Meanwhile, Ken Paxton has sued the city of Austin for ‘misleading’ people when it comes to the voter-approved light rail transit expansion. Oh, and TxDOT is widening I-35 through downtown Austin despite countless folks protesting and some organizations suing them to stop it.
Transit across the state SUCKS. Bike lanes are never properly separated. Light rail is sparse. Busses literally everywhere suck.
What kind of liberal bullshit is this, asking us PROUD AMERICANS to stop using OUR FREEDOM CARS for some bullshit liberal environmental WOKEISM?!
/s
I’m not a Texas fan or defender by any means, but I do know Texans, and the state telling them to not do something will make them do it more out of spite
I didn’t really need to go anywhere today, but now I’m considering it. Fuck you Greg Abbott. You can’t scream oil at me and then tell me not to use it!
You’re goddamned right!
TEXAS NOOO PLEASE DON’T CREATE MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, MY LIB SENSIBILITIES WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT.
I personally feel owned by interconnected light rail, not gonna lie.
Texans, by Roald Dahl
“Why do they love acting so tough?” she used to ask.
“Because they’re children,” Ed would answer. “They’re dangerous children who go about trying to imitate their grandfathers. Their grandfathers were pioneers. These people aren’t.”
Oh THAT should work, LMFAO
I’m sure my boss will understand that I can’t make him a dollar today because Texas said not to drive.
I have nothing in walking distance. Not even a convenience store.
So you could ask me to not take a road trip or to reduce the number of trips I take in my car today, but avoiding the car entirely isn’t physically possible.
I’m pretty sure that’s all originally by design.
Unfortunately there are only a few cities where this is a reasonable ask in the United States, and none I know of are in Texas. Most are in colder parts of the country.
The Texas state government’s path forward here is to do what they can to pedestrianize and densify their cities, but that’s a long term project.
The Texas state government’s path forward here is to do what they can to pedestrianize and densify their cities, but that’s a long term project.
I know you probably didn’t mean it as them actually doing it, but good lord, that statement made me laugh. The governments in texas are so focused on bullshit that increases the problem. A friend just sent me an article his city put out with the headline “YY city is XX% developed, with plans to finish it out by year 20ZZ!” Their “finish it out” means removing 95% of the remaining greenspace and paving it with concrete businesses that have just enough plants to be aesthetically pleasing when the landscaper crew cuts it.
Shit, texas is literally trying to make “one more lane!” a constant thing. When I had to drive through any of their big cities, it’s just a massive construction sprawl, because as soon as they finish one section’s extra lane, they start on the next section.
Seriously. I had to drive through Texas a few months ago, and not only was I shocked at how you can have 6 lanes in both directions STILL being in bumper-to-bumper traffic with constant ‘construction zones’ that were adding another lane into the shoulder.
I wasn’t sure if the construction was to actually help, or just so they could charge double fines for speeding ALL the time.
I have a friend that works in Texas and his IT department literally forced all their employees who have been WFH since COVID to start coming into the office 5 days a week again. So literally the opposite of what this article is stating. Companies need to be held liable for this shit, especially if they have infrastructure in place to easily adopt WFH.
I’m from Texas, this isn’t feasible. If you need to get from anywhere to any place else you’re driving there. Depending on where you are busses may be hit or miss & may not even be an option. Pretty happy to live in a place now where I haven’t needed to drive for years.
I know multiple people who don’t even have a driver’s license (and before I get comments about ‘Europoors’ – No, it’s not because of money, lol), including myself. Never needed one. Within the city I can walk, go by bike, there’s buses and trams. For traveling farther (also internationally), there are trains. Most of the time I just walk everywhere. Multiple supermarkets within walking distance, train station within walking distance, bus stop in front of my door, tram stop 1 minute away.
My husband does have a license, but we own no car.
Can’t imagine being forced to drive a car due to lack of other options. For a population very obsessed with so-called freedom, Americans seem to accept and demand very little freedom sometimes.
Weren’t they supposed to use horses in Texas anyway? When did they switch?
We did, but OPs mom moved away.
An ask like this means at best the folks invested in fixing the problem are inconvenienced, while the “fuck you, I got mine” contingent keep on trucking (probably literally in their Fx50s).
Pass laws that incentivize doing the right thing, or don’t pretend you in any way want to fix it.
Also, can you guys cut back on the BBQ?
Yes. Please. Dispose of it all in some sort of pneumatic tube system that sends it straight to Canada please.
Is it even possible to get around USA without cars? There’s not even proper paths everywhere for pedestrians.
You can pretty easily do it in lots of large cities. Here in Seattle it’s not hard at all going North-South with public transit. East-West is another story…
This is still harder in Seattle than in a lot of major cities, but far better in Seattle than in many other US cities. The thing we have going for us here is that we are constantly expanding and improving our public transit.
It’s possible, but it’s a challenge, and it often involves hiring a car (like an Uber or a taxi) for at least “the last mile” anyway.
Electric vehicles. Did you forget?
Also, the reason why walking, running, or even biking to get around 99% of the US isn’t feasible is because the distances are too vast. The average commute time for people in the US is 26.7 minutes and most of that will be on a highway. Covering the same distance on a bike would take 3-10x longer (why 10x? Because of soooo many bridges that don’t allow bikes or pedestrians!).
Then it’s a public transport failure, USA has horrible train infrastructure.
But even suburbs lack paths for pedestrians, even if you wanted to walk into town it’s dangerous from the get go. The whole country is designed for cars and nothing else, there have been projects I have seen though in some cities where they tear down highways and build pedestrian areas instead, so it’s not an unsolvable problem if they can beat the lobbying.
for a country that supposedly values freedom its amusing to note how few things are considered freedoms:
driving = freedom*
walking = not freedom
clean air = not freedom
quality public transit = not freedom
*with purchase of expensive vehicle
It’s entirely consistent with freedom. Freedom to build with little thought to long term effects. Freedom from paying for infrastructure that benefits everyone.
To do things correctly you need to restrict and regulate.
driving = freedom
*with purchase of expensive vehicle
And legally-required insurance, and being licensed by the State to operate it…
Suburbs have great pedestrian paths - if your only goal is to exercise. Those paths don’t go anywhere, but living in the suburbs I many people using them for exercise.
Even for exercise they tend to be non-existent or suck, which means people end up driving to the few that are good rather than starting their jog from their front door.
Not in the suburbs near me - they are all new suburbs build in the last 3-10 years though. (3 years is important as sidewalks are built last so until the houses are all done the sidewalks don’t connect). Older suburbs though, rarely have sidewalks.
Electric vehicles. Did you forget?
They are still cars.
That’s because of urban sprawl. People prefer to drive farther and longer rather than living in higher density housing.
Disagree. Just gave up on the nightmare of living in a food desert of a Midwest city of nothing but long drives to move to a city three times the size using roughly 50% the space.
People prefer to drive farther and longer rather than living in higher density housing.
If that were really true, it wouldn’t be necessary to restrict residential zoning density by law because people wouldn’t choose to build multifamily housing even where it was allowed.
In reality, it’s the opposite: dense housing is severely restricted by law, but because so many people do want to live in it, the price gets driven up to the point that they can’t afford to anymore and are forced to drive farther and longer instead.
Lol, you do realize you debunked your own claim by the end of the paragraph, right?
The claim that USA has extremely lackluster pedestrian and public transport infrastructure? No, I don’t think I did. I merely pointed out steps are being made in the right direction.
In certain cities yes, but not many places.
I used to live in a very car dependent city and now I’m somewhere that I can easily walk or bike anywhere I need and get there within 15 minutes and I am very grateful for that. Our biking and public transport infrastructure keeps getting improvements, too, which is awesome.
If they want people to use their cars less they need to start making that an actual option. This is not on the individuals but the government.
People are pretty predictable ultimately, we take the path of least resistance most of the time. If it’s quicker or cheaper or easier to do something one way then we’ll do it that way.
I’m calling bullshit. Walking for 15 minutes puts you in a circle about 1-2 miles in diameter, a bike, maybe like 5-6 miles in diameter. You simply cannot pack every place you would want to regularly go to, into an area that small, and still have room for people to live unless you severely restrict your lifestyle and become a hermit, or live in Kowloon Walled City.
I appreciate your maths but you’d be pretty surprised how much stuff can fit in that area. I probably also live in a very ideal spot in my city, it’s certainly not the case for everywhere. I’m pretty much right between a suburb full of housing and our ‘nightlife’ area. And the inner city where I work is just next to that. I am not exaggerating that I can get to work on my (e) bike in 15 minutes. And there’s heaps of things in that area. It’s a big place, though, so sometimes I do need to get an uber but I often go weeks and months without needing to.
Yeah, that’s not happening lol. Politics aside, public transportation is too shit for that and you’ll just get run over if you try to bike anywhere that doesn’t have a bike path/lane.
Might get ran over even with a bike lane.
All those super friendly peeps in big trucks that’ll stop to help you out if you’re in the ditch! (lol. Right.)
That’s why everywhere needs protected bike lanes. You put some sort of concrete barrier between the bike lane and the car lane. It’s great.
Rules for thee but not for me.
