…and economic reality.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/VGJt_YXIoJI&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1&border=1

I just was watching this winning video, and the video properly states what New Urbanism is; AKA Old Urbanism, Traditional Neighborhood design.  Of course, as with all Government agendas they don’t mention we should actually return to the effective monetary policies and zoning practices that allowed the creation of these old urban and traditional neighborhood designs, they instead want to dictate and control the build out of these “new urban” designs.  This does cause concern from me, as it is against any notable choice, individual liberty, or freedom of the individual.  Often times the planners and Government leaders push forward with these efforts as if people choose not to live in cities and choose to live in the suburbs.  The politicians and planners often forget, the main enabler of suburbs, sprawl, and the whole damnable aspect of the wasteful, weakness inducing American stereotype is them and they’re debt increasing subsidization of sprawl type development.  Now they try to hold us all accountable to this and people don’t even realize they’re living a heavily subsidized lifestyle.

Anyway, some of the comments on Youtube I just had to answer, because I’m always amazed at the lack of insight, context, or knowledge they often proffer.

From electer1776 these questions for the utopians:
1. How will you get people to leave their nice suburban homes? Force?
2. How will you stop people from fleeing your overcrowded utopia? Force?
3. How will you stop an explosion of crime in your overcrowded hell?
4. What will you do to control concentrated pollution in your overcrowded areas?
5. What size army will you need to oppress the people into your utopia?

This is simple.  There are many cities that prove these answer I’ll provide, including but not limited to;  Portland, OR, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, even gasp Los Angeles, CA.  Add to that density increasing cities of Seattle, WA, Tuscon, AZ, Miami, FL, and hundreds more around the world.  When given options, people do NOT always choose a sprawling suburb.  Just as often, and usually more often, when provided a choice (which we haven’t had for years in the US) of a good city urban life versus the burbs, people will choose the urban lifestyle.  So, to the answers.

1. Offer then a choice.  Over the years people that want culture, night life, development & education, will often leave the burbs for the higher intensity of brain trust & creativity that is alive within cities.

2. People fled American cities for a number of reasons; white flight, mass subsidization of Interstates that encouraged sprawl, a drastic change in zoning which disabled people from living in cities or allowing cities to grow intelligently.  There where a number of reasons, and the flock often goes the way the herder encourages, so thus the people fled cities per what the Government thought was a grand idea – suburbs!  Now we’re slowly finding out, as the market told us before, that suburbs aren’t exactly feasible.  So after 50+ years of debt induced sprawl, we’re being forced to cut back.  No longer is China and others so willing to keep buying our debt.  We’re going to have to start buying our own lives back now, and we’re deeply owned by others already – it’s a tough road ahead.

3. Crime?  Crime is a unique trait of lower income areas generally, NOT of a particular land development.  New Orleans is a prime example of a million plus people, with very high crime for the US.  Portland, Oregon is a prime example of a million plus people, with very low crime in the US.  You are simply correlating incorrect data points.  Correlation is not causation, simple fact.

4. Populated areas often have less pollution than less populated areas.  Take Portland & Seattle for example.  Compare that with Jacksonville, Florida or Atlanta, Georgia.  Both of those cities have tons more pollution, dirtier air, entire ghettos that are polluted in ways many don’t even know anymore.  These ghettos, are primarily suburban sprawl.

5. What size army?  Hell, Portland & Seattle don’t even need police in large number compared to sprawling areas like Atlanta or Jacksonville.  Jacksonville is close in population to Portland, it had more than 2x the murder rate for the last 30 years.  Atlanta, a little closer to Seattle, still vastly higher.  Don’t even get me started on other places like that.  As urban centers have lost the chaotic destruction caused by mass Interstate Subsidy and white flight, they’ve started to become lively again.  As suburbs mature they become more despotic and crime ridden.

I could go on for days.  The defense of suburbia is ridiculous.  The defense is infeasible.  Already, we can’t afford our military or the economic impact of this lifestyle.  So what do we do?

No matter what, we change.

NOTE: This was written on Wednesday, but I didn’t get it finished up until now.

I was planning to take a trip up to Tacoma today, but I managed to not make the train.  I did however decide I was going to take care of some business today, get things in order, and make sure when I was done with my stay-cation (in lieu of vacation) I’d have things all caught up.  So far I’m off to a good start.

I went downtown, grabbed a Subway Sandwich, then headed to the UPS Store to check the mail.  At some point shortly after that I saw an older lady back into a car trying to parallel park.  She didn’t hit it hard, but I stopped to help if she persisted in parking.

While she was making her second endeavor these three young guys walked up, trendy looking brats really.  At first they seemed friendly when one of them spoke up and said to the lady trying to park, “woh woh don’t hit that car”.  I sounded off simple, “she did once already”.  To which the guy replied, “and you’re just standing there?”  At this point she pulled off and gave up on parking.  I started to tell the guy, “I was going to offer…” but before I could get the whole statement out he blurted out as if offended, “don’t turn around and act like you where…” to which I immediately got riled up at and told him to just “f@#! him, I was trying to help and you assume the worse.”  He then replied with a tepid and faltering response of “Just forget it, it’s…” to which I cut him off with a strongly worded, “you don’t walk up and disrespect someone like that as if you know what is going on!”  To which his friends and he moved further away on the sidewalk even though I had made no movements toward them, as if to show cowardice.  Even though I was only into my downtown errands and random adventures of the day by about 30 minutes these guys had to step up and get me perturbed.  What a way to start the day’s outings.

Either way it wasn’t such a big deal.  I had saw my friend Susan downtown and walked with her from about 5th toward the #14 before this incident, so I was actually pretty chilled already.  It’s always good to see friends downtown.  With that I took a deep breath, boarded the MAX, then decided not to ride it since it was packed.  I decided at this time it was going to be a ride a random bus day.

The north bound #35 came pulling up and it seemed a perfect candidate, so aboard I jumped and off we went.  The #35 is actually one of my favorite buses, one that makes good time and has a beautiful route.  That includes both segments, down to Lake Oswego and Oregon City and north toward Oregon State University.

For a short part of the trip the bus follows the Yellow Line MAX up Interstate Avenue, which is scenic unto itself.  When then turn left off of Interstate and basically clock a solid 45 mph out of inner north east Portland.  The route then rises along the precipice overlooking the UP & Industrial areas while running up Greeley Ave.  This route also takes us by the rather awesome Adidas Portland (North west/US?) Headquarters near the top of the road incline.  From there on it is a mix of residential and small commercial retail interspersed in the area.  Awesome neighborhood, great stores etc.

Just past the Adidas Office is a transfer point to the #72, which heads down Alberta and such, which is another awesome and lively area of Portland.  Just past that the bus route turns onto Lombard where one can transfer to the #75.  That pretty much covers transfers to both of the major north south buses for the inner Portland area.  I made a mental note of this, just for future reference.

Further down the way the #35 also crosses paths with the #4.  I decided this was a good opportunity to jump the #4 over to the Mississippi District.  While en route I learned what “Po’Shined” was, interesting Soul Food place on Denver.

At North Lombard and Denver the #4 bus stop had 8 people waiting.  Pretty impressive for a suburban stop.  Really good to see though.  This is one thing I regularly notice is a massive difference between inner east side and any other area in the TriMet District.  The inner east side is about 4-8x as busy with patrons as anywhere else in the area.  The #4 brought me to the transfer point with the Yellow Line MAX and I decided I’d go do something I’d wanted to for a long long time.

Checking Out North Star Coffee

I wrote up a whole review on my other blog on North Star Coffee, so go check it out if you’d like.  After several years, I finally made it into North Star Coffee.  Their location always seemed pretty awesome, right beside the MAX but not at the stop, as can be very annoying sometimes.  It’s only a mere 50 or so feet from the stop though.

After an hour long stop in the coffee shop to write up more of this blog entry, the Albina Press and North Star Coffee blog entries (the one’s on my other blog) I finally hit the road again and got back to coding.  I was thinking I’d jump aboard the MAX, but then decided to stick with the random bus theme.  So off looking for the #75 or #4 I went.

I went to the stop, but the next bus that arrived was a #6, seemed as good as any bus, so I boarded.  I have to say, one of the best bus rides I’ve had in years.  Most polite riders and jovial nature among everyone.  I got off at Killingsworth and walked toward where I could catch the #72 to head down Alberta but got side tracked when I saw the new Old Town Pizza on MLK.  I decided to stop in and check it out, grab a slice of Pizza for a measly $1.50.  I enjoyed my slice, fiddled with my IPhone and whipped the laptop back out for a bit of coding.

After this I headed over to Random Order Coffee House to wait for a friend.  That included a ride on the #72 down Alberta (yup, that street).  I completed a write up of that coffee shop also.

Income Payroll Tax:  This is the direct payroll tax Oregon charges an individual income earner.

Inferred Income Tax: This is the payroll tax in excess that is spent on roadways, etc, that is then utilized by transit.  This is an extremely small percentage, but since I’m attempting to be as thorough as possible, I’ve included it.  I’ve used 3% since that is about the average budgeted over the last couple of years (excluding the massive bail outs, etc, from this year so far).

Federal Income Tax:  This is the part of the income tax that is spent on transit, then the percentage allocated to Oregon and specifically Portland.  Yeah, again, not that big of a number.

The Government Incurred Debt on My Behalf:  This is cost that goes above and beyond the above collected taxes.  This is the money the Government is inflating through the usage of uncollected funds, also known as “printing money” to spend.  Which then we will owe at some point in the future unless the Government defaults on all the borrowed money.  In the past it has been about 10% of what is already incurred via income taxes.  This year (2009) we’ve incurred approximately $300 per person that will go to transportation, which I did not place below as I’m assuming it will eventually average out again in the future.

Fare Payments:  This includes my monthly pass, any extra passes I had to buy such as when I forgot to get a monthly pass.

Totals

Some of the things we can learn from this information.  Nobody pays a full cost of their transit usage, not even the person making $110k per year.  The extra costs are distributed among the other 90%+ of tax paying citizens, who pay at the rate above REGARDLESS of whether they ever use transit.  The same situation of course goes for automobiles which I’ll cover those costs, out of pocket and taxes, in a future entry.

Looking at this though, it really makes one wonder what it would be like if we paid the actual cost of usage just within the city; LRV, Bus, Streetcar, at our current rate of tax & available disposable income it would be rough even for the 80-110k income earner to afford transit, let alone automobile transportation.

Stay tuned for more of this wealth redistribution for transportation story, I’ve got a lot more research coming down the pipeline.

Again, really, are you kidding me TriMet?  Another alert received today.

“After thorough inspections and testing of the three WES trains overnight, it was discovered that blooms from cottonwood trees were clogging the air filters on the trains’ cooling systems and blocking the sensors needed to keep the trains in operation. The filters have been cleaned, and will be cleaned weekly while the cottonwood trees are releasing blooms. All WES trains will be running for the evening commute.”

In all honesty, this is starting to sound like the little kid making up excuses for not going to school.

Everyone is amazed at Japan’s HSR right?  Make sure to listen all the way to the end.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/6tHUazOZIAk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1

Yeah, that’s right, it is now privately owned and operated.  They subsidized it and then learned it would be more efficient to allow privatized operation.

Imagine that.  To improve efficiency none the less.  Maybe it is time that we re-learned what our history (in the US) would teach us.