Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dirt
I couldn't give two shits about gridlock in Uptown. I just want to feel like I'm not going to die every time I cross one of these streets. I can count all the proper crosswalks on one hand and lost count the number of times I had to fucking frogger it.
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Weird. I've never had a problem crossing those streets. The cars are bunched together due to the light timing. You wait for the bunch to go by, then you cross. You're being overly dramatic. You seem to forget we both live in the same city so I know what those streets are actually like. (I used to live in City Park West.)
Also, on those rare occasions when one must frogger it, a one-way street is much easier than a two-way. No? Colfax. Now
that's a difficult street to cross. I
hate crossing that damn street.
I used to be a part of the cult. I used to be an anti-car urbanist. I'm still all for as much density as possible. I would still love to see a robust transit system that's convenient, clean, comfortable and
civilized, (not a patchwork that's overrun with homeless people). I would love to see it replace cars. I would ditch my car and use it every day if it existed. I'm still the kind of person for whom, living in a neighborhood that isn't walkable is absolutely not an option. But the fact is, I live in a town that is difficult to get around in without a motor vehicle. People still need their cars. They need a way to get them in and out of the city. They need a place to store them.
The east side of town doesn't have a freeway like 6th Ave to get people in and out. The closest thing we have are those one-way's with the timed lights. If you get rid of those, there will be gridlock. I can't even imagine it. The traffic is already horrible as it is. We'd all be less mobile, and we'd be breathing in a hell of a lot more pollution.
I'm going to say this one last time: If you want a better public transit system, then build a better public transit system. I'm all in! Raise my taxes! But actively disincentivizing the use of motor vehicles and intentionally making it more difficult for people to use and store them, in the hopes that it will eventually force people to use alternative modes of transportation, DEGRADES OUR OVERALL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM AND MAKES IT MORE DIFFICULT, IN GENERAL, FOR EVERYONE TO GET AROUND. It hurts our economy. It increases pollution.
And one last thing (that I'm keenly aware of because I'm a truck driver, but seemingly every person on the planet that doesn't work in transportation is completely oblivious to): Every goddamn physical object you have ever owned/consumed/purchased in your life - whether it be a pair of shoes or a banana - came to you on a truck. Perhaps it made part of it's journey via rail, or air, or steamship, but at some point it was on a truck. Next time you're sitting in traffic on I-70, look around at how many trucks there are.