Gen-Y doesn't want to live in the burbs

[TeeDub]

Why is it that other places, like Salt Lake City for instance, can successfully endeavor to create more pedestrian friendly/mass transit friendly areas and greatly increase their rail/brt offerings.... but for some reason its impossible for us to?  

But even their "booming" light rail still has not (and most likely will never) pay for itself.     Then again, by that rationale, the highway system doesn't pay for itself either.  I guess it comes down to how many infrastructure networks do I need/want to subsidize.

[patric]

Tell ya what, lets not have the government pay for any transportation projects, period,,, and let the private sector decide.  Lets see what develops that way.

All the roads to the casinos would be really great...

[Red Arrow]

You've got that wrong.
General Motors removed them and replaced them with GM busses.  In time, sprawl.

Partly wrong.  Many rail lines, both street cars and interurbans, were not very profitable and poorly maintained.  Part of the nonprofitability compared to buses was due to franchise requirements with cities.  Not only were fees required of the private companies but the rail companies often had to maintain the streets as well as their tracks.  Unregulated jitneys often stole riders from transit companies.  Buses were new, clean, and compared to the decaying rail system, comfortable.  GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil were the last several straws that broke the the trolley's back.  

I believe a case could be made that the origins of sprawl were enabled by trolleys/interurbans.  Before convenient, affordable mass transit, everyone had to walk to work.  With the advent of mass transit, a lot more people could escape the crowded living conditions of the city.  Many at the time chose to do that.  Transit Oriented Development created suburbs which were a lot less crowded than the inner city.  

Many of our newest suburban developments are sufficiently dense to support light rail.  I base this on the density of the area in suburban Philadelphia, PA where I spent my first 20 years.  A big problem for any mass transit is the scattered nature of employment in our area.  

[Red Arrow]

I guess it comes down to how many infrastructure networks do I need/want to subsidize.

Supporting rail for others helps keep the traffic count down so I don't get so stuck in so much congestion.

[TeeDub]

Supporting rail for others helps keep the traffic count down so I don't get so stuck in so much congestion.

Having worked all over Tulsa, I have seldom if ever gotten stuck in more than 10 minutes of congestion.

[Conan71]

Supporting rail for others helps keep the traffic count down so I don't get so stuck in so much congestion.

If it gets more texters off the road, fine with me.

[Red Arrow]

Having worked all over Tulsa, I have seldom if ever gotten stuck in more than 10 minutes of congestion.

Lucky you.

I've not always been so lucky.  When 169 was only done as far south as 51st St and I worked at Cherokee Industrial Park (66th N & Lakewood), it frequently took me 30 minutes just to go from 111th & Memorial to get on 169.  Until Memorial was expanded to 6 lanes south of the turnpike, it frequently took 10 minutes just to get from the turnpike to 101st.  Try going anywhere along 71st between Memorial and Garnett on a Saturday.

My present drive is 10 miles and usually about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on traffic.  If I get on Memorial at the wrong time, the drive can easily become 25 minutes, about 10 minutes worth of congestion compared to a relatively clear road.

I forgot, when I worked at 41st & Sheridan (long ago) it took about 1/2 hour to go 7 miles.  Expensive road expansion helped ease that, but only for a while.

[Conan71]

Lucky you.

I've not always been so lucky.  When 169 was only done as far south as 51st St and I worked at Cherokee Industrial Park (66th N & Lakewood), it frequently took me 30 minutes just to go from 111th & Memorial to get on 169.  Until Memorial was expanded to 6 lanes south of the turnpike, it frequently took 10 minutes just to get from the turnpike to 101st.  Try going anywhere along 71st between Memorial and Garnett on a Saturday.

My present drive is 10 miles and usually about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on traffic.  If I get on Memorial at the wrong time, the drive can easily become 25 minutes, about 10 minutes worth of congestion compared to a relatively clear road.

I forgot, when I worked at 41st & Sheridan (long ago) it took about 1/2 hour to go 7 miles.  Expensive road expansion helped ease that, but only for a while.

Do you take the Creek at Memorial, or 121st around to Delaware/Riverside?

[Red Arrow]

Do you take the Creek at Memorial, or 121st around to Delaware/Riverside?

Yes.

In the morning I take the Creek from Memorial to Jenks (and get tied up in High School traffic on Peoria/Elm, come on summer break).  Sometimes I catch most of the 7 traffic lights in 1-1/2 miles green. If not, add at least 1 minute to the drive for each light.  Riverside going into Jenks is intolerable at 7:30ish.

In the evening I go through downtown Jenks to Delaware and 121st.  Getting on the Creek at 5 PM is bad enough but going south on Memorial is icing on the congestion cake.  Stupid drivers cause as much or more problems as the quantity of cars.  All the traffic lights are no help either.

[heironymouspasparagus]

TeeDub has missed a lot of areas.  31st and Sheridan.  Almost anywhere along Memorial.  51st & Harvard - both before and during construction.  169 during traffic time.  BA expressway.  There are many 10 + minute waits around town.

Trolleys from the 50s and before.  They were extremely viable and practical (cost effective) as a city provided service.  This is where the unknown history - or lost history - or something - comes into play.  What they didn't teach you in school, TeeDub, was the fact of GM systematically targeting trolley and bus systems throughout the country with destruction of same as the only intent and goal.  Even though they built buses...they wanted buses to replace trolleys, and cars to replace buses since there was much more profit to be had in selling a car.

Nothing less than the destruction of public transportation was the achieved goal.  And lest one think it is just my paranoid "conspiracy theorist" tendencies - this is well documented.  The company was prosecuted.  And convicted.

Kind of like John Pickle company in Tulsa, no real consequences ensued ($1 fines to the executives involved), but the evidence was massive and overwhelming.

http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm

http://national-city-lines.co.tv/

[dbacks fan]

Another interesting article from Bradford Snell linking GM to Hitler and the Nazis during the 30's and Sloans, President of GM, disdain and disliking of FDR and the New Deal. Apperently Sloan was more intersted in the economic recovery of Germany than the US.

"This documentation and other evidence reveals that GM and Opel were eager, willing and indispensable cogs in the Third Reich´s rearmament juggernaut, a rearmament that, as many feared during the 1930s would enable Hitler to conquer Europe and destroy millions of lives. The documentation also reveals that while General Motors was mobilizing the Third Reich and cooperating within Germany with Hitler´s Nazi revolution and economic recovery, GM and its president, Alfred P. Sloan, were undermining the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and undermining America´s electric mass transit, and in doing so were helping addict the United States to oil."

Is this guy related to Michael Moore?

http://hnn.us/articles/37935.html

[Red Arrow]

Trolleys from the 50s and before.  They were extremely viable and practical (cost effective) as a city provided service.  

Most, if not all, trolley companies started as private companies.  Some survived as private companies for quite a while. Many were taken over by some sort of city or regional governmental authority.  I doubt there are any totally privately owned trolley systems in regular commuter use today.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Worked and would work again as a city service.


Sloan isn't the only one to support Nazi Germany for way too long.  But it's good for business, isn't it?

Union Banking Corporation was an investment bank controlled by the Thyssen family - BIG supporters of Hitler until their ox got gored a little bit.  This is one of the major financial support institutions that allowed Hitler to do what he did.  One of seven directors of that bank in THIS country was from one of the elitist families we have all come to know and love - Preston Bush.

It took Roosevelt until October 1942 to stop this activity.  Shows how tough it is to slow the RWRE juggernaut - 3 years after the start of WWII and one year after WE got into it, someone kept on getting their profits while our soldiers were being killed in the Pacific and in northern Africa.  Getting those profits from the enemy killing our soldiers.  But with "plausible deniability", I'm sure no one in this country knew anything about Union Banking Corporation activities.  Not even the board of directors.  (Maybe kind of like Obama didn't know about Reverend Wright's personal thoughts?)

[TeeDub]

TeeDub has missed a lot of areas.  31st and Sheridan.  Almost anywhere along Memorial.  51st & Harvard - both before and during construction.  169 during traffic time.  BA expressway.  There are many 10 + minute waits around town.

Meh, there was always a backup leaving downtown, but seldom (discounting accidents and rubberneckers) was the actual stop time more than 10 minutes.   Going down Memorial is never fun, but again, it wasn't like it took 30 minutes to go 2-3 miles.    Even the last few years when I worked over at 41st and Skelly during the construction traffic would be "bad" but never was it anything like Dallas, Houston, or St. Louis at rush hour.

And yes, going north on Sheridan through 31st was miserable, but again, never more than 10 minutes.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I'm jinxed - seem to get caught for 10 and 15 a lot in some of those areas.

My new favorite is 41st between Sheridan and Yale.  Went through there on a sight-seeing trip last weekend and took about 30 minutes to go from east to west.  Mess.