And it's not using "cannibal" correctly. A cannibal is something that eats is own type. (Btw, ever fed pork to pigs or chicken to pigeons?) The question is not whether the Wii "eats Wiis", but whether the Wii "eats DS's" and vice versa. A better metaphor would be to ask if the Wii and DS are "type A and B Deftera".
Well, actually, it's not "the same". By "renting out" that "slot" (!), we take on additional risks and costs (psychic and tangible) that don't inhere to regular marital relations.
My point was just that you have to be careful when tabulating an "opportunity cost".
And when I **** my wife, I'm denying myself the revenue of a third-party john who might have rented her for that slot. Thus, in a very real sense, I pay the same rate as everyone else.
I've never understood the focus on stock splits. It's simply an accounting trick. You can own 50 shares at $100, or 100 shares at $50. Who. Really. Cares. It impacts 1) the size of a round lot (100 shares) and 2) the ability to fit the price on a ticker. That's not nothing but I don't see how it warrants all the attention people give it.
I don't think it necessitates homogeneity. If you make these objects highly customizable, it will be easy to make yours different without spending much time on it.
What I want to see is a generalization of your idea to games as a whole. What if someone made a kind of game toolbox with an easy-to-use interface for adding graphical objects, AI, dialogue, etc? Ditto for CGI movies. Like Red vs Blue with Halo, but make the game centered around making movie scenes rather than have to make do with what's possible in Halo.
If such a program already exists, please be nice in replying. (And make sure you read the "easy-to-use" part.)
You can drive slower than me and not be an idiot: don't hog the passing lane, don't match the speed of the drivers in the lanes who are right next to you (thus creating a wall), and be going at least 60 mph when you merge onto a freeway.
You can drive much faster than me and not be a maniac: just take the first opportunity to go around me (I probably won't be in the left lane, or will quickly vacate it when I see your speed) rather than tailgate, and don't change lanes close enough to me such that I panic.
-I'm not the jerk slowing you down. If people are trying to go faster than me, I go miles out of my way to ensure they can pass. I'm in the left lane? I'll get out of your way long before you're close. Two-lane/two-way road? I'll pull over if necessary.
-I was referring to *any* situation in which they can easily pass. That includes when I'm in the right lane and the left is free. That excludes when I'm in the left lane and it's hard to come around on the right.
Believe me, where I live is the very source of roadblock drivers. Almost every morning on the freeway there will be semis 2-deep across all three lanes. Or there will be someone bottling up the left lane so people can't even go around. Or I'll be behind someone trying to merge at 40 mph(!).
My idea was a flashing neon sign that says, "back off!"
A similar idea is for the sign to say "POLITE PATROL". Now, given the shock, they're probably just going to assume it says "POLICE PATROL", and hey, why take the risk?
It's not illegal, because after all, you're not claiming to be the police, just the *Polite* Patrol. You just patrol politeness.
What bothers me more than tailgaters is tailgaters who avoid EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO PASS YOU, even when there is another lane going the same direction. If they're tailgating when there's no chance to pass, okay, they're annoying me, but I at least understand their position. If they're tailgating me while passing up every opportunity to pass, WTF?
It may be that I'm just the crazy mathematician, but if you get published in a well-respected journal, your results should be statistically significant. If your results are statistically significant, by the way the mathematics works, you had to have gathered enough evidence to prove yourself false, but the data actually proved your hypothesis true.
So, unless the journals in the field are complete crap, there's enough evidence to falsify the results about the historical climate.
Okay, let's backward-induce for a minute. Al Gore's movie was using the best science as of c. 2002. That means to have predicted five 5-year overlapping periods (97-02, 96-01,...)they would have had to have made* the predictions starting in '92. In '92, they only had accurate (satellite) readings of global temperatures for 15 years, or ten 5-year periods. So the very best science could have been right on five 5-year periods, based on observing ten 5-year periods, starting with c. 1992 era computational power.
Is that statistically significant?
*Can you properly use "have" three times in a row like that? I don't think so!
As I argued here, you don't know if there's bias until you see scientists making valid predictions and still being shut out. What counts as a valid prediction in climate sciences? No one is going to say that "next year, global temp. readings will increase by 1 degree". No one will even predict the *sign* of the change next year. What they will predict is trends over e.g., the next five years. But then, you have to gather a statistically significant number of these to rule out luck. So, you'd need to get those right several times to validate your model. Accounting for varing CO2 emissions, of course, complicates it. I doubt there's enough evidence time-history (following a previous prediction) to falsify anyone's theory. That's the problem.
Btw, the summary implies Lomborg denies that climate change is real. That's not true. In The Skeptical Environmentalist, his claim is that the media misrepresent the various probabilities of the different scenarios, and that the costs of significant changes (like Kyoto, and by extension, anything more stringent than Kyoto) are not justified by the benefits they would yield. That's not the same as denying the existence of climate change.
No, I ignored it because it's irrelevant. Who decides which work days "unnecessarily match[es] that of many others"?
It's not irrelevant; it's the very heart of the matter. Some businesses use normal hours. They do this because it optimizes profitability. This calculation does not include the congestion cost they impose on others. My proposal imposes on them that cost. Some of those businesses will, in such an environment, find that using different hours increases profitability. That means that previously, they were using business hours that imposed a cost on others (through congestion) not justified by the productivity of their business. Those are the ones unnecessarily matching the hours of others. Which was the whole point.
me:No. The tax is in proportion to the congestion the vehicle contributes. A bus congests about what 3-4 cars would (maybe more).
you:You do realize you're arguing a non-sequitur, right?
I realize you disagree with me; it's not a non-sequitur.
You acknowledge that a bus can eliminate 50 cars from the road, yet congests as much as 3-4 cars? Even assuming 4 cars, that's a negative 12.5 car congestion ratio so the bus companies should be reimbursed for their travels, no?
No. I explained this before. The bus is congesting more (than a single car). Each person is congesting less (than if they had driven a single car each). If 50 people go from driving a car ($30 toll) to using one bus (which pays $100 toll plus $100 operating costs), their costs go from $30 each to $4 each. Each person saves money by switching to the bus. It that sense, the people that alleviate congestion are "reimbursed".
The bus's reimbursement comes from the passengers that pay to ride it. But if doesn't carry any people, it's not alleviating congestion, but adding to it. Under the toll I proposed, it would only make money to the extent it actually gets people to, together, cause less congestion than they would indvidually in cars.
There has long been the problem of American transit being behind the rest of the world. There is sprawl in Europe, there are traffic jams, but the heart of the problem is the mentality that there just isn't another option than driving. People will make up any excuse to avoid mass transportation here. There are too many germs, it takes too long, costs are out of control, government is corrupt, etc. etc. How can we change this?
You mean, how can we change the *validity* of these objections, or people's *belief* in their validity?
I think my proposal invalidates them: If costs "force" huge numbers of people onto high-density transit methods, that will draw private transit providers, which will have cleaner buses, more convenient routes, and competition on cost.
As for how to make people believe that? I don't know. I think if people sat down and looked at the impact of my proposal on their lives, they'd want it. But how many people vote based on a sober analysis of the issues?
My proposal certainly requires people to kill a few of their sacred cows; I don't deny that.
Your solution seems to me to be problematic, because it doesn't do anything to reduce growth.
I assume you mean city area growth, rather than economic growth. I think it does in that it gives (and transparent) monetary incentives to those with shorter commutes.
As a stopgap, it MAY reduce traffic,
Well, the proposal is to keep raising the tolls until traffic is at moderate levels, so this has to happen unless people would pay infinite tolls to keep driving.
at the expense of certain property owners,
I think the cost of commuting is more than offset by the loss of commute time. If this were really an issue, then in the transition, tolls could go into a compensation plan.
but as I mentioned before, it might just offload more traffic to the rest of the day
I don't see why that's bad. As long as the traffic keeps moving, roads can be used efficiently.
And what about traffic on regular non-highway roads? There would be no change, as the rush to get the bus depot is still there.
Well, if you look at the number of people per bus depot, it's a lot less likely for it to fail to meet capacity.
Forgive the oversimplification, but you are saying that we should all be working on a rotating schedule,
I think I took great pains to avoid favoring any kind of outcome except uncongested roads and for people to bear the cost of their own congestion. It makes no difference to me if it results in a) ultra-staggered workdays, b) everyone living in an apartment in the same building as their office, or c) everyone riding the bus. I do, however, strongly suspect it would be mostly c), leading to businesses gravitating toward building around the major depots, which would have the effect of greatly favoring non-car lifestyles. If a huge variety of businesses is located near any one depot, and there's little traffic inbetween, you could live most of your life without driving. And I think the *possibility* of this, whether or not you use it, is good for everyone.
me:So? If their workday unnecessarily matches that of many others, they *should* be moving it already.
you:Workdays tend to coincide so that businesses can interact with one-another, hence the term "business hours". This also allows for similar social and family time after work hours and on weekends.
Take for example restaurants, food distrubutors, supermarkets, food producers/manufacturers. Restaurants obviously have to be open to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner which occur at predictable times allowing them to prepare in advance and staff accordingly. Their distributors and suppliers have to work during the day to accommodate their orders, therefore supermarkets, warehouses and other suppliers must work accordingly. Manufacturers/producers must supply said distributors and the chain is complete. Synergy. It exists in every field of work.
So, in other words, you didn't read the the word "unnecessarily" in my post (see sig), and you didn't understand why your entire response here is beside the point? There are more succint ways to say that.
I understand why the work day is what it is. Really. Really, I do. My plan does not favor or disfavor it. It just makes the costs of congestion show up on everyone's balance sheet so that becomes another factor in whether any one business decides to match the schedules of others. Get it?
If you want to help eliminate congestion, make alternative arrangements. Car pool, mass transit into and out of major downtown areas, etc.
Make alternative arrangements? Who's making these arrangments? Do you mean, me, personally join a carpool? Well, as anyone else always argues before reading my complete proposal, if only I (or 10, 20, or 1,000 people) take these alternative modes, they will make their commute LONGER, and have to deal with ADDITIONAL annoyances, and STILL not noticeably reduce congestion! Lots of sacrifice for me, no gain for anyone. Not much of a "help".
That's why it's necessary for everyone at once to bear a *dollar value* cost of these, so that everyone has an incentive to shift at the same time.
Now taxing people who commute to/from work who are often in situations where living "in the city" is too darned expensive, puts an increased barrier on them and makes their lives even more difficult; especially at the rates proposed in that journal entry.
No; they are already paying in ungodly commute times. I don't live in a big city (thank God*), but when I did (and from talking to the people who have), I had to get up two hours earlier than I would otherwise have to, and get back two hours later. That is a huge, real cost to me. If I rode a bus in light traffic, I could shave probably an hour off the commute itself and live at reasonable hours. And the cost? $4 toll. (See below.) I make that in about ten minutes.
Taxing busses, BTW? Considering a single bus can eliminate as many as 50 cars per run, isn't that redundant?
No. The tax is in proportion to the congestion the vehicle contributes. A bus congests about what 3-4 cars would (maybe more). The "savings", and therefore the incentive to use the bus is already reflected in the price that the commuter pays. While one bus pays more than one car, one bus rider pays less than if he drove a car. If it's $100 for a bus, plus (as a high estimate) $100 for the bus company's operating costs on a trip, that $200 is distributed over 50 people, who see a commute price of $4. ($200/50)
1. Developers don't give a hoot about density.... There is no 'developers ideology' where one would want to save the environment with tall building clusters.
I didn't say any of that. (See sig.) I just said there *exist* developers willing to do this, as, you agree, there are developers willing to do a lot of things.
Cities are currentlybuilt so that we can live without a car,
No, they're not, they're really, really not. Outside of NYC, Boston, and Chicago maybe, the transit system does not support a carless lifestyle for anyone not willing to go miles out of their way.
The main reason, though? Fear of the city, due to decades of marketing the suburbs as safe and pleasant. There is an abundance of habitable urban area that just isn't perceived as safe to raise a family
I'll agree with you on that, but that's mainly because of the power-tripping bureaucrats I deried above.
3. Your idea of taxing driving at rush hour would likely have unintended consequences. Companies would shift their work day
So? If their workday unnecessarily matches that of many others, they *should* be moving it already.
or move their offices even further out of the city, accessible only by country roads, their hiring pool limited to those who live nearby,
You just explained why they wouldn't do it.
they would be put in an artificial "commuting class" watching the wealthy drive by in their Lexus coupes
So? Their commute is much shorter now, regardless of where they live.
Furthermore, the housing stock already in place would be put in an extreme position of devaluation,
Why? Yes, you have to pay high tolls at rush hour now, but since you'll be riding a bus, you won't pay very much, and your house is now located on prime real estate that's just "a few minutes from work", even during rush hour!
Growth boundaries, such as Portland's, have proven to be effective,
HAHAHAHA!! You're kidding, right? Those are well-known to cause "leap-frog" development, making the problem even worse.
I don't know what the best solution is, but getting more people on buses will be going after the wrong side of the equation.
It doesn't "get more people on buses"; as I made pains to point out, it "gets people" to do *whatever* is compatible with market prices for rush hour road use. Maybe that means a different work schedule. Maybe that means a carpool or vanpool. Maybe that means living closer. Maybe it means biting the bullet and paying the toll. If work schedules were rigid, it would draw entrepreneurs to start implementing viable transit options that don't require a car, making that less inconvenient than it is now.
Slashdot Mirror
And it's not using "cannibal" correctly. A cannibal is something that eats is own type. (Btw, ever fed pork to pigs or chicken to pigeons?) The question is not whether the Wii "eats Wiis", but whether the Wii "eats DS's" and vice versa. A better metaphor would be to ask if the Wii and DS are "type A and B Deftera".
Well, actually, it's not "the same". By "renting out" that "slot" (!), we take on additional risks and costs (psychic and tangible) that don't inhere to regular marital relations.
My point was just that you have to be careful when tabulating an "opportunity cost".
And when I **** my wife, I'm denying myself the revenue of a third-party john who might have rented her for that slot. Thus, in a very real sense, I pay the same rate as everyone else.
Obviously, it's no big deal because Microsoft has a lot more power than Google, so for Google to leverage a monopoly to get into other markets is AOK.
I got that insight from Vellmont et al.
I've never understood the focus on stock splits. It's simply an accounting trick. You can own 50 shares at $100, or 100 shares at $50. Who. Really. Cares. It impacts 1) the size of a round lot (100 shares) and 2) the ability to fit the price on a ticker. That's not nothing but I don't see how it warrants all the attention people give it.
I don't think it necessitates homogeneity. If you make these objects highly customizable, it will be easy to make yours different without spending much time on it.
What I want to see is a generalization of your idea to games as a whole. What if someone made a kind of game toolbox with an easy-to-use interface for adding graphical objects, AI, dialogue, etc? Ditto for CGI movies. Like Red vs Blue with Halo, but make the game centered around making movie scenes rather than have to make do with what's possible in Halo.
If such a program already exists, please be nice in replying. (And make sure you read the "easy-to-use" part.)
I found one way to mostly avoid it though : I don't drive during rush hour.
My "solution" is to live in a small town that doesn't have regular back-ups. (Though they've figured how to significantly slow down sparse traffic!)
You might be interested in my latest journal entry. (Any way to de-archive it, or do I just have to re-post it to allow comments?)
No, I haven't.
You can drive slower than me and not be an idiot: don't hog the passing lane, don't match the speed of the drivers in the lanes who are right next to you (thus creating a wall), and be going at least 60 mph when you merge onto a freeway.
You can drive much faster than me and not be a maniac: just take the first opportunity to go around me (I probably won't be in the left lane, or will quickly vacate it when I see your speed) rather than tailgate, and don't change lanes close enough to me such that I panic.
Instead of trying to crack into my brain anymore:
-I'm not the jerk slowing you down. If people are trying to go faster than me, I go miles out of my way to ensure they can pass. I'm in the left lane? I'll get out of your way long before you're close. Two-lane/two-way road? I'll pull over if necessary.
-I was referring to *any* situation in which they can easily pass. That includes when I'm in the right lane and the left is free. That excludes when I'm in the left lane and it's hard to come around on the right.
Believe me, where I live is the very source of roadblock drivers. Almost every morning on the freeway there will be semis 2-deep across all three lanes. Or there will be someone bottling up the left lane so people can't even go around. Or I'll be behind someone trying to merge at 40 mph(!).
My idea was a flashing neon sign that says, "back off!"
A similar idea is for the sign to say "POLITE PATROL". Now, given the shock, they're probably just going to assume it says "POLICE PATROL", and hey, why take the risk?
It's not illegal, because after all, you're not claiming to be the police, just the *Polite* Patrol. You just patrol politeness.
I also hate people who add baseless assumptions to my post in order to make me look stupid.
What bothers me more than tailgaters is tailgaters who avoid EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO PASS YOU, even when there is another lane going the same direction. If they're tailgating when there's no chance to pass, okay, they're annoying me, but I at least understand their position. If they're tailgating me while passing up every opportunity to pass, WTF?
What if the people using the device selectively target who they pull over based on its readings?
Oh, wait, that applies to everyone who will be using it.
It may be that I'm just the crazy mathematician, but if you get published in a well-respected journal, your results should be statistically significant. If your results are statistically significant, by the way the mathematics works, you had to have gathered enough evidence to prove yourself false, but the data actually proved your hypothesis true.
...)they would have had to have made* the predictions starting in '92. In '92, they only had accurate (satellite) readings of global temperatures for 15 years, or ten 5-year periods. So the very best science could have been right on five 5-year periods, based on observing ten 5-year periods, starting with c. 1992 era computational power.
So, unless the journals in the field are complete crap, there's enough evidence to falsify the results about the historical climate.
Okay, let's backward-induce for a minute. Al Gore's movie was using the best science as of c. 2002. That means to have predicted five 5-year overlapping periods (97-02, 96-01,
Is that statistically significant?
*Can you properly use "have" three times in a row like that? I don't think so!
As I argued here, you don't know if there's bias until you see scientists making valid predictions and still being shut out. What counts as a valid prediction in climate sciences? No one is going to say that "next year, global temp. readings will increase by 1 degree". No one will even predict the *sign* of the change next year. What they will predict is trends over e.g., the next five years. But then, you have to gather a statistically significant number of these to rule out luck. So, you'd need to get those right several times to validate your model. Accounting for varing CO2 emissions, of course, complicates it. I doubt there's enough evidence time-history (following a previous prediction) to falsify anyone's theory. That's the problem.
Btw, the summary implies Lomborg denies that climate change is real. That's not true. In The Skeptical Environmentalist, his claim is that the media misrepresent the various probabilities of the different scenarios, and that the costs of significant changes (like Kyoto, and by extension, anything more stringent than Kyoto) are not justified by the benefits they would yield. That's not the same as denying the existence of climate change.
Interesting. It wasn't always like that. I remember before when I clicked on a tag, it would just pop up an input that let me enter the same tag.
Great work on making the tag system less useless!
Oh, great. Are you one of those guys who uses "atheist" to mean "agnostic", and demands that everyone break tradition and switch to your usage?
'Cause I fuckin' hate those people.
The cynic in me says we're way past the day when people actually think about how a product looks from the perspective of the end user.
No, I ignored it because it's irrelevant. Who decides which work days "unnecessarily match[es] that of many others"?
It's not irrelevant; it's the very heart of the matter. Some businesses use normal hours. They do this because it optimizes profitability. This calculation does not include the congestion cost they impose on others. My proposal imposes on them that cost. Some of those businesses will, in such an environment, find that using different hours increases profitability. That means that previously, they were using business hours that imposed a cost on others (through congestion) not justified by the productivity of their business. Those are the ones unnecessarily matching the hours of others. Which was the whole point.
me:No. The tax is in proportion to the congestion the vehicle contributes. A bus congests about what 3-4 cars would (maybe more).
you:You do realize you're arguing a non-sequitur, right?
I realize you disagree with me; it's not a non-sequitur.
You acknowledge that a bus can eliminate 50 cars from the road, yet congests as much as 3-4 cars? Even assuming 4 cars, that's a negative 12.5 car congestion ratio so the bus companies should be reimbursed for their travels, no?
No. I explained this before. The bus is congesting more (than a single car). Each person is congesting less (than if they had driven a single car each). If 50 people go from driving a car ($30 toll) to using one bus (which pays $100 toll plus $100 operating costs), their costs go from $30 each to $4 each. Each person saves money by switching to the bus. It that sense, the people that alleviate congestion are "reimbursed".
The bus's reimbursement comes from the passengers that pay to ride it. But if doesn't carry any people, it's not alleviating congestion, but adding to it. Under the toll I proposed, it would only make money to the extent it actually gets people to, together, cause less congestion than they would indvidually in cars.
Why is this so hard to understand?
There has long been the problem of American transit being behind the rest of the world. There is sprawl in Europe, there are traffic jams, but the heart of the problem is the mentality that there just isn't another option than driving. People will make up any excuse to avoid mass transportation here. There are too many germs, it takes too long, costs are out of control, government is corrupt, etc. etc. How can we change this?
You mean, how can we change the *validity* of these objections, or people's *belief* in their validity?
I think my proposal invalidates them: If costs "force" huge numbers of people onto high-density transit methods, that will draw private transit providers, which will have cleaner buses, more convenient routes, and competition on cost.
As for how to make people believe that? I don't know. I think if people sat down and looked at the impact of my proposal on their lives, they'd want it. But how many people vote based on a sober analysis of the issues?
My proposal certainly requires people to kill a few of their sacred cows; I don't deny that.
Your solution seems to me to be problematic, because it doesn't do anything to reduce growth.
I assume you mean city area growth, rather than economic growth. I think it does in that it gives (and transparent) monetary incentives to those with shorter commutes.
As a stopgap, it MAY reduce traffic,
Well, the proposal is to keep raising the tolls until traffic is at moderate levels, so this has to happen unless people would pay infinite tolls to keep driving.
at the expense of certain property owners,
I think the cost of commuting is more than offset by the loss of commute time. If this were really an issue, then in the transition, tolls could go into a compensation plan.
but as I mentioned before, it might just offload more traffic to the rest of the day
I don't see why that's bad. As long as the traffic keeps moving, roads can be used efficiently.
And what about traffic on regular non-highway roads? There would be no change, as the rush to get the bus depot is still there.
Well, if you look at the number of people per bus depot, it's a lot less likely for it to fail to meet capacity.
Forgive the oversimplification, but you are saying that we should all be working on a rotating schedule,
I think I took great pains to avoid favoring any kind of outcome except uncongested roads and for people to bear the cost of their own congestion. It makes no difference to me if it results in a) ultra-staggered workdays, b) everyone living in an apartment in the same building as their office, or c) everyone riding the bus. I do, however, strongly suspect it would be mostly c), leading to businesses gravitating toward building around the major depots, which would have the effect of greatly favoring non-car lifestyles. If a huge variety of businesses is located near any one depot, and there's little traffic inbetween, you could live most of your life without driving. And I think the *possibility* of this, whether or not you use it, is good for everyone.
me:So? If their workday unnecessarily matches that of many others, they *should* be moving it already.
you:Workdays tend to coincide so that businesses can interact with one-another, hence the term "business hours". This also allows for similar social and family time after work hours and on weekends.
Take for example restaurants, food distrubutors, supermarkets, food producers/manufacturers. Restaurants obviously have to be open to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner which occur at predictable times allowing them to prepare in advance and staff accordingly. Their distributors and suppliers have to work during the day to accommodate their orders, therefore supermarkets, warehouses and other suppliers must work accordingly. Manufacturers/producers must supply said distributors and the chain is complete. Synergy. It exists in every field of work.
So, in other words, you didn't read the the word "unnecessarily" in my post (see sig), and you didn't understand why your entire response here is beside the point? There are more succint ways to say that.
I understand why the work day is what it is. Really. Really, I do. My plan does not favor or disfavor it. It just makes the costs of congestion show up on everyone's balance sheet so that becomes another factor in whether any one business decides to match the schedules of others. Get it?
If you want to help eliminate congestion, make alternative arrangements. Car pool, mass transit into and out of major downtown areas, etc.
Make alternative arrangements? Who's making these arrangments? Do you mean, me, personally join a carpool? Well, as anyone else always argues before reading my complete proposal, if only I (or 10, 20, or 1,000 people) take these alternative modes, they will make their commute LONGER, and have to deal with ADDITIONAL annoyances, and STILL not noticeably reduce congestion! Lots of sacrifice for me, no gain for anyone. Not much of a "help".
That's why it's necessary for everyone at once to bear a *dollar value* cost of these, so that everyone has an incentive to shift at the same time.
Now taxing people who commute to/from work who are often in situations where living "in the city" is too darned expensive, puts an increased barrier on them and makes their lives even more difficult; especially at the rates proposed in that journal entry.
No; they are already paying in ungodly commute times. I don't live in a big city (thank God*), but when I did (and from talking to the people who have), I had to get up two hours earlier than I would otherwise have to, and get back two hours later. That is a huge, real cost to me. If I rode a bus in light traffic, I could shave probably an hour off the commute itself and live at reasonable hours. And the cost? $4 toll. (See below.) I make that in about ten minutes.
Taxing busses, BTW? Considering a single bus can eliminate as many as 50 cars per run, isn't that redundant?
No. The tax is in proportion to the congestion the vehicle contributes. A bus congests about what 3-4 cars would (maybe more). The "savings", and therefore the incentive to use the bus is already reflected in the price that the commuter pays. While one bus pays more than one car, one bus rider pays less than if he drove a car. If it's $100 for a bus, plus (as a high estimate) $100 for the bus company's operating costs on a trip, that $200 is distributed over 50 people, who see a commute price of $4. ($200/50)
*I mean "God" in the secular sense.
1. Developers don't give a hoot about density. ... There is no 'developers ideology' where one would want to save the environment with tall building clusters.
I didn't say any of that. (See sig.) I just said there *exist* developers willing to do this, as, you agree, there are developers willing to do a lot of things.
Cities are currentlybuilt so that we can live without a car,
No, they're not, they're really, really not. Outside of NYC, Boston, and Chicago maybe, the transit system does not support a carless lifestyle for anyone not willing to go miles out of their way.
The main reason, though? Fear of the city, due to decades of marketing the suburbs as safe and pleasant. There is an abundance of habitable urban area that just isn't perceived as safe to raise a family
I'll agree with you on that, but that's mainly because of the power-tripping bureaucrats I deried above.
3. Your idea of taxing driving at rush hour would likely have unintended consequences. Companies would shift their work day
So? If their workday unnecessarily matches that of many others, they *should* be moving it already.
or move their offices even further out of the city, accessible only by country roads, their hiring pool limited to those who live nearby,
You just explained why they wouldn't do it.
they would be put in an artificial "commuting class" watching the wealthy drive by in their Lexus coupes
So? Their commute is much shorter now, regardless of where they live.
Furthermore, the housing stock already in place would be put in an extreme position of devaluation,
Why? Yes, you have to pay high tolls at rush hour now, but since you'll be riding a bus, you won't pay very much, and your house is now located on prime real estate that's just "a few minutes from work", even during rush hour!
Growth boundaries, such as Portland's, have proven to be effective,
HAHAHAHA!! You're kidding, right? Those are well-known to cause "leap-frog" development, making the problem even worse.
I don't know what the best solution is, but getting more people on buses will be going after the wrong side of the equation.
It doesn't "get more people on buses"; as I made pains to point out, it "gets people" to do *whatever* is compatible with market prices for rush hour road use. Maybe that means a different work schedule. Maybe that means a carpool or vanpool. Maybe that means living closer. Maybe it means biting the bullet and paying the toll. If work schedules were rigid, it would draw entrepreneurs to start implementing viable transit options that don't require a car, making that less inconvenient than it is now.
How is spelling Europe as "Yurrop" supposed to be funny?
Oh, and I'm still waiting for a response to my other posts...
Yurrop
....
I think the correct spelling is Europe, but then again, I'm not as smart as you
No, it won't.