[Thunderhawk]

I have no problem with you wanting to live so far away from civilization, my problem is that cities today are continuing to develop the same way they have always in North America, my just spreading further and further out into areas, without any actual consideration of the development and the lack of need for said vehicles. If you ask a lot of people who ride the bus, they are usually of low income and will desire to purchase a vehicle when they can (even a cheap one), just to get off the transit system because it is extremely weak and mostly useless. When I was in Belgium and Japan, although smaller in terms of a country, very few people that I asked said they actually needed a vehicle, since cities were planned with the ability to walk to places you needed to shop and transit that moved you far distanced that you needed to go. At least attempt to develop cities so that people can live there, rather than cars living there. With the lack of development in cities in the past, we've only created a need for said vehicles and since a large number of people are moving to cities, why not develop cities properly, so that these people can actually LIVE here, rather than live 20 minutes from downtown by car? Just look at Canada, 80% of Canada’s population, live in cities, so why do we create cities for vehicles, when the cities are for the large majority of the population?

I agree. I can also tell you one of the main reasons why Canadian cities generally cannot do what those you mentioned have done: Creating a mass transit system that can be a real replacement for the car, not just a poor man's only option, is expensive. Canadian cities do not have the same type of revenue stream Japanese, European and even American cities get: they get a percentage of income/sales tax, Canadian cities are limited to what they get through property taxes, fines, (city level) licences and the occational other stream (usually small or one time). And then Canadian cities have to provide various public services (outreach, public housing, etc.) usually with only moderate fed/prov assistence too.

Building and maintaining roads is very cheap compared to subways or trams, so cities concentrate on roads and let the individual pay for their own way on it.

[QatzelOk]

Building and maintaining roads is very cheap compared to subways or trams

Yeah, you're a real expert on transportation technology, Thund.

If we cannot adapt and develop technology to overcome environmental problems before they are fatal, then perhaps we deserve it to be fatal.

Techn is what got us here in the first place. And you want to "solve" this with more techne. This is the kind of thinking that takes place in a cult. It's not rational, it's ideological thinking about technology. Food is good for your health, but Foodism - using food to fill the gaps on your life - is extremely unhealthy. Same with technology.

many of these people are actually experts, as they are engineers who develop this technology and do their best to push the limits of technology to meet antagonistic demands from activists, governments, buyers, professionals.

Auto tech people are experts at auto tech. But they are the last people you should ask about appropriate or sustainable technologies because they have a vested interest. Electric cars are being pushed by these people as a way to save their own jobs, not to save anthing else like our environment or economies.

These people know what they can do, they do it, and things are moving. This is not PR.

Thanks for telling me "things are moving" isn't PR. I guess "things are moving" is an observable fact of some value.

[Eauz]

Building and maintaining roads is very cheap compared to subways or trams, so cities concentrate on roads and let the individual pay for their own way on it.

This is the same short-sightedness we see with regard to our own healthcare system. Sure, in the short-term, maintaining roads is cheap, however, in the long-term, think of all the money used to maintain and purchase technology that is used to construct and maintain roads. Planning of cities and use of money for transit infrastructure could actually see cities post profits, with people using such transit, as opposed to begging the federal government each year for more money to maintain roads. Added to the cost of maintaing roads is the cost of creating new roads and maintaining these new roads along with winter clearing costs for each road and area of the city. In the end, having reliable transit systems like LRT moving throughout the city to major spots, subways and buses that connect people further away to the LRT and subway hubs creates less use and necessity for money used to maintain roads and other machines required for road construction and snow removal.

Now, I hear both Adrien and yourself crying that it would cost TOO much. Remember, in the early days of developing roads, there was a major cost related to the actual development of these roads in the first place and then actually getting them into the cities and rural areas. When will we stop thinking about the short-term gains of roads and think of the long-term savings and possible profits (if developed properly) that could be made from such infrastructure for cities. It would save both you and I a LOT on taxes over the long-term.

[QatzelOk]

Sure, in the short-term, maintaining roads is cheap,

Building and maintaining roads is very cheap compared to subways or trams

Okay, I must protest this with extreme irony.

Yes, trams are really expensive compared to car infrastructure. That's why the Soviet satellite countries - which were incredibly wealthy - had such great networks while the cash-starved capitalist countries only had enough money for Camaros and fly-overs.

Likewise, a hundred years ago, North American cities were much richer than they were for the last 50 years. Thus, they had extensive tram networks which were a sign that they had more cash than they knew what to do with.

Today, we are poor and suburban.

Communism makes you rich, and then you can afford trams. Same with going back in time.

[Thunderhawk]

Yeah, you're a real expert on transportation technology, Thund.

I believe Maas is the closest we have a real expert on the subject matter. But road design and infrastructure is part of the field I study.

Techn is what got us here in the first place.

You would rather Humans be gatherers in the savannas?
Not even hunter-gatherers, as hunting required technology.

This is the same short-sightedness we see with regard to our own healthcare system. Sure, in the short-term, maintaining roads is cheap, however, in the long-term, think of all the money used to maintain and purchase technology that is used to construct and maintain roads.

Actually, its still cheaper to build roads then tram lines or subways. However, it being cheaper doesnt make it better long term - in fact, I believe money should be spent on mass transit. I condemn the short sighted nature of urban planning being about roads, but I also recognize why it happens - not out of ignorance or desire, but because there is no other development option that tries to be fair to new areas and still affordable.

construction, rough guide line of cost:
road: 1-10 million /km
LRT: 10-40 million /km
Subway: 100-200 million /km

For the cost of building ~6 lanes of road you could put in an LRT line. I rather that be the method. But most roads start off as 2 or 4 lanes and are then widened, and operating LRT lines in low density areas would either run at a negative (which is ok) or be run so rarely that people would not count on it, and thus resort to cars anyways.

I rather cities have dedicated LRT lines and rent out track time to cargo delivery companies so that the trucks can get off the roads (which it damages with its high ESAL factors). But that takes a substantial financial investment Canadian cities dont have and higher level governments dont want to give. The Soviet block had governments that were willing to invest - and they did. But thats rare in the West.

[QatzelOk]

You would rather Humans be gatherers in the savannas?

It's really not up to me or you.

It's up to what nature wants.

That's why the concept of an 'efficient' car is such a joke. Because the definition of 'efficient' would depend on the technology of the moment, and not on the long-term sustainability of modern society.

This is where your expertise is actually a chain around your leg. You are attached to the things you obsess about. You can't imagine the world being a better place without them.

[Thunderhawk]

It's up to what nature wants.

How do you know nature doesnt want humans to advance technology?

You are attached to the things you obsess about. You can't imagine the world being a better place without them.

You believe the world would be a better place without technology?
Or just cars?

[Adrien]

Lots of replies! We're actually having, some of us anyway, a real discussion.

I have no problem with you wanting to live so far away from civilization, my problem is that cities today are continuing to develop the same way they have always in North America, my just spreading further and further out into areas, without any actual consideration of the development and the lack of need for said vehicles. If you ask a lot of people who ride the bus, they are usually of low income and will desire to purchase a vehicle when they can (even a cheap one), just to get off the transit system because it is extremely weak and mostly useless. When I was in Belgium and Japan, although smaller in terms of a country, very few people that I asked said they actually needed a vehicle, since cities were planned with the ability to walk to places you needed to shop and transit that moved you far distanced that you needed to go. At least attempt to develop cities so that people can live there, rather than cars living there. With the lack of development in cities in the past, we've only created a need for said vehicles and since a large number of people are moving to cities, why not develop cities properly, so that these people can actually LIVE here, rather than live 20 minutes from downtown by car? Just look at Canada, 80% of Canada’s population, live in cities, so why do we create cities for vehicles, when the cities are for the large majority of the population?

Before I start, let it be known that I usually live and want to live in the roughly downtown area of big cities, where I use no car. I do not even have my license, given I never really needed a car. The starting point of my argument was laying a fact, that today, and I nuanced that in different degrees depending on the continent, many people do not live in downtown areas, or live in small compact towns but far from big economic centres to and from which they need to commute, a commute they can only make by car, due to the fact that some communities cannot support the cost of a transit system, or that it is in the big picture difficult for a big community to link every population spot, every community, to every other one.

You'll notice that Belgium and Japan were in the cases in which people don't need a car that much due to rather extensive mass transit system. But you'll have to acknowledge too that even in Belgium, Japan, or France, some people can only reach their workplace, supermarkets, etc. by car. Not that it can't change over the course of one's life or career, in one way or the other.

If we go to North America, again you have to acknowledge that their tax system and the flows of money do not work the same way as in Europe. And in the United States that fact is even stronger. They don't have big central infrastructures, their urban map is made of different and horizontally intertwined levels of communities, from towns and villages, to cities, townships, etc. In France, to take our example, there is a pyramidal structure of authorities and organisations of this and that: Urban Communities, Syndicats des Transports, Conseil Regional, Conseil General, etc.. And also there isn't the financing. The pros and cons and whereabouts of the US tax system and public sector is for a different forum, but here we have to acknowledge that fact. There just isn't the financing one needs. And it's a nationwide characteristic of the United States. Only huge metropolitan areas can support the cost of a bus (or worse, train) system. In the Midwest at large, that is just not possible.

So cities, that need to grow because the US is a land of immigration too, because the population usually grows anyway (they are 300 million, that's nothing like Canada's situation in term of potential commuters to accomodate), well cities grow the only way possible. With the car in mind.

If you allow me an aside here to recenter my main point, I wasn't arguing that we must do that or work to preserve it even, it just happens, I was just telling Qatz that the car answers a need today, especially in the US, but that at the same time there is a real work done on that need to make cars more efficient. And that his hatred for the United States made him be ill-faithed about that. I know that we should work to develop mass transportation. And to me, I can totally envision a mass transit-based downtown life and the car being used for long distances, vacations, or even pure pleasure on a race track.

To come back to urbanism, in addition to the situation having to evolve in a certain way in North America, the initial canvas is very different and complicates things. Any urbanist will tell you that the medieval, ancient even, roots of urbanism in Europe created a more compact by-default organisation. For trade, religious activities, etc. people gathered, and old towns of cities of today are proof of that medieval density. There even the smallest villages are small. In North America, or South America or even Africa in a way, the model is a colonial one of spread out settlements, of people pushing further the barrier of explored lands and settling along the way, and as I said, people settling to follow the availability of land.

All of that should explain my opinion on the past development of cities to become the way they are today. Add to that some pure urbanistic failures too (the 60s, large housing projects and their susbsequent social death which results if all economic life fleeing further, which in turns provokes the use of the car, and the second stage in which during the 70s and 80s these projects were purposedly sent far away with a highway connecting them to the rest of the urban web so that immigrants would be far away), a couple of economic crises, the dismembering of the powerful State in favour of an even more liberal economy, the decline of public investment in that sector, etc. and you'll see why today we don't plan anything, especially not something as costly as a mass transit system.

Is it good? At the end of the line, no. But that's the way it is, and while changing that takes decades, people need to go to work and exchange goods each day. And that requires vehicles, that need to be changed every now and then, but vehicles that we kept improving to make it easier on our way of life and our people.

If we had it the way you and I want it in terms of system of production, management of the State and all, it'd be very different. We could invest in that, plan tremendous urbanistic changes, etc. If it's any proof of my sincerity in the sticky thread of the Socialism forum there are several passages in which my ideas on the concentration of economic activity, urbanism, etc. are evoked.

I don't see why it couldn't be done, since even Germany destroyed villages and forced people to move to the cities after WWII. However, even if these communities want to exist, it doesn't mean that the actual cities have to suffer for the fact that a few villages with populations of 100 or less want to have vehicles. Again, cities are where people in the modern world end up living, it's just part of modern society and preventing any development of planning that would help improve the ability of a person to live in a city without a vehicle is of great importance for the development of our society.

I am not saying that to be offensive at all, but what that analogy with Germany is a blatant lack of respect for people who today live in these 'urbanistically unefficient' cities, towns, villages and other communities, who don't have just a hundred of inhabitants as you say, to make for such a big global population wherever in the world we're talking of populations of a couple thousands each time. Localities with less than that have a minimal impact, because they are usually made of old populations who do not move a lot and have a small consumption (given young people most likely leave for jobs in bigger agglomerations) and/or are localities of professionals, farmers and cattle growers who will anyway transport their goods, and themselves with them, by vehicle.

Plus inhabitants of smaller cities shouldn't be labeled as culprits, they didn't choose to live there in order to mock urbanists and others. They live there because they could, wanted to, because they liked it, and stayed there because that's where they built their families, social networks, etc.

The forced relocation of people is one of the worst things you can do, it hints at all sorts of very dark periods of our modern and not-so-modern history, it does nothing for the social cohesion of a nation, and can have disastrous results.

I also question your manichean view of the city in the first place actually. First, every city isn't either the size of a capital or a tiny tiny village. There is, and that depends on a lot factors, an infinity of sizes. Lots of cities can be economically viable, stable and relevant with populations of 50000, 80000 inhabitants. But that's too small to bear the cost of huge investments that won't anyway come from superior levels of the state. And finally, it's very socio-centric to say that the big agglomeration is the way of the future.

It is not a linear evolution. The "city" and the "country" both answer different needs of our industry, economy, social development, cultural development, availability of leisure. They usually house different activites. They exchange population in a regular basis. They offer different skills.

It is a urbanistic and geographic cliche here in France to say that there is Paris, and the rest. It's due to an equally cliche, though true, book of the 1940s (I think) called "Paris and the French desert". To me that's a bad thing. To ensure economic progress, cultural progress, creativity, diversity of activities and opportunities, we need to have a more spread-out model. And that probably will always require a more personnal means of transportation, no matter how advanced we manage to get our public systems to be.

Which is why you develop and change with time. Companies that existed in the 20's and continue to exist today don't keep the exact same practice going that they did in the 20's. This is obvious, why would we do the same with planning? Why not ADD onto the existing planning?

Companies and urban planning cannot be compared. A company launches a product, it's volatile, gets destroyed, recycled, they get a new one on the market, flies off the factory's shelves, it's a consumer good. Urban planning is about building roads, railroads, highways, housing projects, commodities, etc. You don't change that in the course of five years, the average product cycle these days.

If you get one model of car wrong, if the laptop you release is underpowered, if your instant coffee is a disaster, you just go back to the drawing board, and the new product replaces the old one on the assembly lines, repopulates the market, and your mistake is erased. If you built roads among corn fields where you had one shot and could have built railroads instead, if you built a new city for new inhabitants so far north of London it requires them to take the M1 to go to the job the moved to the area for, if you built a massive housing project north of Paris that is now in ruins and a social failure on a superb spot that is now also ruined, well each and every time it will take decades to change it. It will take investments, and why these don't come I've evoked it just earlier.

Today everynow and then you see the housing authority managing to empty an old building by finding new spots for its inhabitants and not welcoming new ones. Just that takes years. Then they have to destroy it, it takes a lot of money both to destroy and clean the site. Then they have to build something new. But among this urbanistically dysfunctional environment, it's either they build a new building or they wait for the whole place to be taken down to start anew. And even then success is not garanteed.

So there is a LOT of inertia. So in the mean time, we might as well work to get our cars more efficient, to work in little touches on collective transportation, and do what we can to change our system of production.

---

@Thunderhawk's reply: I totally agree with you on the difficulties cities encounter. And it's everywhere the same, the scale at which the problem arises is the only thing that changes. In Europe, smaller cities will encounter the same problems as bigger cities in Canada, so imagine the problems of smaller cities in North America.

---

I won't bother to reply to Qatz's Klaxonness.

---

This is the same short-sightedness we see with regard to our own healthcare system. Sure, in the short-term, maintaining roads is cheap, however, in the long-term, think of all the money used to maintain and purchase technology that is used to construct and maintain roads. Planning of cities and use of money for transit infrastructure could actually see cities post profits, with people using such transit, as opposed to begging the federal government each year for more money to maintain roads. Added to the cost of maintaing roads is the cost of creating new roads and maintaining these new roads along with winter clearing costs for each road and area of the city. In the end, having reliable transit systems like LRT moving throughout the city to major spots, subways and buses that connect people further away to the LRT and subway hubs creates less use and necessity for money used to maintain roads and other machines required for road construction and snow removal.

I don't think you realise the gap between the two budgets. Building roads is dirt cheap. Maintaining them is even cheaper. Highways are a bit of a tougher endeavour because they require you to do landscaping and take down forests, and swamps, and former crops, etc. But roads? It's nothing. And while it is possible to spend a lot in maintaining them to have slick tarmac, state-of-the-art barriers and signals (let's take the cliche example of Ontario), you don't even have to with roads, you can leave them just okay, and fix them every now and then, and traffic will still go through, even if motorists complain (see Quebec hehe, or the US). Sure you need to get the roads cleaned a bit when it snows, but you think it's not the same for buses, tramways, trains? If anything you then spend more doing it because you have to do it thoroughly as you bear the responsibility of a public service. And you have to provide all that at an affordable cost for travelers! And with a minimal tax increase! And no funding from above!

The choice of roads is a low maintenance, low investment, no strings attached solution. Doing major, major changes in urbanism, installing mass transit systems, keeping them working with all the employees it takes, etc. is a gigantic investment that signs you in for decades of steady investment and money.I am not saying choosing just roads over mass transit is rejoicing, or the best long-term choice, or what I would do, but turning things around cannot happen today with someone snapping their fingers. There is nobody to bear the cost of the investment most of the time, we're talking tremendous amounts of money Eauz.

When on one hand you have a one-off small investment, and on the other hand a huge, long-term, renewing investment, which do you think smaller and medium-sized cities most of the time left fending for themselves will choose?

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but that's also when we should blame a capitalist system of production and a system of government defending free-markets. If we are to be upset over that, let's blame the ruling classes and all, not people who just try to live their lives the best way they can.

---

Yes, trams are really expensive compared to car infrastructure. That's why the Soviet satellite countries - which were incredibly wealthy - had such great networks while the cash-starved capitalist countries only had enough money for Camaros and fly-overs.

That is a ridiculous strawman, as usual.

In the Soviet countries the totality of the country's wealth was put on public services and heavy infrastructures, none on consumer goods. That was the product of their system of production as well, of course, as a conscious choice. In capitalist countries, since the situation was exactly opposite in terms of economy and choices. the result was the exact opposite. Period.

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Actually, its still cheaper to build roads then tram lines or subways. However, it being cheaper doesnt make it better long term - in fact, I believe money should be spent on mass transit. I condemn the short sighted nature of urban planning being about roads, but I also recognize why it happens - not out of ignorance or desire, but because there is no other development option that tries to be fair to new areas and still affordable.

construction, rough guide line of cost:
road: 1-10 million /km
LRT: 10-40 million /km
Subway: 100-200 million /km

For the cost of building ~6 lanes of road you could put in an LRT line. I rather that be the method. But most roads start off as 2 or 4 lanes and are then widened, and operating LRT lines in low density areas would either run at a negative (which is ok) or be run so rarely that people would not count on it, and thus resort to cars anyways.

I rather cities have dedicated LRT lines and rent out track time to cargo delivery companies so that the trucks can get off the roads (which it damages with its high ESAL factors). But that takes a substantial financial investment Canadian cities dont have and higher level governments dont want to give. The Soviet block had governments that were willing to invest - and they did. But thats rare in the West.

I totally agree with and every of your points there Thunderhawk.

Again Eauz I am merely trying to explain the state of our global situation and explain the situation of the people out there, in order for Qatz to stop his dishonest assessment of that same situation. And I was also trying to make the subsequent point that the car is here and prevalent for a reason (as a direct mirror effect of the transit system situation we've been discussing), and that it is being improved and made more efficient to make up for the continous unavailability of such a transit system.

[Eauz]

I don't think you realise the gap between the two budgets. Building roads is dirt cheap. Maintaining them is even cheaper. Highways are a bit of a tougher endeavour because they require you to do landscaping and take down forests, and swamps, and former crops, etc. But roads? It's nothing. And while it is possible to spend a lot in maintaining them to have slick tarmac, state-of-the-art barriers and signals (let's take the cliche example of Ontario), you don't even have to with roads, you can leave them just okay, and fix them every now and then, and traffic will still go through, even if motorists complain (see Quebec hehe, or the US). Sure you need to get the roads cleaned a bit when it snows, but you think it's not the same for buses, tramways, trains? If anything you then spend more doing it because you have to do it thoroughly as you bear the responsibility of a public service. And you have to provide all that at an affordable cost for travelers! And with a minimal tax increase! And no funding from above!

I guess my question though is, when do we escape this cycle? If the cheapest way to have a mode of transportation is building roads and highways, then where is the desire to encourage urban development that is for the people living in these cities? In terms of cost, I still think in the end, you will have a more sustainable and ecological plan, if infrastructure is invested in mass transit for the public. It might even provide a profitable business for cities, if created properly. However, in order to do so, one must first create the cities so that they are not built for big box chain stores but for people to actually live in. There comes a point in life when you have to grow up and realise that we can't just keep the same 1950's style life of driving from the suburbs to work and back on our highways, there needs to be a change in the way cities are built and used for. At the moment, a lot of people view cities are the place where they work but not the place where they live. Why not change this? Although you might not like some of what Qatz is saying, cars really have destroyed a large part of North American cities by making them a place you drive through as opposed to a place you live. Urban development doesn't just help create mass transit it also creates economic growth for the inner city, a place that a lot of people view as dangerous and an undesirable place to be.

[QatzelOk]

Sure you need to get the roads cleaned a bit when it snows, but you think it's not the same for buses, tramways, trains?

I think I'm the only person here who's ever taken an urban geography course.

In Montreal, snow clearing is killing our roads budget. And the cost of replacing highways and ramps is killing people as well as budgets.

Tramways were a lot cheaper to maintain, and the price of those systems also INCLUDES THE VEHICLES.

It used to cost five cents to travel all around the northeast US by tramway/train. Now it costs a small fortune to do the same by car (when you include the cost of road construction/policing/pollution mitigation. All of these costs are incurred by everyone, which makes road transportation look cheap.

Also, those cheap "roads" that Adrien is saying would be an alternative to mass transit wouldn't be paved, so buses and trucks couldn't use them. Only SUVs and mountain bikes. And mass transit is better for lazy people than mountain bikes.

(I can't believe Adrien wrote several 5000-word posts in this thread without really knowing the overall costs of car transit versus mass transit.)

[Thunderhawk]

I guess my question though is, when do we escape this cycle? If the cheapest way to have a mode of transportation is building roads and highways, then where is the desire to encourage urban development that is for the people living in these cities?

When spending for infrastructure is acceptable by the people, the people accept and start paying the real cost for transit (public and private) and the mass transit unions dont try to coopt that extra cash for increasing the pay of their members.

cars really have destroyed a large part of North American cities by making them a place you drive through as opposed to a place you live.

I agree with this. Even mass transit buses contributes to that affect, to a certain degree.

Tramways were a lot cheaper to maintain, and the price of those systems also INCLUDES THE VEHICLES.

They are cheaper to maintain due to their necessity of proper design. Regular roads can be designed for regular cars and survive excessive loads (from trucks) for years before they need rehabilitation/repair/replacement.

Also, there are very few tramways compared to the amount of roads, so it easy to dirrect a bit more money to properly maintain tramways as that extra is a fraction of a percentage point of the total roadway maintenance budget. The main argument is that the cost per passenger moved per km, is cheaper for tram ways then for roads. But then roads are also used by heavy cargo movers which cause most of the damage, while trams dont have these extra loads (though a tramway would be better suited for their movement).

The price of LRT lines (including my above mentioned numbers) sometimes includes vehicles, sometime it does not. None the less, the vehicles will need maintenance too, and that adds to the operating cost.

In Montreal, snow clearing is killing our roads budget. And the cost of replacing highways and ramps is killing people as well as budgets.

Quebec uses to much salt, and is cheap on the construction end.

[Adrien]

I guess my question though is, when do we escape this cycle? If the cheapest way to have a mode of transportation is building roads and highways, then where is the desire to encourage urban development that is for the people living in these cities?

Well, for me the answer is changing our whole system of production. Today when the point of the system is to promote free enterprise and limitate the role of government, even on infrastructures that are that essential, the cheap solution is always the one chosen. There is actually no desire, no policy in that domain. The last policies (however misguided) were from the 60s and very early 70s in the last years of big government and strong State for us here in Europe. It's not a coincidence. Same for the revalence of mass transit systems as opposed to personnal means of transportations in the countries of the Soviet bloc for instance.

In terms of cost, I still think in the end, you will have a more sustainable and ecological plan, if infrastructure is invested in mass transit for the public. It might even provide a profitable business for cities, if created properly.

Oh that's true it creates activity. Transit systems create jobs by ordering vehicles, employing mechanics and drivers, ticket controllers, and they also need sub-contractors for the electronic ticket machines. And the knowing that a bus line or tramway line will pass every day in this or that sector will make the little shop owners more confident than mere trafic, that fluctuates and doesn't generate as many stops of customers.

But no matter the possible outcomes, which would take years, it takes tremendous amounts of money to build it in the first place (I'm not denying the building itself creates activity too, but the money created by the activity won't come to replace directly the money spent out by the State out of its funds in the first place).

However, in order to do so, one must first create the cities so that they are not built for big box chain stores but for people to actually live in. There comes a point in life when you have to grow up and realise that we can't just keep the same 1950's style life of driving from the suburbs to work and back on our highways, there needs to be a change in the way cities are built and used for.

See, you underestimate that of all the consequences of capitalism, from personal wealths, careers, companies and monopolies that come and go, all of which are volatile and not very lasting in our environment, the way it impressed urban development with its mark (see my answer in my first comment here) is deep, lasting, physical even.

You cannot change that with a signature at the end of a contract. It would be time consuming, costly, damaging to our social weave as well as to all the communities. And if you think of creating new cities altogether, this is a very difficult endeavour, and all the mass projects of this kind have failed in the past. The only successful case has to be that of the new towns created in Cornwall under the impulse of Prince Charles' eco-theories, and since we're talking quality living with a real research in urbanism, the cost would go through the roof on a big scale project.

At the moment, a lot of people view cities are the place where they work but not the place where they live. Why not change this?

No matter how you dislike it, the pendulum movement of people going to work in the morning in city A and coming back home in the evening in city B is never gonna die.

Activities and people are not always in the same place but the two must remain connected. And sometimes they happen to be in the same place, but it's never long before the people go look further away for more space or just space in the first place. A core city can only accomodate so many people. Otherwise if you make it crazy big and dense we run into a lot of other problems that totally outweigh the positive impact of mass transit systems on the quality of life. And it is today also acknowledged that there needs to be a green belt of sorts between a core city and the outskirts where the workers go live to find a better lifestyle. Also, people don't keep the same job all their lives.

Today, due again to all lack of real planning from the authorities, these green belts are being eaten away by the building of new houses of people trying to stick to the core city. To me it is not a good option at all, conurbations (senseful for how good they receive transit systems) come with a whole lot of problems too.

Although you might not like some of what Qatz is saying, cars really have destroyed a large part of North American cities by making them a place you drive through as opposed to a place you live.

I disagree, to me the problem is the opposite. The capitalist mindset practiced, as a founding principle even, by the American nation for over two centuries now, a period that includes the building of a country from scratch, meaning all the European webs of medieval population spots were not there to provide any help, created a spread-out situation, based on personnal means of transportation. Trust me, before the car they would go and connect their cities by private trains (it was a market as booming as the car market was later on, and was the first engine of American economic development before Detroit), by horse, by dilligence carriage, for goods, passengers, information, etc.; if you erase all the cliches of the Far West movies, what is left is truly a situation on which the car attached itself. And even then there was a real idea of "driving through", of stops on the way. It's a two hundred year old base that you're dealing with in America here.

True, the availability of the car over the carriage made that process accelerate. But the car was not a primary cause, it was invented as a motorised carriage to replace horses, which were costly, not very efficient, and because the poor animals couldn't cover this kind of distance as the said distance was made greater by the expansion of the country, by the rapid appearance of economic activity here and there, etc. They truly answered a physical, systemic need.

Urban development doesn't just help create mass transit it also creates economic growth for the inner city, a place that a lot of people view as dangerous and an undesirable place to be.

That's far from being the fault of cars alone. And again new forms of organisation for cities don't fall out of the skies, they represent pharaonic endeavours, almost literally I would say. I'm not saying we can't do anything, though being in a capitalistic system of production limitates the options drastically, but we ought to work on all fronts. Acknowledging the role and relevance of the car today, while maybe trying to work on what we have in terms of cities and improve them.

My post was originally longer but stupid browser crashed and I had to do it all over again.



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It used to cost five cents to travel all around the northeast US by tramway/train. Now it costs a small fortune to do the same by car (when you include the cost of road construction/policing/pollution mitigation. All of these costs are incurred by everyone, which makes road transportation look cheap.

That sounds like a biased anachronic strawman argument. Care to say when did it use to cost five cents? What did five cents represent in terms of purchasing power back then? And compared to the cost of operating a vehicle? Do you have any idea of expensive it is today to travel by train? Even more so in Europe, where it's cheaper to cross France in car than in train.

Have you ever wondered why in North America bus lines like Greyhound and Jefferson were omnipresent, and many people's only choice? People don't do it for the fun of sitting for days on end in the most uncomfortable means of transportation this side of the Atlantic. Look, buses like these are motor vehicles, they're private, they embody the lack of infrastructure. You imply that yourself! The NorthEast area isn't the only thing there is to the US! What about the entire midwest? The deeper corners of the industrial belt? How about the very economically active South-West? What about them?

Also, those cheap "roads" that Adrien is saying would be an alternative to mass transit wouldn't be paved, so buses and trucks couldn't use them. Only SUVs and mountain bikes. And mass transit is better for lazy people than mountain bikes.

I don't want to sound like a smartass, but cheap roads are not paved, they're just covered in asphalt. That's cheap, easy, and quickly done to boot (unless as I said if you go for a highway which includes more variables). And please stop your whining about SUVs, any little car can withstand a trip on a 'patchworked' portion of road, where the asphalt is maybe not even, with a couple of holes in the road, or with cracks repaired by just filling then with tar. Come on, that describes just as well the part of Wisconsin where I was and half of Montreal's own streets and outbound roads.

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I agree with this. Even mass transit buses contributes to that affect, to a certain degree.

Actually, if you go for the big scale, many Greyhound buses and the like keep lots of communities and shops alive. Many little shops all across the world rely on customers coming from neighbouring towns.

[Thunderhawk]

Actually, if you go for the big scale, many Greyhound buses and the like keep lots of communities and shops alive

My comment was that buses damage roads a lot more then cars.
A greyhound bus carrying 50 people do more damage to the road then 50 cars.

http://www.pavementinteractive.org/index.php?title=ESAL

[Adrien]

Oh sorry my bad hehe.

[QatzelOk]

A greyhound bus carrying 50 people do more damage to the road then 50 cars.

I will repeat myself: trains.

Back in the day, when North Americans were a lot smarter and had a lot less money/fat, they used trains to carry freight and passengers. The tracks can withstand a lot more weight, trains use a lot less fuel, and maintenance costs are a lot lower on trains than on buses and trucks.

It's cheaper to live closer together and transport things by train, and we no longer have the money (or environment) to screw around with cars and the lies that keep them on our roads.

**thread comes to a stunning conclusion**

[Thunderhawk]

I will repeat myself: trains.

Most people in this thread, Adrien and my self included, support trains and LRT.

trains use a lot less fuel,

Actually, they use a huge amount of fuel. Their efficiency comes from moving huge loads for that fuel usage.

[QatzelOk]

Actually, they use a huge amount of fuel. Their efficiency comes from moving huge loads for that fuel usage.

This sentence is relatively throw-away. I realize that trains are big, and big things use more fuel than little things. But the hundred cars that replace a 90 passenger tramway, for example, use a lot of fuel. And so when someone writes that trains use little fuel, they are obviously comparing them to the alternatives.

Of course, my bicycle uses the least fuel of all. Even a thousand of them.

[Thunderhawk]

I realize that trains are big, and big things use more fuel than little things.

Terminological error ?

When you said trains, I thought of trains. Commuter trains, cargo trains. etc.-trains.
Commuter trains arent a lot more efficient then cars. They move a lot of people while using little room and do so quickly, which is why they are liked by people who support mass transit, but they arent green. Trams generally are, but I dont consider them as "trains". A language barrier?

[Dave]

Define green, Thunderhawk. I would argue that something that doesn't produce pollution is green. Trains and trams that run on clean energy fit this bill, although there is pollution involved in their manufacture and construction (steel and cement production especially). But then, is anything green?

[josephdphillips]

it is a cop-out to say that it was a logical evolution between horse to car.

The horse represented private transportation in its day. Now the car does. Sounds pretty logical to me.

What is missed in your argument is the lack of vision or planning with regard to cities, that helped develop the supposed need for vehicles to be used by individuals.

It was a different vision, not the lack of vision, that created the infrastructure for the automobile. People don't LIKE living in crowded cities. They don't LIKE being forced to use public transportation when private transportation is so much more convenient.

No one knows that more than me. I live in the Los Angeles area. I would rather spend two hours in my car, stuck on freeways, than spend an hour on a public bus or train. Most people are that way.

If planning had been in place, the existing networks of rail for industrial use could have been converted into usable transit systems.

Oh, you mean if government coercion had been applied, people could be forced to use mass transit.

If planning had been in place, we wouldn't have had the need to have someone living 2 km away from the closest transit stop.

Plans for high-density living always exist and are rejected. People do not want to live that way.

In Winnipeg, they completely destroyed the existing rail lines inside the downtown core, to provide for more vehicle use. This completely destroyed the downtown core and it is now a place to drive through, rather than walk through.

You forgot to mention that people like outdoor malls and box stores a lot better. They can park, buy what they want, get back in their cars and go back home. They don't need to walk blocks through a crowded downtown to find what they want and then have to schlep it home on a crowded bus (like my grandmother did).

There is nothing natural or logical about moving from a means of transportation for the 18th centry (horses) to vehicles, when we are living in a world with a lot of technological development that COULD have been used to developing extensive lines of transit, reducing the need for said vehicles.

You seem to be saying the government should be ignoring the desires of its citizens in favor of what the elite wants for them. You will note, however, that extremely few people who promote transit, especially those in government, actually use mass transit. No on in L.A. does, that's for sure.