Pete at Streetsblog: “Few Ideas” at Commuter Outrage
by Judd WileyMay 22nd, 2008, 12:15 pm
From Pete, who wrote the following in the comments section at Streetsblog.
[Commuter Outrage] is almost adorable in its’ ignorance. Reminds me of Powerline, LittleGreenFootballs, FreeRepublic, and all the other right-wing echo chambers that were full of vitriol, hatred, and general anger about the fact that the world didn’t work the way they believed it would for them. They’re all pretty anachronistic these days.
Few comments, few ideas, and little if any constructive thought processes. It’s easy to be angry and insult everything around you. It’s a lot harder to put together solutions.
And that’s the difference between here and there - we’re sick of the status quo, but at least we’re kicking around solutions, and trying to make some progress. We’re tired of the standard political pandering that passes for “achievement” in government - let’s see some actual solutions from the people who should consider themselves fortunate that the people felt they deserved the chance to represent us in office!
I feel like a mosquito at a nudist colony. Where to begin?
First of all, we are not right-wing or left-wing. We bash the Bush administration-led Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and more on a daily basis for their incompetence and stupidity. We bash the Democrats for their complete inability to bring about meaningful change even though they’re in control of Congress. We bash John McCain over his stupid gas tax reprieve, which would have increased traffic congestion. We bash Barack Obama over the fact that he came out in favor of a gas tax reprieve in Illinois in 2000, but is now against the idea in 2008 for political reasons.
Second, on almost every topic we cover we provide a list of practical, workable, realistic solutions. Rising gas prices? Build more nuclear power plants. Traffic congestion? Build more lanes. Get rid of the social engineering. No money for subway expansions? Cut wasteful spending elsewhere. Increased car fatalities at red-light camera-serviced intersections? Scrap the cameras, which have been academically proven to increase traffic accidents.
Third, we hate the status quo. The status quo means sitting in the parking lot that is the highway for 2 hours every day because there is no Metro stop near your home and they’ve turned the main access point to your neighborhood into a car pool lane (Judd). The status quo means jamming into a slow, inefficient, and overcrowded Metro managed and operated by complete idiots because the government doesn’t run mass transit like a business and would rather create a jobs program (Lewis).
Fourth, if you dislike the “vitriol, hatred, and general anger” as well as the “insults” displayed on this site, that’s just too damn bad. There’s going to be a lot more of it in the coming years. Americans are sick and tired of having to put up with horrible commutes socially engineered by corrupt politicians, stupid government workers, know-nothing academics, radical environmentalists, car haters, income redistributionists, and everyone else who thinks it’s their job to tell us how to organize and live our lives.
You, Pete, need to actually read Commuter Outrage before you embarrass yourself again.
REITERATION: “Pete” doesn’t work for or formally represent Streetsblog.
The Streetsblog Truth Squad
- Part 1: Car Haters: Streetsblog
- Part 2: Pete at Streetsblog: “Few Ideas” at Commuter Outrage
- Part 3: Who Is Mark Gorton?
- Part 4: StreetsBlog: StreetCritiques
- Part 5: Pick Your Poison - Gas, Guns, or Elitism
- Part 6: Streetsblog’s Comment Moderation Policy: Waaaaaaaaaaa!
- Part 7: A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words
- Part 8: Bike Box?
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Posted in Uncategorized Rage |
That’s quite a worldview you’ve got there.
How is building more lanes not also “social engineering?” Is it “realistic” and “workable” in a dense urban place like New York City?
How come when more subway capacity is needed we have to cut “wasteful spending” elsewhere but when more roadway capacity is needed we have to “build more lanes.”
Is nuclear power really the best solution you can think of for rising gas prices? How do we get the nuke power into the cars anyway? Seems like a signficant project. What about doing easy things like building a functioning national rail network, better buses in cities, and encouraging bikeable, walkable communities? Or does all of that qualify as wasteful spending and social engineering?
The research on red light cams is pretty clear: They tend to slightly increase the number of minor rear-end collisions while signficantly decreasing the number of serious mid-intersection collisions and pedestrian fatalities.
I’m most interested in your definition of “social engineering.” This seems to be at the core of your complaint.
“Social engineering.” Wikipedia defines it as “efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behavior on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups.”
In the context of this site, “social engineering” refers to when the government tries to move individuals away from their current social attitudes and behaviors (which the individuals prefer), and towards new social attitudes and behavior that the government thinks would be best for these individuals (but which the individuals do not prefer). The individuals do not accept these attitudes and behaviors willingly (otherwise they would have done so already on their own), so the government is essentially jamming them down their throats.
In our satirical lexicon, we define “social engineering” as “reckless fiscal and policy experimentation in an attempt to create a perfect world.” We say this because these new social attitudes and behaviors are more often than not theoretical concepts that look good on paper, but have ruinous consequences when applied to the real world.
Take car pool lanes, for instance. On paper, they are a great idea. Everyone will drive 2-3 people per car, which will result in fewer cars on the road, which will result in less congestion, cleaner air, etc. The actual results, however, have been ruinous. In cities like Los Angeles where car pool lanes are on almost every major freeway, the result has been more congestion, more smog, and more misery. Why? Because in order for car pool lanes to work, people have to reorganize their schedules so that they’re in lock step with their car pool pals. You must live near them, leave home at the same time as them, work near them, leave work at the same time as them, and not have any personal errands or stops either going to or coming home from work. The mathematical probability of all these pieces of the puzzle coming together is very low. As a result, approximately 7% of drivers in Los Angeles actually car pool, and a large percentage of them are mothers driving their children around. Here’s the problem: You’ve taken a 4-lane highway and converted 1 lane to a car pool lane that only 7% of drivers are allowed to use. In other words, you’re cramming 95% of traffic onto 75% of the capacity. It’s worse for a 3-lane highway. 95% of the traffic onto 66% of the capacity. More traffic congestion, more smog, more misery.
You ask, “How is building more lanes not also ‘social engineering’?” Staying with our Los Angeles example, if you read this post on the history of the California freeway you’ll learn that, since 1974, the miles driven by Californians have increased 116%, while lane mileage has increased just 8%. In other words, the rate of population growth vastly exceeded the rate of highway capacity expansion. Why? The government under Gov. Jerry Brown wanted to move Californians away from the automobile because of their socio-politico-economic worldview – social engineering.
Your other points:
Expanding road capacity in New York: We are not stupid. Obviously this can’t be done in densely packed areas like Manhattan where there’s no more room. The above post does not apply specifically to New York City.
Nuclear power: We are 100% in favor of electric cars, powered by nuclear energy, which is clean, cheap, and safe. Now obviously, this is not an immediate fix. But it’s not a long-term fix today either, since we’re not building the nuclear plants that we should be building. Why? Because Americans have a strange fear of nuclear power plants, stemming from the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters. Yes, convincing Americans that nuclear power is the way to go and then constructing the power plants will be a long, arduous, and expensive task. But again, nuclear energy is far and away the best solution in the long term.
National rail network: We are 100% in favor of this. We believe the government should shift dollars from their many wasteful projects and embark on a massive construction project that will put the European nations to shame. Amtrak is a national embarrassment, and we plan to spend a lot of time mocking and ridiculing everyone involved in that debacle.
Bikeable, walkable communities. We are 100% in favor of these as well, as long as they don’t come at the expense of other more efficient and less time consuming modes of transportation, such as the car. For example, Lewis, who posts on this site, often rides his bike to work. But he is not a fanatic who hates cars and wants to take road capacity away from them. He coexists with the cars around him. He doesn’t think he’s better than the drivers of these cars because he rides his bike to work. He rides his bike to work because it’s faster than the Metro, and he enjoys being outdoors.
Red-light cameras: You are completely wrong. Go back and re-read the studies.
Our worldview is that the government should not pick and choose which modes of transportation it thinks we should use. They should modernize and expand everything – highways, bridges, tunnels, subways, buses, light rail, long distance rail, airports, airways, and so forth. Let the individual American citizen make up his mind about how to get where he wants to go.
that was a good retort, judd. i like how you can almost imagine that smug BLEEP smirking to himself as he wrote that comment - as if he had struck some gold mine that you hadn’t considered.
only when it was too late did he realize that he had walked into an L-shaped ambush with claymore mines and flamethrowers.
By your own definition I think it’s fair to say that the 50 year project of building out America’s automobile-dependent suburban sprawl and the Interstate highway system — essentially, the landscape that we live in today — is the biggest big government social engineering experiment that has ever been undertaken in the history of the world.
It looked good on paper back in 1953, didn’t it?
1953 … I think you’re referring to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which was also known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which authorized the Interstate Highway System.
To fully understand this issue, we have to go back to the very early 1920s when the Bureau of Public Roads asked the U.S. Army to research the idea of national highways for the purpose of national defense. In the late 1920s, the first local and state highway systems began to emerge. Again, the purpose was national defense (not trying to socially engineer Americans into automobiles).
In the early 1930s, according to Wikipedia, “as automobile traffic increased, planners saw a need for such an interconnected national system to supplement the existing, largely non-freeway, United States Numbered Highway system. By the late 1930s, planning had expanded to a system of new superhighways. …” And so on through the 1950s.
In other words, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, the largest public works project in American history, which you despise, was the government’s congruent reaction to Americans driving more. Exactly the opposite of social engineering. Let’s call it “social responsiveness.”
And why were Americans driving more? Go back to 1903, the year that Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. In 1908, Ford introduced the Model T, which cost only $360, a very affordable price at the time. Ford sold over 500,000 Model Ts in 1915 alone. By 1927, the Model T had been replaced by the Model A, which sold more than 4 million through 1931. By manufacturing affordable automobiles and thus generating a national demand, Henry Ford did more for the creation of the national highway system than the government.
So, no, I don’t think it’s fair to say what you said. And, yes, I think the Interstate Highway System must have looked pretty damn good on paper.
Judd,
So, who funds this blog anyway?
Whether you think it’s a good thing or bad thing doesn’t matter. But the US interstate highways system and it’s accompanying suburban sprawl is — absolutely — and without question one of the biggest big government social engineering experiments ever undertaken.
Until the mid-20th, no large group of human beings had ever before lived in an automobile-enabled suburban settlement pattern. For 10,000 years, since the dawn of civilization, human beings, for the most part, lived in towns, villages, cities and on farms. Left to their own devices — not interfered with by big corporate or government interests — that’s how human beings tend to settle and use their land.
Car-based suburban sprawl is not, as you would like to have it, some natural state of being or pure state of market demand. Far from it. American suburbia was a product created and sold to American consumers by real estate developers, automakers, advertising agencies, tire manufacturers, asphalt spreaders and quite a few others. Car-based suburban sprawl was not some natural market resonse enabled by some of the biggest and most intrusive US federal government programs every conceived (”Sorry sir you’re going to have to give up your potato farm. We’re coming through with the Long Island Expressway now. Gotta get all those GI Bill fellas in Levittown to work at their jobs in Midtown Manhattan where G.M. is setting up their new headquarters.”)
The automobile was, in many places, rammed down Americans’ throats. One of the most well known examples of the auto-industrial complex’s social engieering was the destruction of urban trolley systems in more than 40 cities across the U.S. between the 30’s and 60s. And what a shame. When you visit cities outside the US that didn’t dismantle and destroy their urban light rail systems post-WW2, you realize how much better they are positioned to thrive in the 21st century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Streetcar_Scandal
The Great American Streetcar Scandal[1] was the sequence of events in which General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum formed the National City Lines (NCL) holding company, which acquired most streetcar systems throughout the United States, dismantled them, and replaced them with buses in the mid 20th century. It is alleged by historians that NCL’s companies had an ulterior motive to forcibly gain mass use of the automobile among the U.S. population by buying up easy-to-use mass light rail transportation countrywide and dismantling it, leaving populations with little choice but to ride their buses.
I fund it. $50 to purchase the URL. $6.95 per month for hosting.
You write:
… the US interstate highways system and it’s accompanying suburban sprawl is — absolutely — and without question one of the biggest big government social engineering experiments ever undertaken.
And then you name the catalysts:
… real estate developers, automakers, advertising agencies, tire manufacturers, asphalt spreaders … the auto-industrial complex … General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum … the National City Lines (NCL) holding company …
These are all private enterprises, owned and operated by citizens, who created a superior means of transportation (in the eyes of consumers) and thus created a demand for their products. The government then built the US interstate highways system to meet the demands of consumers. How is that “government social engineering”? I say it’s exactly the reverse – “government social responsiveness.”
You mention the purchasing and dismantling of streetcars. The free market allows one company to buy another company, dismantle it, and sell off the assets – just as the free market allows one company to introduce a superior product that puts another company out of business. This is called destructive capitalism and it’s been going on for centuries. It’s also legal, as evidenced by the fact that in 1949 the NCL was acquitted of the main charge against it.
Your entire philosophy and world view is anti-capitalist and anti-free market. I’m assuming you live in New York. Your city would not exist without capitalism and the free market.
RNCL - you’re also wrong on another thing - Eisenhower got the idea for the interstate from Germany’s autobahn during WWII.
Germany was trying to position their society as an automobile enabled settlement pattern long before we were.
However, here, the government response was just that, a response. Eisenhower didn’t build the interstates before there were cars to use them, he built it in response to the volume of cars on the existing roads and the need for a more efficient system to facilitate national defense.
Hey, so, Judd, I know how much a URL costs. What’s your guys’ day jobs anyway? Who do your DC-area law firms work for?
Look: You can be for suburban sprawl car culture and against trains and buses or whatever. That’s fine. I could care less. But if you want to be taken seriously then you ought to acknowledge the simple fact that all of those private entities — the real estate developers, auto makers, oil producers, etc. etc., were enabled by a gigantic big brother big government social engineering project of unprecedented proportions. Most likely, fixing the problem is going to involve government too.
But, first off, no, actually GM was convicted of criminal activity in their purchase and destruction of urban America’s streetcar lines. That wasn’t just “capitalism.” It was a crime against the American people. Granted, GM was fined a measly $5,000 for the destruction of 40 lightrail lines across the US. But that’s another story.
And, yeah, “consumers” (I like to call them “citizens”) liked their streetcars. So much so that in Brooklyn they named their beloved baseball team the Trolley Dodgers. The introduction of GM’s diesel-belching, high-floor buses was never loved or even liked. In fact, those buses, almost immediately, helped turn urban mass transit into a third-class system (first class folks bought themselves a new car from GM, the owner of the old trolley lines). When big government came in with eminent domain and started smashing expressways through vibrant middle class neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, it all combined to speed up white flight to the suburbs and helped produce 30 years of urban decline. Talk about social engineering.
Been to Cleveland lately? It sure is easy to find a parking space downtown! The experiment that turned America’s cities into parking lots and highway interchanges was big government social engineering unprecedented proportions. The private entities that helped to make it happen — the automakers, oil producers, asphalt-layers, sprawl-developers, you name it — received massive, direct and indirect government subsidy and encouragement. In many cases, they still do.
The creation of this auto-industrial complex you champion was and is “social engineering” because we know that consumers want something entirely different. Look at the market, Judd. The most desirable real estate in the US today is, for the most part, found in walkable, transit-friendly, less car dependent places — Greenwich Village, Dupont Circle, Downtown Portland, Stapleton, Colorado. With the exception of the upper .5%’s mansions and second homes’ the least desirable real estate is found in the most far-flung, car-dependent “drive-til-you-qualify” suburbs — Stockton, California, Elyria, Ohio, eastern Pennsylvania.
The market is sending a very clear signal. People don’t want to be forced to fire up the Chevy Tahoe every time they need a tube of toothpaste or their children want to do a “play date.”
The century-long, American auto-industrial suburban experiment of 1950 to 2050 was just that. An experiment. A massive social engineering project financed and planned by a big, out of control federal government, imposing its will on municipalities, implemented by corporations coming out of WW2 with spare industrial capacity raring to be put to use, and fueled by a vast supply of miraculously cheap energy that we’ll never see again.
We will now spend the next 50 years moving back towards land use and settlement patterns that prevailed for centuries prior to the suburban, automotive social engineering experiment. Human beings are not hardwired for automobiles and suburbia, Judd.
The question is whether you outraged commuters are going to be part of the solution or part of the problem. We sunk our nation’s wealth into the suburban auto-industrial complex. Now we’re broke. You can whine, cry, kick and scream all you want. The automobile utopia of your youth isn’t coming back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302456.html
TC - That’s quite an elaborate conspiracy fantasy that you’ve concocted. Unfortunately it doesn’t take a few things into account:
First - people were buying cars and building roads privately before there was any government intervention to do it for them. Governments started to get involved in regulating automobiles and roads once it started to become dangerous. Our government didn’t create a car based society, it reacted to one.
Second - No one on this site is against other transportation modes - i.e. buses, trains, subway, etc… read the other posts.
Third - GM used competitive market techniques to buy and dismantle streetcars. They carried it too far and entered the realm of unfairness, were prosecuted and convicted. Now, name one other company in the world that doesn’t try to eliminate it’s competition. This had nothing to do with the government - and if it did, why did the government step in and stop it? If trolley cars are so useful, why don’t the cities that still have them, like San Francisco or Memphis experience record ridership. If they’re so efficient and popular, and all we need is to eliminate government social engineering - then why don’t we start to build more of these systems? There’s nothing standing in the way now. Conveniently for you - when the trolley systems don’t get built - because they’re just as inefficient as subways - you’ll be able to say that it’s because the government has so effectively socially brainwashed us that we are incapable of thinking outside our automobile box. That’s a crafty little argumentative trick, but that’s what it is - a trick, not proof.
Fourth - you shouldn’t assume that your preference is reflective of the market as a whole. I can name plenty of people who don’t consider Dupont Circle or Greenwich Village desirable real estate - including me. I don’t deny that the walkability of these neighborhoods is attractive - I live in a walkable neighborhood. But, I also own a car, and I fully admit that while I can walk to the grocery store, I’m not going to - and plenty of people who live in these pedestrian friendly neighborhoods are the same way. It’s funny that you mention a bunch of hip neighborhoods as examples of desirable real estate since transportation is only one thing that plays into the equation in all of those places - culture and trends are others.
Fifth - if you honestly think we are ever going to move backwards toward land use practices that existed before the industrial revolution, I have news for you - it isn’t ever going to happen. That is not “sustainable living” with a population of 6.6 billion people - 300 million of whom live here. Of course anyone can plainly see that this isn’t going to happen by looking at the developing world - they’re all refitting their infrastructure to accommodate cars and they’re not all guilty of social engineering. They’re struggling to keep up with citizen demand.
The truth is, you can whine, cry, kick and scream all you want - but this is an industrialized nation that is not going to move backwards in time to appease anyone’s naive sense of nostalgia. We need to fund all transportation alternatives - including the automobile - proportional to their utility.
TC - You write: We sunk our nation’s wealth into the suburban auto-industrial complex. Now we’re broke.
What are you talking about?
Are you saying that the U.S. is in debt because Americans bought cars and moved to the suburbs, and the government built interstate highways?
I’d love to see the facts and statistics you have to back up this outlandish statement.
Judd,
Check out the business section of your local paper. It probably has a story or two about the rising cost of oil, collapsing suburban real estate prices and the evaporating value of a dollar. Do the math.
Excluding the fantasy wealth generating segments, the US economy fundamentally IS the creation and servicing of suburban sprawl. That’s what we make in the US today. That economy is now collapsing and unless someone finds a big easily accessible oil deposit on Planet Zurkon, it isn’t going to be rebuilt.
The 50 year automobile suburb social engineering experiment represents a massive misallocation of the nation’s wealth. We will spend the next 50 years paying down that mistake. The pain and outrage you feel today is largely due to that historic error by an intrusive big government under the influence of powerful corporate interests.
Actually, Mr. I Don’t Leave A Consistent Name When I Post Even Though I’m Clearly The Same Person, I’m not going to “exclude the fantasy wealth generating segments.” That’s not what we do here at Commuter Outrage. We don’t exclude data that doesn’t fit into our worldview.
But since you’re too lazy to provide your own evidence to back up your statements, I’m going to do it for you. I’m going to go through all of the Fortune 500 companies for 2008 and see if you’re right that “the US economy fundamentally IS the creation and servicing of suburban sprawl.” (For those of you who don’t know the definition of the Fortune 500, it’s an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 American public corporations as measured by their gross revenue.)
Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to list each company, list what it does, list its gross revenue, and give the official Commuter Outrage “Knee Jerk Reaction,” i.e. in 2 seconds or less I will determine whether or not the company’s purpose is “the creation and servicing of suburban sprawl.” I’ll do the math, giving each company a percentage of the whole. I will not skew the results toward my view, and will put the whole thing up in a fresh post so you can review and challenge any Knee Jerk Reactions that you don’t agree with.
Here’s what I ask for in return. (1) In the future, please bring some evidence next time you throw out wild generalizations about this or that. You’re a very time consuming person. (2) Please start using one goddamn name in your posts. It’s getting annoying.
Stay tuned.
Read Much? - As promised, here’s my analysis of the Fortune 500.