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LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending



 
 
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  #281  
Old February 12th, 2007, 08:56 AM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
sharx35
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Posts: 803
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending


wrote in message
...
In article 9XNzh.51504$Fd.8578@edtnps90, "sharx35"
wrote:

keep population figures in my immediate consciousness. Area wise, we have
the biggest urban park in North America...even bigger than NYC's Central
Park.



Well, Central Park isn't really that big:

Central Park, New York, 341 hectares (843 acres)
Nose Hill Park, Calgary: 1127 hectares (2784 acres)
Forest Park, Portland, Oregon: 2085 hectares (5155 acres)
(does not include ajacent parks such as Pittock Acres Park, Upper
McCley Park, Washington Park, etc. which expand to total area
that act as one large park, but in fact are administered separately)
George Bush Park, Houston, Texas: 3156 hectares (7800 acres)
Tijuca National Park, Rio de Janeiro: 3300 hectares (8154 acres)

In some time spent searching, I was unable to find anything about a large
park in Edmonton.


It's called the North Saskatchewan River Valley, passing through the MIDDLE
of the city. 95% of it is parkland. Most of those other parks are at the
outskirts of a city.


--
-Glennl
The despammed service works OK, but unfortunately
now the spammers grab addresses for use as "from" address too!
e-mail hint: add 1 to quantity after gl to get 4317.



  #284  
Old February 14th, 2007, 05:04 PM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
Doug McDonald
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Posts: 86
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending

SMS wrote:
Bolwerk wrote:

Intentional congestion sounds too much like NIMBYs gone wild. Either
way, the claim that the congestion is intentional is too absurd. The
last thing most NIMBYs want is congestion - they want their antisocial
lives to never come in contact with other people.



If you are talking about my claims of intentional congestion, the
intentionally congested area is not a NIMBY place: it is
effectively a "downtown". It's not really downtown, but the campus
of the University of Illinois and the surrounding area of fraternities,
sororities, and huge apartment complexes.

Intentional congestion was tried for a while in one of our
downtowns (we have two, one a mile west of campus, one a mile east)
and not only did not work, it drove business to the corn
fields north of the Interstate. The city fathers just had not realized that
this was the certain result of intentional congestion. They fixed the
congestion by reopening the street they closed, and offering various
incentives for business to relocate back there. This was actually extremely
successful, with a now thriving restaurant-bar-boutique area. The
big volume business remains where it moved to, with natural congestion,
but certainly adequate roads and very adequate parking.

Doug McDonald
  #285  
Old February 14th, 2007, 06:48 PM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
SMS
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Posts: 899
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending

Doug McDonald wrote:

Intentional congestion was tried for a while in one of our
downtowns (we have two, one a mile west of campus, one a mile east)
and not only did not work, it drove business to the corn
fields north of the Interstate. The city fathers just had not realized that
this was the certain result of intentional congestion. They fixed the
congestion by reopening the street they closed, and offering various
incentives for business to relocate back there. This was actually extremely
successful, with a now thriving restaurant-bar-boutique area.


While many cities have recreated a downtown area, albeit with
restaurants, bars, and coffee houses rather than retail stores, the
reason that the stores left was not due to traffic congestion either
intentional or accidental. Retail stores followed their customers out to
the suburbs. As those suburbs aged and newer suburbs were created
further out, they moved again.

Where I live we have two greyfield malls in downtown areas. One is
closed, except that Target and Macy's on each end are open (JC Penney is
closed). They will tear down the mall except for Target and Macy's and
restore the previous downtown street pattern, and try to fabricate a new
"historic" downtown. One is turning into more of a restaurant and
entertainment facility, with movies, bowling, and restauarants, and
though Sears, Penney's and Macy's will probably stay there are almost no
retail stores left. They'd have been better off tearing down the
decaying hulk and starting over, but they are trying to cobble something
together, including a movie theater on stilts over the mall structure.

The
big volume business remains where it moved to, with natural congestion,
but certainly adequate roads and very adequate parking.


Your error is in thinking that the big volume business moved out of the
downtown area simply because of traffic.
  #286  
Old February 14th, 2007, 07:27 PM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
Doug McDonald
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Posts: 86
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending

SMS wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:

Intentional congestion was tried for a while in one of our
downtowns (we have two, one a mile west of campus, one a mile east)
and not only did not work, it drove business to the corn
fields north of the Interstate. The city fathers just had not realized
that
this was the certain result of intentional congestion. They fixed the
congestion by reopening the street they closed, and offering various
incentives for business to relocate back there. This was actually
extremely
successful, with a now thriving restaurant-bar-boutique area.


The
big volume business remains where it moved to, with natural congestion,
but certainly adequate roads and very adequate parking.


Your error is in thinking that the big volume business moved out of the
downtown area simply because of traffic.


I didn't say that. It moved out because of that, plus
lack of parking, plus general decay. But NOT due to suburbs.
Yes, we have a couple of suburbs, and one has a WalMart.

But the general run of big businesses (chains, etc.) didn't
move to a suburb. They moved to the closest possible
area where there was cheap land, which was in fact only
one mile from downtown, separated from it by I74. The closest
suburb is 4 miles away the other direction.

Doug McDonald



  #287  
Old February 17th, 2007, 05:14 AM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
Stan de SD
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Posts: 106
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending


"Bolwerk" wrote in message
...
Doug McDonald wrote:
Bolwerk wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:
Many young people in the US do not understand
how much better things could be if we had continued on as we were
in the 50 and 60s.

McCarthyism, segregation, back alley abortions, and mutually assured
destruction? Par-tay, man!


No, I am referring to freedom. Something people in Europe
don't even have the concept of.


That hardly seems fair. Europe is a huge geographic and cultural area,
and much of it is far less authoritarian than the U.S.


You have obviously never lived or worked there... :O|


  #288  
Old February 17th, 2007, 10:28 PM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada,ba.transportation,misc.transport.urban-transit
Bolwerk
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Posts: 87
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending

Stan de SD wrote:
"Bolwerk" wrote in message
...
Doug McDonald wrote:
Bolwerk wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:
Many young people in the US do not understand
how much better things could be if we had continued on as we were
in the 50 and 60s.
McCarthyism, segregation, back alley abortions, and mutually assured
destruction? Par-tay, man!
No, I am referring to freedom. Something people in Europe
don't even have the concept of.

That hardly seems fair. Europe is a huge geographic and cultural area,
and much of it is far less authoritarian than the U.S.


You have obviously never lived or worked there... :O|


Really? Funny. I seem to remember quite obviously doing just that.
  #289  
Old February 20th, 2007, 02:20 AM posted to misc.transport.urban-transit,ba.transportation,rec.travel.usa-canada
Jym Dyer
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Posts: 6
Default LA Times: U.S. Love Affair With The Car Ending

"Traffic Calming" actually means "traffic infuriating"
or "causing aggressive driving". We have it here in
Champaign-Urbana IL, and it is a disaster.

I'm afraid I must agree. "traffic calming" is anything
but calming for those subjected to it.


=v= Sigh. Not so.

=v= The real problem here is that people are using the
words "traffic calming" inaccurately. Traffic calming is
a systems approach, which uses various traffic engineering
devices to keep things moving smoothly. Unfortunately,
in some municiplaities what happens is that they ignore
the systems approach and misuse the devices as obstacles.
And they mislabel it "traffic calming."
_Jym_

 




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