tax.

from here: https://usa.streetsblog.org/20...

Most other studies seem to hover around that 50% mark. The point being that "let the free market decide" is a nice quip; but it does not work in markets that do not rely on the free market; but instead rely on heavy subsidies.

The argument that's used in my city is that people have a right to continue to live in the neighborhood they've been living in, even if they can no longer afford it.

Some of our Alderman will even intervene and try to prevent a property owner from selling his property to a developer if his current tenants complain they are being priced out of the neighborhood.

However, Macias hasnâ(TM)t sold the existing building to Plati yet because of a conflict with his tenants, who were on month-to-month leases (which have been shown to make tenants more susceptible to evictions), and paying only $500 a month in rent. After Macias gave them 30-day notices to leave the building, in late September residents, supported by the activists, vowed to fight the evictions and stopped paying rent, arguing that they needed more time to find housing in the increasingly expensive rental market of Logan Square.

DNAinfo is reporting that First Ward alderman Joe Moreno has threatened not to approve the required zoning change for the TOD unless Macias cooperates, which would effectively block the sale of the property. âoeBy refusing to work with me on a resolution that would allow for a dignified and humane relocation of the tenants, [Macias] has chosen to pursue an opposite, heavy-handed tactic,â Moreno said in a statement to DNA. âoeBy doing so, he has revealed himself to be a bad community partner, who may no longer merit the granted city zoning privileges that are enabling the sale of his property on his terms,â Moreno said.

https://sf.streetsblog.org/201... https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba...

Digging a multi-billion dollar tunnel for a few thousand daily riders that would have easily been served on improved buss service. It is of course delayed and massively over budget. In the meantime the real need was for transit up and down the peninsula. The tech companies you seem to harbor ill will against quickly put together their own mass transit, bus service in a few months had thousands of daily riders on a relatively fast, efficient, clean and safe service.

Likewise Uber/Lyft and others filled the gap when municipal taxi commissions and municipal mass transit failed at their jobs. I'm no fan of the ridehailing apps, but they exist based on government's failures.

They make it practical for investors to 'park' their money into real estate and keep houses off the market.

Then allow rentals only in owner-occupied units.

And switch at least partially from property taxes to land value taxes in order to discourage banking of vacant land and end the reverse subsidy of suburban middle-class single-family homes at the expense of poor inner-city residents.

And if you're really concerned about home affordability, allow cities to upzone heavily trafficked residential streets (the ones you don't want your children to play on anyway) for multifamily homes in order to drive down home prices by flooding the housing market. You can further reduce rents by about $100-200 per month by abolishing minimum parking requirements.

Wrong.

  https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/01/nyc-drivers-injured-1324-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-june-and-killed-nine

Of eight fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/21/nyc-drivers-injured-1144-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-july-and-killed-14

Cyclist Neftaly Ramirez was killed by an Action Carting driver who left the scene. NYPD declined to file charges for the fatal hit-and-run, and instead made excuses for the driver to the media. The majority of hit-and-run drivers who strike people in NYC are not held accountable in any way.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/09/21/nyc-drivers-injured-970-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-august-and-killed-seven

Of five fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

Wrong.

  https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/01/nyc-drivers-injured-1324-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-june-and-killed-nine

Of eight fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/21/nyc-drivers-injured-1144-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-july-and-killed-14

Cyclist Neftaly Ramirez was killed by an Action Carting driver who left the scene. NYPD declined to file charges for the fatal hit-and-run, and instead made excuses for the driver to the media. The majority of hit-and-run drivers who strike people in NYC are not held accountable in any way.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/09/21/nyc-drivers-injured-970-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-august-and-killed-seven

Of five fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

Wrong.

  https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/01/nyc-drivers-injured-1324-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-june-and-killed-nine

Of eight fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/21/nyc-drivers-injured-1144-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-july-and-killed-14

Cyclist Neftaly Ramirez was killed by an Action Carting driver who left the scene. NYPD declined to file charges for the fatal hit-and-run, and instead made excuses for the driver to the media. The majority of hit-and-run drivers who strike people in NYC are not held accountable in any way.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/09/21/nyc-drivers-injured-970-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-august-and-killed-seven

Of five fatal crashes on surface streets reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, no motorists were known to have been charged for causing a death.

Clearly we need more parked cars and fences along the road for people to hit instead of pedestrians and bicyclists. Get those bad drivers off the road before they do any real damage!

Unfortunately, transportation engineers have been facilitating the opposite by removing roadside trees and therefore violating their code of ethics to protect public safety. Isn't it ironic when they widen streets to make it easier for paramedics to respond to collisions caused by wide streets?

That and other reasons are why transportation engineers are the stooges of the engineering profession.

A car driver losing control and injuring a pedestrian would serve more time.

In the US, generally not. I've heard of cases where pedestrians have had some fairly grievous permanent injuries after being hit by a car while they were walking on the sidewalk, and the driver hasn't faced charges. This taxi driver, who hopped onto the sidewalk and severed the leg of a pedestrian, is still driving his cab, as an example.

I'm not sure what I think of that. On the one hand, reckless behavior causes tragedies. On the other, pretty much by definition tragedies caused by reckless, rather than deliberate, behavior are accidents - the fact they're avoidable accidents doesn't mean the perpetrators ever intended them to happen. There needs to be consequences, but destroying someone's career seems to be spreading the misery, not preventing more.

A better focus would be on creating systems that make such accidents more difficult. The same, ultimately, is true of drones.

The distinction between residential and commercial establishment has been a staple for a long time, and it has a lot of value...

...for middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, but not for the inner-city neighborhoods that subsidize them. That's right, single-use zoning is a form of reverse welfare that subsidizes the middle- and upper-classes at the expense of the poor.

Also, what's the value in prohibiting someone from building an apartment building next door to a factory? You'd think it would be good to bring jobs to a city without bringing traffic.

In Japan by contrast, they do things a little smarter than the USA's clumsy approach to zoning. Instead of single-use zoning, they allow anything of a lesser nuisance than the area is zoned for. A grocery store is less of a nuisance than a factory, so they allow grocery stores in industrial zones. An apartment building is less of a nuisance than a grocery store, so they allow apartment buildings in commercial zones. And a single-family house is less of a nuisance than an apartment building, so single-family houses are allowed in multifamily residential zones, but not the reverse.

If every neighborhood in a city had to become self-sufficient in city spending versus property tax revenue, you can be sure that people living in middle-class, single-family residential zones suddenly faced with massive property tax bills would do everything in their power to attract bed-and-breakfasts, corner stores, and the other tax-efficient amenities that existed in our neighborhoods until we legislated our freedoms away in the aftermath of WWII.

We currently spend stupendously huge amounts of money on healthcare, education and infrastructure.

Education "more than any other nation in the report' (per capita, roughtly $15,000 per student, approximate $1 Trillion):
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...

Healthcare "$3.2 Trillion" (over $10,000 per person):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...

Infrastructure "$416 Billion":
http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...

That's approximately $4.5 Trillion

Those [who] are a drain on the system don't [get to complain].

Tell that to those who live in tax-inefficient suburbs and yet complain the loudest when things don't go their way!

Another self-entitled cyclist who believes that cars shouldn't be in the bike lane, eh? What next you selfish person? Are you going to disallow cars from driving on the sidewalk also?

/s

(The article below indicates that NYPD was not going to take action against a driver who did just that, mowed down a pedestrian, and drove away, however the driver has turned herself in.)

http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/06/03/driver-who-injured-woman-on-manhattan-sidewalk-pleads-to-two-felonies/

You have been warned repeatedly that cars are dangerous. Therefore, if you still get in a car and you get hurt or killed by a drunk driver, you only have yourself to blame.

You don't happen to work for the City of New York, do you?

You simply can't get the number of riders to make a bus system pay off in a city of as large as 50,000

This city of 8,738 has bus service.

People who never set foot on a bus and aren't close to any of the limited number of lines pay for others to ride.

That's fine because people who live in the city heavily subsidize people who live in the suburbs.

You lose the ability to adjust to civilized life as you get old.

What a completely asinine and insulting argument you just made.

You don't think young people are more likely than older people to move from rural areas to built-up civilization?

For the same number of cars on the road, SDCs will cause far less congestion than HDCs.

Absolutely false. You can't cure congestion by increasing capacity. Ever notice how every time after you widen a freeway, it's congested again within 10 years?

NYC is infamous for things like cops running out into the street and attacking cyclists, or parking their cruisers in bike lanes and then ticketing cyclists for not riding in the bike lane.

Despite the public outcry and idiocy of that, were up to the same thing the next year.

And then the year after that...

Well, that's not the fault of surge pricing.

Surge pricing is how eBay works, and it has had great results in San Francisco, so we know from experience that surge pricing is a good thing, as long as the price is set at market equilibrium. The real problem with dynamic phone tariffs, if any, lies elsewhere.

Get out of the way, let private companies take the risk and reward, and see how quick a functioning solution arises.

http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...

...You were saying?

If they're going to continue growing the metro area, they need some kind of mass transit that makes it possible to get around without adding even more cars to the highway.

Except it doesn't work that way in real life:

two University of Toronto professors have added to the body of evidence showing that highway and road expansion increases traffic by increasing demand. On the flip side, they show that transit expansion doesn't help cure congestion either.

(emphasis added)

Look at the comments in the article you listed. They correctly point out that while mass transit doesn't help congestion (roads will always fill up with the maximum amount of cars they can handle, and that drivers can put up with), it does increase the movement of masses of people, meaning urban centers can form because people can get in/out of the city easily.

Think of it this way. Say there were no roads at all. None. Would you rather have a city with mass transit zipping people in and out of the downtown area, or each suburb creating its own mini 'downtown' since people can only ride bikes or walk and the real city center is too far away?

Yes, the roads will always fill up unless they move so slow people won't use them, or they cost so much that people look for alternatives, if they exist. In the meantime, if you want people moving in/out of areas quickly, mass transit helps with that. It allows you to better plan neighborhoods and business areas.

If they're going to continue growing the metro area, they need some kind of mass transit that makes it possible to get around without adding even more cars to the highway.

Except it doesn't work that way in real life:

two University of Toronto professors have added to the body of evidence showing that highway and road expansion increases traffic by increasing demand. On the flip side, they show that transit expansion doesn't help cure congestion either.

(emphasis added)

It's the door-to-door time of transit that's key AFAICT:

The Downs–Thomson paradox (named after Anthony Downs and J. M. Thomson), also known as the Pigou–Knight–Downs paradox (after Arthur Cecil Pigou and Frank Knight), states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport. It is a paradox in that improvements in the road network will not improve traffic congestion. In fact, improvements in the road network can make congestion worse, if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient, or if it shifts investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox

If they're going to continue growing the metro area, they need some kind of mass transit that makes it possible to get around without adding even more cars to the highway.

Except it doesn't work that way in real life:

two University of Toronto professors have added to the body of evidence showing that highway and road expansion increases traffic by increasing demand. On the flip side, they show that transit expansion doesn't help cure congestion either.

(emphasis added)

Can anyone justify the expense and bureaucracy of taxi medallions when passenger safety isn't an issue?

Yes - traffic congestion. According to Uber's own study, Uber operations in central Manhattan have decreased average traffic speeds for all vehicles by 8%.

Goddammit, the insurance companies are really ripping us off. Why are they charging so much more for car insurance than they do for standing on the sidewalk insurance?

Indeed!

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/12/17/eyes-on-the-street-dodging-drivers-on-the-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/22/vance-nets-felony-indictment-for-driver-in-beekman-sidewalk-hit-and-run/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/17/nypd-no-charges-for-driver-who-killed-woman-on-brooklyn-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/03/23/no-charges-for-cab-driver-who-killed-two-people-on-bronx-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/27/its-still-legal-to-run-over-a-child-on-a-new-york-city-sidewalk/

Goddammit, the insurance companies are really ripping us off. Why are they charging so much more for car insurance than they do for standing on the sidewalk insurance?

Indeed!

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/12/17/eyes-on-the-street-dodging-drivers-on-the-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/22/vance-nets-felony-indictment-for-driver-in-beekman-sidewalk-hit-and-run/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/17/nypd-no-charges-for-driver-who-killed-woman-on-brooklyn-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/03/23/no-charges-for-cab-driver-who-killed-two-people-on-bronx-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/27/its-still-legal-to-run-over-a-child-on-a-new-york-city-sidewalk/

Goddammit, the insurance companies are really ripping us off. Why are they charging so much more for car insurance than they do for standing on the sidewalk insurance?

Indeed!

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/12/17/eyes-on-the-street-dodging-drivers-on-the-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/22/vance-nets-felony-indictment-for-driver-in-beekman-sidewalk-hit-and-run/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/17/nypd-no-charges-for-driver-who-killed-woman-on-brooklyn-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/03/23/no-charges-for-cab-driver-who-killed-two-people-on-bronx-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/27/its-still-legal-to-run-over-a-child-on-a-new-york-city-sidewalk/

Goddammit, the insurance companies are really ripping us off. Why are they charging so much more for car insurance than they do for standing on the sidewalk insurance?

Indeed!

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/12/17/eyes-on-the-street-dodging-drivers-on-the-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/22/vance-nets-felony-indictment-for-driver-in-beekman-sidewalk-hit-and-run/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/17/nypd-no-charges-for-driver-who-killed-woman-on-brooklyn-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/03/23/no-charges-for-cab-driver-who-killed-two-people-on-bronx-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/27/its-still-legal-to-run-over-a-child-on-a-new-york-city-sidewalk/

Goddammit, the insurance companies are really ripping us off. Why are they charging so much more for car insurance than they do for standing on the sidewalk insurance?

Indeed!

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/12/17/eyes-on-the-street-dodging-drivers-on-the-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/22/vance-nets-felony-indictment-for-driver-in-beekman-sidewalk-hit-and-run/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/07/17/nypd-no-charges-for-driver-who-killed-woman-on-brooklyn-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/03/23/no-charges-for-cab-driver-who-killed-two-people-on-bronx-sidewalk/
http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/27/its-still-legal-to-run-over-a-child-on-a-new-york-city-sidewalk/

The problem of congestion caused by people circling around looking for parking has already been solved. Cities simply have to wake up to the fact that parking is both rivalrous and excludable and therefore neither a public good nor should be treated as one.

To be clear, I think that's 35,000 daily usages, not users. And most are under 30 mins (I think). But I did mean to make sure it was clear I was only speaking anecdotally, "as far as I can tell" -- I certainly may have a skewed perspective from the stations I see.

Thank goodness we have urban transit planners, people with degrees in this stuff. They are heavily, heavily pushing bicycle transit and bike shares. Not because it's 'sexy', but because it works.

I couldn't agree more. I am in awe of what they accomplish, to be honest. But at the same time, I can see they are struggling. From what I have read the MTA is $15-32B in the hole. So even though these bikes are a drop in the bucket, it is easy to be overly sensitive about the city wasting money, and the ever forward march of advertising. I also think it's good to look at them in that larger context.

You can plop down a bike share station in a matter of days or weeks (the biggest hassle are the community meetings) which affords enormous flexibility; it takes months to redo a bus route, and decades to plan a subway line.

An interesting point for sure.

Bike share bikes convert a fair number of people over to bike ownership, too - and the presence or more bike riders on the city's streets makes the streets safer for everyone.

Both of these statements seem unquantifiable to me -- I just say this because you have a good reply that seeks to show the actual number of bikes in comparison to my admittedly anecdotal statement. I have seen stats regarding "protected bike lanes" making things safer, but that is a subtle difference to "more bikes make everything safer" Here are the stats, I assume this is what you are referring to: http://www.streetsblog.org/201... But I really dont know where you could find data on these bikes converting people to ownership.

(Don't give me any garbage about how everyone should live in cities -- what a drab, sad world that would be.)

Yes, what a drab, sad world it would be if people lived where they weren't an economic burden on others.

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.

Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.

And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline. It might be a fun vacation trip exactly once, particularly if they are maintaining the "free train rides if you blog about how great it was, even if it wasn't". Maybe twice, if you take the ride back as well.

High sped trains in the U.S. usually aren't.

https://systemicfailure.wordpr...

http://chi.streetsblog.org/201...

in some neighbourhoods the wait time actually increases along with the surge price increase.

It makes sense that neighborhoods with a relative oversupply of drivers would see their wait times increase, approaching the wait times in neighborhoods with higher demand.

In San Francisco when they implemented surge pricing for parking, prices went up in some neighborhoods and down in others. But prices on average fell.

Statistics don't bear your anecdotal statement out:
http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...

HOAs are just an affront to your personal liberties and a money pit. Their enforced conformity preserves nothing and gives you nothing (except some light fascism).

Ditto for cities.

For one, the US is big.. really big.. So it's not cost-effective to run power cables and alike underground.

You're close. It's not that the USA is big, it's that much of it is urban sprawl. Sprawl makes all infrastructure expensive on a per capita basis, which is why the suburbs are subsidized by downtown areas. "Big" only matters between cities, but intercity electric lines are high voltage wires that don't get buried.

Middle and lower income households absorb the greatest percentage of social programs, so why shouldn't they be the ones that contribute the most to them?

That's like asking prisoners to pay for their imprisonment. Remember, the purpose of the zoning code is to keep the poor and minorities out of middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods, and that in turn restricts economic mobility, keeping the poor dependent on social programs for their livelihood. For example, the market would build more affordable housing if it weren't prevented from building it.

(Side note: this is similar to the way motorists support separated bicycling infrastructure, in order to get bicyclists out of their way. And then they complain that bicyclists aren't paying their fair share for those separated facilities.)

So I think the people who actually want those social programs (the wealthy) that keep the poor poor should be the ones to pay for them.

Middle and lower income households absorb the greatest percentage of social programs, so why shouldn't they be the ones that contribute the most to them?

That's like asking prisoners to pay for their imprisonment. Remember, the purpose of the zoning code is to keep the poor and minorities out of middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods, and that in turn restricts economic mobility, keeping the poor dependent on social programs for their livelihood. For example, the market would build more affordable housing if it weren't prevented from building it.

(Side note: this is similar to the way motorists support separated bicycling infrastructure, in order to get bicyclists out of their way. And then they complain that bicyclists aren't paying their fair share for those separated facilities.)

So I think the people who actually want those social programs (the wealthy) that keep the poor poor should be the ones to pay for them.

Yet it's the inner cities, where poor people live, that heavily subsidize the suburbs, where middle- and upper-class people live.

It's interesting how people rationalize this kind of reverse welfare by calling anything else "regressive."

the highrise produces 50x as much trash. So instead of 10 trashcans once a week they need to haul away 5 dumpsters worth every day.

Let's say a single dumpster handles the trash of 25 apartment units. So you'll need 20 dumpsters for the 500-unit apartment block. For 500 single-family homes, you'll need 500 trash barrels. Which do you think is easier to service, 20 dumpsters or 500 barrels?

In the suburbs you can put up a couple pylons and just dig a hole to do what needs doing. Downtown you'll need flag people to help redirect traffic, you may need coordinate access to buildings, or involve other utilities etc.

Despite all that, dense development is much more cost-effective in city services than single-family homes. For example, per unit, a mixed-use development produced a total of $3,370 in public revenue annually, while costing the local government about $1,400 per year in infrastructure maintenance, policing, fire response, and other general fund obligations. In comparison, the traditional suburban development...generated only half the revenue â" $1,620 per year â" and cost more to service â" $1,600.

So my question is, why should poor renters subsidize middle- and upper-class homeowners? By defending this kind of reverse welfare, you come off as being in favor of it.

I think you'll find less resistance from me or anybody else if you focus on things that elicit a positive image...like pushing increased research funds for cleaner burning engines, real fuel production alternatives like algae. Things that benefit everyone, AND reduce environmental impact.

You're hoping for some future technology to save us all--a deus ex machina. But there are things we can do now. For example, eliminate subsidies and favoritism for automobiles.

Oh, but this would hurt Big Oil and people who love to drive, so it wouldn't benefit everyone.

You can't please everyone all the time, so why should we even try?

It is why Cities have always struggled. To many people to close to each other. The wealthy always purchase enough space to make themselves comfortable. However the poor can not and once you get so many people pressed together they fight.

I think the fighting is because downtown areas heavily subsidize the suburbs (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4) and so the inner city poor are getting fed up because their money is leaving their neighborhoods and is spent on subsidizing the middle and upper class lifestyles. And because the middle class prevents economic mobility by keeping the poor out of middle class neighborhoods.

It is why Cities have always struggled. To many people to close to each other. The wealthy always purchase enough space to make themselves comfortable. However the poor can not and once you get so many people pressed together they fight.

I think the fighting is because downtown areas heavily subsidize the suburbs (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4) and so the inner city poor are getting fed up because their money is leaving their neighborhoods and is spent on subsidizing the middle and upper class lifestyles. And because the middle class prevents economic mobility by keeping the poor out of middle class neighborhoods.

Maybe if there is a distracted driving law that you're violating when you do it. Otherwise, probably not. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11... http://blog.sfgate.com/bicycle... http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013...