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Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads
An anonymous reader writes: During a recent Urban Land Institute talk, the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino, told an audience that the road network in Iowa was probably going to "shrink." Calling for fewer highways isn't what you'd normally expect from a government transportation official, but since per capita driving has peaked in the U.S., it might make sense for states to question whether or not to spend their transportation budgets on new roads.
heck, we still marvel at the roads the roman empire abandoned.
How do you know they are not? In addition, he did not say highways, he said roads, unless you are in an urban area I am sure it is safe to say that virtually all regular roads provide direct access to someones home.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
In these flat agricultural states, a vast network of farm roads have been built over the years. The hallmark of over-roaded areas is the use of four-digit state route numbers in places that are mostly rural. Now that family farms are consolidating into large agribusiness operations, fewer access points are needed. Meanwhile, the cities need more roads and maintenance, so these states needed to reprioritize.
So the homeowner isn't trying to drive down them at 70 mph in a sports car, but rather at 20mph in a pickup truck.
I gather you've never lived in the country. Folk will be driving down them at 70 mph in their pickups.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
more than a decade later states are waking up to empty highways.
"Empty highways"? Even allowing that your statement includes hyperbole it doesn't fit with the fact that the US population is growing. Personally outside of some of the most rural parts of the US I've NEVER seen "empty highways". Most in fact seem to need more lanes than they have.
The US, in general, is a declining superpower and its starting to show.
Spare me. People have been spouting this nonsense as a political meme for most of my life. Every out of power politician declares that "we need to make america great again", thereby implying that somehow the country isn't great. They then follow it up by declaring the US to be "the greatest country in the world". So which is it? The US has the largest economy, the largest military, leads the world in scientific research, and does so with just 5% of the world's population. Declining? I've been around for a half century and can't say I see the evidence. Things are better in the US than when I was born. Just because some other countries have been doing well (China etc) doesn't mean things are going in the shitter here.
our skin-and-bones transportation budget, crumbling bridges, and pothole ridden highways are so common as to be a feature.
Any shortfalls can be solved overnight by simply reallocating some of the ludicrous amount of money we spend on our military to domestic infrastructure. More money could be saved by going to a single payer health care system like most of the rest of the civilized world. We have the money but our leaders have chosen to spend it poorly. We like to pretend we need to spend more on our military than the next 17 largest countries combined. We like to pretend that socialized medicine is somehow evil when in fact avoiding it is the unethical thing to do. Not to mention that we already have it (Medicare) and are in denial about it.
Millenials like myself hate driving.
Better get over that. Not being snarky, it's just a reality of living in most parts of the US. Most of the country is simply not accessible without a car and that isn't going to change anytime soon. You don't have to love to drive but it's going to be a part of your life most likely whether you like it or not.
we're crippled by inexorable college debt and newfound levels of unaffordable housing. regular maintenance and gas, insurance and most importantly our general penchant for unemployment after the housing decline means we arent really interested in a car.
That sounds like a lot of excuses to me. Adjusted for inflation gas is cheaper now than it was when I was a child. You can avoid a lot of college debt by not going to expensive private colleges you cannot afford. Spend a year or two at a community college and finish up at your state college. You can get a great education and not be in the poor house. Insurance? You can be covered by your parents until you are 26. If you can't get a job by then with unemployment at 5% then you probably are doing something wrong.
Other generations have had it harder than you. Would you have preferred to grow up during the Great Depression or WWII? How about as a minority 50 or even 25 years ago? I assure you things were harder then.
So why didn't your uncle simply get his driver's license back when he was 16? They should have solved the problem in the previous generation!
The only way this matters is if the percentage of people sharing your cousin's circumstances is large or increasing, and I see no reason to believe that's the case. It's not as if these requirements are new, after all.
Furthermore, I suspect that in the vast majority of cases where the parent lacks a license, it's because the family lives somewhere like Manhattan where the child doesn't actually need one either.
In other words, this is a non-issue that you only think is important because one of the tiny number of people who are affected by it happens to be somebody close to you.
No, I'm saying it's not the State's responsibility to let unqualified people have drivers' licenses just because their parents couldn't be bothered to teach them, or to subsidize their parents' fuck-up!
And by the way, "resort[ing] to paying $50 per hour for a driving instructor" is a false dichotomy: just because your uncle can't/won't help, doesn't mean that's the only other choice. What about your aunt; can't he drive with her? What about your cousin's uncle (i.e., your dad)? What about over-25 family friends? What about a random neighbor, who is not an "instructor" and therefore probably would charge much less than $50/hour? What about you?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm not a millennial, but I've definitely seen their struggle. I can attest that they have to work twice as hard for half what their parents had. I look at all the opportunities to prove myself I was given as a borderline gen-x before 9/11 and the financial crash and there's not a snowballs chance anyone would get that today.
Millenials are an abused generation - no doubt. Unfortunately, they were abused by well meaning people and their own parents, who thought they were were doing the right thing for them.
I've worked with a lot of them, and usually in their first job after entering the workforce. This was when in their early 20's, they were just breaking free from their helicoptering parents, full of self esteem, and ready to show the world how its done right.
The results in general were horrifying, to those older folks, and especially to these poor kids. Their carefully cultivated self esteem took a real hit after discovering that Facebook was not a job skill, that the older people were not their servants, and thos stupid old people actually knew more about computing and computers than they did, and that you don't get promoted to manager after 1 year, or get congratulations for coming in on time.
The results were usually a huge crash and burn after reality hit them hard in the chops. Some became really depressed, and a fair number quit and moved back with mom and dad.
And I don't blame it on them, but on the abuse they endured from parents and a society that refuesd to allow them to become adults.
I can attest that they have to work twice as hard for half what their parents had.
Yeah, my father and others who went through the depression had it so easy. No generation ever in the course of history has it as bad as these poor millennial do. My generation, it was laughably easy, the 70's was a great time of 100 percent employment for young people. And the money? I was rolling in it
Sarcasm indeed, but ridiculous claims get ridiculed.
Guess what. I worked really, really hard all my life. Early on I worked some menial jobs. Worked through junior high and high school. My parents both worked really hard, at a time when women were supposed to stay at home, my mother worked all her life. We knew how to work. I need a river cried for me. But I don't need nor want one.
This still comes back to the unrealistic expectations these poor kids were inculcated with. Of the many millenials we hired, only one or two would ever come in early, or stay past five. Just as an example, one millenial we hired, had some work to get done for the next day for use in the biggest meeting of th year. At 10 till 5, he stopped working, told us his mom was waiting for him in the parking lot, and left us hanging. I had to complete his work that evening.
And that is just one anecdote among many, not to mention the young lady unionjunior illustrator, who when someone would give her a job, she would come over to me and plead she was so busy. I took a job for two to help her, then found out her work overload was spending the day on Facebook - no doubt telling her friends how busy she was.
Or the guy who went apeshit on me because I touched the screen of his computer. And actually I hadn't, I pointed at it, and he apparently thought fingerprints could jump. Ot the guy who insisted that all my discussions with him take place via texting.
Many more anecdotes, but you get the gist of my experiences.. We did not have these experiences with the GenX'ers. There were better or worse workers, but no trend like with the millennials. All in all, its people on the bottom of the food chain thinking they can hand out the orders to the people they work for. Which is sadly enough, just how they were raised.
This always result in howls ot outrage from the millenials, as they react in the manner of people who hold themselves in high esteem, yet have no real achievements. They get mad. I'll ge
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.