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I remember there was a bit discussion here a while back on that some places (esp the west) suburbs are incorparated as cities and other metros they are not. It's a bit of an irrevelant distinction in Massachusetts (and i think most of New England) since the only difference between a city and a town here is whether it is governed by a mayor or a town meeting and board. And everyone lives in a town or city.
I read about fastracks a few years ago. The plan seemed rather large and ambitious. Are they keeping up with the plan or parts being delayed or cut?
I know of places that opposed rail in their town even when it didn't cost them anything. Arlington, MA (suburb of Boston) opposed a subway extension into their town because they were afraid that it would change the character of their town (the MBTA; Boston's metro transit would have paid for it). And a neighborhood (one that was less urban than most though) of Boston opposed a streetcar line being extended into their neighborhood because it would take up road space, so the MBTA ran a bus instead.I think I've also heard of opposition to rail by the belief it would bring poor people into their town.
Northern Dutchess county (about half between Albany and NYC) opposed a commuter rail extension because it would encourage newcomers to move in for the purpose of commuting to NYC, ruining the small town and rural ambiance. The rail line would have been almost 90 miles from NYC and one awful commute (almost 2 hours?!)
Well, as much as I've been accused of focusing only on Denver (which is not true, but it is a city I know a lot about and unlike many others on CD, I really don't like to talk about stuff I don't know anything about), your focus seems to be solely Boston/NYC. The economy has slowed down FASTRACKS. I think they're going to ask for another tax increase in November. Cities here are eager to get a light rail station.
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Originally Posted by AJNEOA
No, but surrounding municipalities could be more supportive of the region as a whole. My point wasn't to say they should be the executive sponsor, but they're typically not large proponents (or fully backing of the executive sponsor).
Well, the point of this conversation isn't to have a discussion about JUST Denver. I get that you're familiar with that area, but I try not to make these discussions region-specific unless the discussion topic is geared that way (or unless it's in a region-specific forum). I feel this is why we typically end up on different pages in this forum.
I'm not sure what you mean about more supportive. We pay RTD tax at the same rate as the Denver residents.
See above for my comments about being too "Denver-centric". I have also used Chicago, SF, DC and some other cities of examples of cities where the public transit transcends the city limits, and has for a long time.
Well, as much as I've been accused of focusing only on Denver (which is not true, but it is a city I know a lot about and unlike many others on CD, I really don't like to talk about stuff I don't know anything about), your focus seems to be solely Boston/NYC. The economy has slowed down FASTRACKS. I think they're going to ask for another tax increase in November. Cities here are eager to get a light rail station.
Well, I talk about Boston and NYC because they're what I'm mostly familiar with. Other people gave examples on DC & Baltimore so it comes out in the end. I don't assume the rest of the country is similar to them, but I will bring them up as exceptions to broad generalizations that are made at times on this forum. I have talked about other cities when people brought them up.
Sometimes in your posts you generalize how the rest of the country is based on Denver.
Anyway, I live right in the middle of a large city (a block and a half from a homeless shelter at that) and I don't own a car, so yeah, I probably have a higher "tolerance" for some of the things that come with that than would someone who lives a completely different sort of life.
I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't mind if there was somewhere affordable I could live and walk to work (and groceries, movies, restaurants would be a bigger plus), but I'd definitely have a car even so.
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They could use our underpaid, overstretched police force to constantly kick people out of parks and stairwells and doorways, bus shelters, courtyards, parking lots, transit stations, etc. But, then where are they going to go?
They could buy them a bus ticket and send them down the road. That's not a permanent solution, but if you they were to do it once a month or so it'd keep things managable.
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As far as being overtaxed, I care less about how much I'm paying in taxes than what I'm paying them for. I'd happily pay a 12 percent sales tax if it would get us much better transit, better public health facilities, more police and some badly-needed redevelopment.
This does imply you have a higher tolerance for such things since you're alluding to unresponsive government and high crime by pointing out all the things that aren't being done and mentioning more police as one of them..
It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Fixing urban problems costs money, and there is absolutely no getting around that simple fact. Cities can't afford to fix urban problems without the tax base that comes from more residents. Suburbs are able to foist their problems off on cities (shipping homeless to the nearest city, not providing low-income housing or social services, not bothering with public transit), which means they don't have to pay to fix those problems, and in fact they do better by kicking the problem down the road to where the city has to pay for it.
I don't think they're foisting the problem off on the city so much as putting forward a different solution. It is the city's fault they try to solve problems with answers that haven't worked in the past, but as I said the same folks who have done a bad job running the city keep getting reelected. The result is that since the city is the entity that decides to offer things the suburbs don't it bears the burden for providing them.
The city could ship the homeless off too. The city could stop providing low income housing and social services. The city could stop providing public transportation. In the end the folks who want these things will go elsewhere.
A problem in Northern IL and likely the rest of the nation is that, although the suburbs pay tax dollars to the transit agency, it serves mostly people headed for the city, even if most people actually commute to another suburb. There is some talk of trying to serve them with a Suburban Transit Access Route, but not enough movement on it. I believe Southern California is the only place with a regional rail line going from one suburban region to another, without going into the city.
I don't think they're foisting the problem off on the city so much as putting forward a different solution. It is the city's fault they try to solve problems with answers that haven't worked in the past, but as I said the same folks who have done a bad job running the city keep getting reelected. The result is that since the city is the entity that decides to offer things the suburbs don't it bears the burden for providing them.
The city could ship the homeless off too. The city could stop providing low income housing and social services. The city could stop providing public transportation. In the end the folks who want these things will go elsewhere.
Shipping the homeless off isn't a solution, because what's stopping wherever you ship them to from shipping them back? If you don't provide low-income housing, the people who can't afford housing become homeless. If you don't provide social services, disease and starvation are the result--that's why we have social services in the first place. If you stop providing public transportation, traffic gets worse, especially at rush hour, because everyone riding in public transit during rush hour isn't occupying their own car.
Remember, your city is also an "elsewhere." It's a wonderful illusion assuming that we can just never have to clean up our garbage or wipe our butts, because doing so is so much bother, and if we just ignore our problems they will go away, but that's not how the world works.
Actually solving problems is expensive and difficult, and it's hard to get enough support for the costs of just mitigating those problems, let alone solving them, because people think they can just wish problems away. Human beings don't just lie down and die because they're inconvenient for us, starving people don't just wither like an unwatered plant. Part of why the United States has been so politically stable for so long is because we decided in the last century that we didn't want to see Americans treated like that, and made at least some efforts to address the problems of poverty. They weren't always the best solutions, or the cheapest, but they prevented mass uprising, limited disease and starvation, and stopped the sort of authoritarian solutions that proved more popular in other parts of the world. We chose democracy and freedom instead, which has not always been the easiest path either, but was the one worth taking.
Shipping the homeless off isn't a solution, because what's stopping wherever you ship them to from shipping them back?
Different tolerances for the problem. Send them to some city with a high tolerance for the homeless.
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If you don't provide low-income housing, the people who can't afford housing become homeless.
Or they go to some other city that does provide low income housing.
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If you don't provide social services, disease and starvation are the result--that's why we have social services in the first place.
Sorry I don't consider sewers to be a social service, and I can't recall anywhere where people other than the homeless were getting fed by the city. Even then it is usually private groups and not the government running the soup kitchen. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're talking about.
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If you stop providing public transportation, traffic gets worse, especially at rush hour, because everyone riding in public transit during rush hour isn't occupying their own car.
A little bit worse. Most places people don't seem to ride public transportation in large numbers anyways.
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Remember, your city is also an "elsewhere." It's a wonderful illusion assuming that we can just never have to clean up our garbage or wipe our butts, because doing so is so much bother, and if we just ignore our problems they will go away, but that's not how the world works.
Seems to work pretty well for suburbs doesn't it?
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Part of why the United States has been so politically stable for so long is because we decided in the last century that we didn't want to see Americans treated like that, and made at least some efforts to address the problems of poverty.
Please. It was voting not welfare that kept the US from having some uprising of the poor. That's what all those revolting the 1840s in Europe wanted. You can put that sort of thinking aside. Even Marx would repudiate himself on this if he was alive today.
What you're suggesting is that it's perfectly fine for you to shove your problems somewhere else, where hopefully they won't care about those problems. It's kind of like if you were my neighbor, and instead of flushing your waste down the toilet (because then you'd have to deal with it) you flung it over the property line onto my property...then told me that you don't want to visit my house because it smells like poop!
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