  Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 483 Registered: 06-2007 |
This was the original Facebook link to an article on the need for government spending on transportation projects as a means to create jobs, increase access to jobs and reduce dependency on oil. Everything that follows has been an argument either for or against transportation spending in Detroit. http://www.thenation.com/doc/2 0090216/adler | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 484 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: 'LOL ... Only The Nation could, with a straight face, advocate "high-density, efficient housing" built by the government and use Manhattan and San Francisco as examples. I'm all for mass transit, especially as an actual downtown resident, but the examples of the Keynesian failures in Japan's attempts to do the very thing The Nation advocates are too stark a reminder of the harsh realities of government attempts to spend us to prosperity.' | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 485 Registered: 06-2007 |
'JF' says: 'Read more carefully. They don't advocate the high-density efficient housing built by the government. They are merely stating that high-density efficient housing is a byproduct of the existence of mass transit.' | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 486 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: 'True. I guess I'm influenced by The Nation's overall ideological slant, which is the government construction of everything through increased confiscation of personal wealth (such as the gas tax hike proposed in this piece, a coercive measure to punish drivers and force them toward government mass transit ... further punishment for the automakers, too.) Only The Nation could call a tax increase of any sort "ideal." The Leftist desire for Orwellian massed housing, where government can better control people for their own "benefit," is evident in this story, as is the disdain for the conservative suburbs.' | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 487 Registered: 06-2007 |
'JF' says: I guess I tend to look at this on more of a local level when evaluating this than anything else. I admit that the idea of spending our way out of this current situation is problematic, but if we are talking about Detroit specifically, then this stimulus is good and might work. Spending money for transit projects means first and foremost that Detroit will get some type of system. In my opinion, this is a pre-requisite for attracting the type of workers we want. Secondly, the construction of the rolling stock required for not just the Detroit project, but projects across the U.S., might very well wind up taking place in Detroit. With property values low, the right improvements to the infrastructure of our area might help our area experience a rebound. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 488 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Except the only mass transit project with a shot at any of this money is the A2-Detroit commuter rail, and I don't see many jobs being created in the next 12 months for that. The Woodward and 3-county plan are too far out to be eligible, from all I've been told. The Detroit plans are one thing. The Nation appeared to advocate mass transit as the answer that Japan thought it would be - little bullet trains to nowhere. People want to live in ulta-hipster lofts in Detroit, but not that many and not on the level of progressive hotbeds like SF and NYC. Fix the schools. You're not going to significantly repopulate Detroit without the stuff people get in the inefficient 'burbs. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 489 Registered: 06-2007 |
'M' says: Wow, [B], you really have drunk the Limbaugh anti-government kool-aid! I had no idea. Many people want to live in higher-density urban housing, closer to amenities and less dependent on a car to get anywhere and do anything. In fact, the housing crash is far worse in "conservative suburbs" than in "orwellian massed housing" of urban areas. Also, haven't you been listening all year to all those crazy leftists in the Michigan Chamber and other business groups advocating for increasing the gas tax? Clearly they want to punish drivers and force them towards government mass transit, right? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 490 Registered: 06-2007 |
'R' says: The Nation has a face? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 491 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' Says: It's not anti-government, nor anything to do with Limbaugh (I don't listen to any commentators on radio or TV, much less windbags like Rush). I'm of the Austrian school of economics. I'm a Goldwater Republican. Government has its role in the economy, but not the freight train to hell we're about to see. The housing crash can be pinned on progressive ideology pervading the false conservative movement within the White House for 8 years, pushing the notion of giving everyone a shot at owning a home. Bad idea. As for the dense urban housing - it's not selling. Loft projects are failling all over. Mass transit in Detroit will hope - no one is a bigger fan. But The Nation isn't talking about stuff like Woodward. It's pushing the Japanese/Keynesian route, and that's a disaster. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 492 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' Says: And The Nation wants to raise the gas tax for different reasons than the chamber. Business groups want repairs and improvements to highway and road infrastructure, whereas the writers of the Daily Worker, er, I mean The Nation are pushing to replace Detroit with rail and, at best, absurd things like the Smart Car. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3516 Registered: 07-2004 |
Market forces that help drive what conservatives want are just that: "market forces." It's not us. We're just letting the free market work its magic. Market forces that help drive what conservatives don't want? "Crisis!" We need to use public resources to help fine-tune market forces. We'll see how closely reality follows the satire. Will free-marketers be willing to concede that volatile fuel prices, changing tastes and falling revenues/rising costs means that the suburbs won't "work" anymore? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 493 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: The government, working hand-in-hand with private industry, successfully retooled America's auto plants to construct planes, tanks and an entire wartime manufacturing base during World War II. It was a massive undertaking that was not only unmatched in history, but was wildly successful. Now, as it becomes painfully obvious that perpetuating automobile-based sprawl is just not economically sustainable, we have an opportunity to retool America's auto plants once again! Yes! It is time for a massive public-private partnership on the level of the Arsenal of Democracy and Eisenhower's interstate highway system! Retool much of the auto industry for rail-based transit. New rail-based transit in Detroit and in every midsize and major city in the US, each inter-connected by high-speed rail links. Now is the time to boldly plan and build our future in an economically sustainable way. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 494 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: That's completely unfeasible. Tanks and automobile are consumable products that sustain industry by needing to be replaced. Trains are designed to last decades or more. Is Detroit going to produce 12-16 million locomotive engines and cars a year? Are we going to tear up the streets and replace them with hundreds of millions of miles of train tracks? Cars and aircraft replaced trains for a reason - speed and efficiency. Maybe you enjoy the 12 hour Amtrak trip from Detroit to Chicago, but I'll take the 3 1/2 car ride any day. Little trams like the one proposed for Woodward make sense. General mass transit in tiny, crowded places like Japan make sense. But it doesn't in general for a massive country like the U.S. The Progressive utopian fantasy of ditching Dodges for bullet trains between work and the massive East German-style apartment building are just that - fantasy. We're a nation founded on individualism and the "frontier spirit" of our own homestead. Suburbia wasn't an accident. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 495 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: Automobiles replaced transit because of government policy, period. And automobile-based sprawl (most of what suburbia is) has been a such a complete and total social, cultural and economic catastrophe, one hardly knows where to begin. The ongoing costs in terms of human life alone are staggering. Does one bring up the wholesale slaughter of 40,000 Americans each and every year simply because communities are designed almost exclusively for mandatory automobile use? How about the 250,000 additional Americans maimed each year? You'll have to Google how many Americans were killed last year riding rail-based transit - I heard the number was something like 7. Or how about the huge transfer of wealth from our pockets to the pockets of those who despise us ($200 trillion?) - just so we can keep driving. It's continued insanity. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 496 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: Automobile Freedom Day We hear about tax freedom day each year - the theoretical day in which someone has labored enough work days to cover the cost of their annual tax obligation. I would like to see the media start covering "Automobile Freedom Day" - the day in which an individual or family has labored long enough to cover the cost of owning and maintaining their fleet of automobiles. This would include: payments, interest, insurance, gas, maintenance, repairs, ect. plus the hidden costs such as paying for and maintaining the enormous sprawl infrastructure, along with the ongoing costs of those killed and injured. My guess is that it would eclipse tax freedom day by a long shot. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 497 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' Says: Government didn't force cars on people. There was a market for them because they're manifestly more convenient than trains and similar modes of transportation, except in large, dense cities such as NYC and Chicago, etc. I'm supposed to lug my four kids on trains around the country? I'm supposed to take seven transfers between here and Meijer to get the large volume of groceries I need? That sure is convenient. Or are we to force people to live in massively overcrowded cities, so we can all give up our cars and experience something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =9XfVl6_R7_k I'll pass. The argument against internal combustion engines and fossil fuels doesn't negate the inherent inconvenience of trains versus cars. The market is pushing for cars with different fuel sources, not for everyone to get on trains. Other than streetcars, trains are dead. How many people died on transatlantic ocean liners last year? 0. But other than luxury, it's a crappy way to get to England. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 498 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Why not a fleet of government-owned rickshaws? It'll put people to work, it's quieter than trains and doesn't require tearing up roads for tracks! Can't get more green than rickshaws. And no one died in any U.S. rickshaw accidents last year. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 499 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: Compact, walkable, transit-oriented communities are the future. Investigate them a little, I think that you would like them. They are actually perfect for families, as I can attest. There are even some in metro Detroit. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 500 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: In places like Detroit, this is a fantasy. Why? Because the infrastructure is so rotten and the schools are so terrible. You're simply going to swap white suburban flight for things like these walkable communities -- yuppies ghettos, if you will. It simply abandons the city and its remaining residents who can't afford to retreat into these cute little enclaves. Instead of '50s tract housing, you have stacks of hipster lofts and Whole Foods stores next to a street car station. Meanwhile, that leaves about 200 million Americans in rural areas or in the gritty downtowns. You're never going to repopulate (Urban Marshall Plan or otherwise) cities like Detroit until you come up with jobs and better services and schools. And building train cars instead of autos, to put it mildly, is delusional. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 3517 Registered: 07-2004 |
I see, so we set up the suburbs where everything was far apart, places where you need cars, then we're going to say we need cars because we have everything set up so far apart? Ummm ... | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 501 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: It you can look past all of your hate, you will see that it's not about Detroit vs suburbs or tract housing vs 'yuppie ghettos'. It's about building sustainable communities for everyone. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 502 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Sustainable communities brought to you by driving a stake through the heart of the U.S. auto industry? Come pitch that idea outside a stamping plant. It's not "hate" (the intellectually bankrupt progressive fallback, usually accompanied by charges of being a Rush Limbaugh acolyte and other ad hominem stuff). It's answering absurdist arguments that we need to abandon cars for trains because they're safer, and damn the consequences. 1. Jobs. 2. Effective schools. 3. Effective services. Fix those, and your community will be sustainable whether you come and go on a choo-choo, in an Edsel or on a Pogo stick. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 503 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: The auto industry has done an excellent job of driving a stake through it's own heart. Absurd is to defend auto-centric sprawl. Absurd is to suggest that that way of life is somehow sustainable. Absurd is to suggest that wallkable neighborhoods built around transit somehow won't work in Detroit (even though these neighborhoods have been successfully built around the country). It is absurd and even ridiculous to suggest that everything else needs to be fixed first - city services, schools, etc., before investments in transit are made. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 504 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: They've been built in little high-tax yuppie enclaves that can afford such luxuries. It can probably be done along Woodward Avenue in Detroit, maybe a couple other routes. But for about 2 million others, the trains will be miles and miles away. And as long as Detroit fails to deliver basic services such as police protection, and the schools are the worst in the country, no one is coming downtown, at least not families with money to spend. Talk about trains to nowhere ... Because the Big 3 mismanaged themselves doesn't mean trains are wiser than cars in the United States. Americans love their cars. They love the freedom and convenience they provide. That's not going to change. They're not going to live their lives based on a train schedule (especially if it's anything like the failure that Amtrak has been). | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 505 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: The market will dictate if Americans will give up their cars to live regimented lives based on a train schedule. The nation already abandoned trains once, and I see zero reason to believe it's going to give up personal freedom for government-run mass transit. Feel free to dream that Michigan Avenue is going to evolve into a "walkable neighborhood" any time soon. As long as it's riddle with crime, filth and decay, with zero services and no schools, it will remain what it is. Pissing away money on train tracks there would be further evidence of the tin ear of the Left. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 506 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: The "freedom" and "convenience" lies are two of the biggest lies ever perpetuated about automobile-based sprawl. Automobile-based sprawl is designed to restrict transportation choice (hardly "American"). Those who inhabit such communities are forced to own an automobile to reasonably exist. And they are forced to incur all of the expenses associated with it. If you are too young, too old, or too poor to purchase and maintain a motor vehicle, then too bad! - You are reduced to second class citizenship where you are left isolated and unable to provide for even the most basic of needs. Americans that I know love choice. The Americans that I know want transportation options (even the ones that love cars!). Walking options, biking options. streetcar options, subway options, and train options to supplement their usually single option of driving. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 507 Registered: 06-2007 |
'k' says: Dude, you're a lost cause, filled with anger. Open your eyes. Travel to other cities and check out what they have done to their communities that were "riddled with crime, filth and decay" just a few short years ago. You will be amazed by their transformation. and yes, the transformation will happen here! The seeds are being sewn! Thanks in part to great people like TRU! Keep up the good work! | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1795 Registered: 12-2006 |
Not "Americans". Detroiters love their cars, etc. Vast numbers of people in other big cities use trains regularly, and most of them are local or regional transit trains which come frequently, not Amtrak. Subways on the main lines in New York and Toronto (for instance) come once every two or three minutes at peak times. Nobody has to "live their lives based on a train schedule"; you just show up, and the train comes within a couple minutes. I've been on both those systems, many times, and I've never looked at a schedule. Detroit fails to deliver basic services, and none more so than public transportation. What people in every other big city in the world rely on, we just flat don't provide at all. That is perhaps our single biggest service gap as a City and region. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 508 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: You honestly think Americans want to be boxed into little train-oriented communities? We're not talking about options - no one disputes we all like to have choices. You're railing against the automobile and its culture -- the very culture that made America into the super power that it is. Laying tracks into east Detroit isn't going to transform anything. It's going to create a wasteful train to nowhere that terrified white suburbanites won't go anywhere near. Until you spend on infrastructure, services and schools, rail is a wasteful fantasy. I'm not saying light rail doesn't have a place. It does. But your suggestion that we're going to create new carless communities is utter fantasy. Cars will be the No. 1 option. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 509 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: No one has said anything about carless communities. Adding transit is about giving people transportation choices. Something you are clearly against. And again, you need to get out of your angry shell, travel around to other cities and see what has been accomplished in neighborhoods like the eastside of Detroit. Perhaps then, you will see how foolish your statements are. |
