Comments on: motoring pain vs. transit pleasure

By: Brian Peoples

Brian Peoples — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 14:58:25 +0000

When we focous on the “demand” side of mass transit, a solution will become more visible to us. We need to stop creating the “supply” side of mass transit – which results in inefficient services. Give the money to the users and let them decide what type of mass transit works. Look at California Assembly bill AB2128. To understand this philosophy, all we need to do is look at the history of public housing. In 1973, Nixon enacted Section 8 HUD housing – rather than giving the money to the landlords, the money was “funnelled” through the tenants – with the tenants giving 30% more money. As a result, the low-income residents could go to the general housing market and the state no longer had to own and operate public housing. This lowered cost to the state and allowed low-income residents to live where they wanted.

By: Brian Stanke

Brian Stanke — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:32:29 +0000

How about development? Cities force developers to provide bundled parking (that seems “free”) with every home, office, and story but rarely care about transit access or even walkability. The sad truth is California and the US are build around the car because that is what the law demands. Functional compact cities like San Francisco, New York, Boston, or those European cities everyone likes at visit are ILLEGAL to build here in the US. No, the only thing we can build here is LA or Fremont.

You got the question wrong, people are forced by law to use a car, unless they can afford the priviledge of living in downtown SF or Manhattan. The question is when are we coming to allow people to walk and take transit by allowing development that is building around walking and transit. Currently such a thing is illegal.