You could always ask for more, but honestly, unfucking car centric infrastructure is going to take two decades at least of consistent effort and deliberately diverting highway and road funding. I’m putting this square in the ‘W’ column while noting that there are many, many more 'W’s that we still need to claim.
Honestly, just the fact that Biden is explicitly talking about the problem would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, so at the very least it shows that a decent amount of the public is starting to get it. And that support is going to be needed to take measures that are going to be unpopular with a loud (and often well resourced) minority.
You, sir or madam, are an optimist. Certainly let’s do it, but there’s 70+ years worth of car-centric growth to undo, and 70 years with if declining transit to rebuild. It’s a lot.
In the city near me, the project to remove just one of these downtown highways dividing cities took 16 years
I really think that car-centric infra is so bad, that once people get a taste of good urbanism and small and medium businesses see how it benefits them, it’ll start picking up a lot of steam. Honest to goodness, the only reason it has such sticking power is that it’s really all we know in the US, and people find it hard so hard to imagine that our infra has been deliberately designed badly that they adopt excuses for why it must not work here. But once they see it working and like it, it’s going to be on like donkey Kong
High quality video of people cycling and walking in livable cities is helping with this I think. Even if you can’t afford to travel yourself, you can get a feel of someone going about their day in a way that is much more true to the actual experience than in the past.
Gotta hope we can do better than in the past. How much of big projects delayed just because of old bueracracies and not fully utilizing new technolgiea and ideas?
On problem is most of the money supposedly meant for public transit in the IRA went towards roads and car infrastructure. So I have a feeling somehow this is just gonna make more highways if anything actually materializes from this.
You could always ask for more, but honestly, unfucking car centric infrastructure is going to take two decades at least of consistent effort and deliberately diverting highway and road funding. I’m putting this square in the ‘W’ column while noting that there are many, many more 'W’s that we still need to claim.
Honestly, just the fact that Biden is explicitly talking about the problem would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, so at the very least it shows that a decent amount of the public is starting to get it. And that support is going to be needed to take measures that are going to be unpopular with a loud (and often well resourced) minority.
Absolutely. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Nothing’s going to change overnight. We can only hope to move in the right direction.
You, sir or madam, are an optimist. Certainly let’s do it, but there’s 70+ years worth of car-centric growth to undo, and 70 years with if declining transit to rebuild. It’s a lot.
In the city near me, the project to remove just one of these downtown highways dividing cities took 16 years
I really think that car-centric infra is so bad, that once people get a taste of good urbanism and small and medium businesses see how it benefits them, it’ll start picking up a lot of steam. Honest to goodness, the only reason it has such sticking power is that it’s really all we know in the US, and people find it hard so hard to imagine that our infra has been deliberately designed badly that they adopt excuses for why it must not work here. But once they see it working and like it, it’s going to be on like donkey Kong
High quality video of people cycling and walking in livable cities is helping with this I think. Even if you can’t afford to travel yourself, you can get a feel of someone going about their day in a way that is much more true to the actual experience than in the past.
Gotta hope we can do better than in the past. How much of big projects delayed just because of old bueracracies and not fully utilizing new technolgiea and ideas?
On problem is most of the money supposedly meant for public transit in the IRA went towards roads and car infrastructure. So I have a feeling somehow this is just gonna make more highways if anything actually materializes from this.
Source, so I can raise my blood pressure about it?