Comments on: Transportation Quandary: ‘Anyone Listening Out There?’ http://citiwire.net/post/1633/ Our mission... to reflect a new narrative for 21st century cities and regions. Leaving behind the 20th century pattern of cheap energy, endless automobility, burgeoning suburbs, threatened inner cities. To a challenge-packed 21st century: energy prices headed north, perilous carbon emissions, deepening have-have not divisions, excruciating social problems and deep challenges in education. But a time of exciting promise, too. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:15:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Neal Peirce http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1118 Neal Peirce Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:48:24 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1118 Comment from Daniel Sebald: Amusing story: I ordered am Amtrak ticket to St. Louis, then called around to find a car rental in the city open on a Sunday. No dice. Calls transfered to national office, etc. I try a downtown office a block from the Amtrak depot one more time and after a couple minutes the attendant says, You could take the city train out to our airport booth. (I was unaware of the new Amtrak depot and the light rail system with a stop just outside Amtrak.) Oh, that works! The light rail was packed like sardines just after a ballgame. Don't know if you've seen St. Louis' new three blocks of water jets and fountains for kids like what Chicago added--that was a big hit in the middle of August. Comment from Daniel Sebald:
Amusing story: I ordered am Amtrak ticket to St. Louis, then called around to find a car rental in the city open on a Sunday. No dice. Calls transfered to national office, etc. I try a downtown office a block from the Amtrak depot one more time and after a couple minutes the attendant says, You could take the city train out to our airport booth. (I was unaware of the new Amtrak depot and the light rail system with a stop just outside Amtrak.) Oh, that works! The light rail was packed like sardines just after a ballgame. Don’t know if you’ve seen St. Louis’ new three blocks of water jets and fountains for kids like what Chicago added–that was a big hit in the middle of August.

]]> By: Robert Justice http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1097 Robert Justice Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:05:40 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1097 Dear Neal: For this and any of your desires for Citistates to be achieved will require a vision by President Obama. If he would come out with a grand plan to revive our economy based on changing our energy from fossil fuels to nuclear, rebuild our railways system with the target of removing long haul truck travel and throw at $2 per gallon gasoline tax to help build mass transit systems in our metropolitan areas it can be done over the next 50 years. Of course we will have to rebuild our steel and building materials industries. If he doesn't challenge us like Kennedy did with travel to the moon we can kiss all of this goodby. Dear Neal:
For this and any of your desires for Citistates to be achieved will require a vision by President Obama. If he would come out with a grand plan to revive our economy based on changing our energy from fossil fuels to nuclear, rebuild our railways system with the target of removing long haul truck travel and throw at $2 per gallon gasoline tax to help build mass transit systems in our metropolitan areas it can be done over the next 50 years. Of course we will have to rebuild our steel and building materials industries. If he doesn’t challenge us like Kennedy did with travel to the moon we can kiss all of this goodby.

]]> By: Jim Vance http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1095 Jim Vance Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:12:11 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1095 So long as politicos and wired-in state-level bureaucrats who feed (and are fed by) big-money contractors can embed disingenuous language or outright falsehoods in metropolitan transportation plans, project-related environmental documents, and local bond elections regarding the land-use implications of constructing new highways (particularly those on new alignments in rural fringe areas), it will not be possible to re-orient the economic machine which has produced the postwar US urban landscape. Money talks (even more convincingly with the latest Supreme Court decision).... So long as politicos and wired-in state-level bureaucrats who feed (and are fed by) big-money contractors can embed disingenuous language or outright falsehoods in metropolitan transportation plans, project-related environmental documents, and local bond elections regarding the land-use implications of constructing new highways (particularly those on new alignments in rural fringe areas), it will not be possible to re-orient the economic machine which has produced the postwar US urban landscape. Money talks (even more convincingly with the latest Supreme Court decision)….

]]> By: Mark Spitzer http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1094 Mark Spitzer Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:29:35 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1094 We're currently a polarized country. To build successful Metro regions with balanced land use and transportation infrastructures, we're going to have to stop yelling and all gather around the same table. It's going to have to start in the individual regions. Washington is grid-locked by partisanship and corporate dollars. Maybe we need to start studying and promoting the success stories (Portland, OR?). Americans are good at adopting success (i-phone anyone?). Let's understand and expand on the land use and transportation i-phones. We’re currently a polarized country. To build successful Metro regions with balanced land use and transportation infrastructures, we’re going to have to stop yelling and all gather around the same table. It’s going to have to start in the individual regions. Washington is grid-locked by partisanship and corporate dollars. Maybe we need to start studying and promoting the success stories (Portland, OR?). Americans are good at adopting success (i-phone anyone?). Let’s understand and expand on the land use and transportation i-phones.

]]> By: David Parvo http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1093 David Parvo Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:55:14 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1093 As John Maynard Keynes would say, there will be a very dark side to their political expediency and, to be brief, once again we'll see that special interests will “win” while greater society as a whole “loses.” http://placemakinginstitute.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/contriving-multi-modal-contrivances/ As John Maynard Keynes would say, there will be a very dark side to their political expediency and, to be brief, once again we’ll see that special interests will “win” while greater society as a whole “loses.”

http://placemakinginstitute.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/contriving-multi-modal-contrivances/

]]> By: Khal Spencer http://citiwire.net/post/1633/comment-page-1/#comment-1092 Khal Spencer Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:54:34 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1633#comment-1092 In the Jan/Feb. 2010 Atlantic Magazine, James Fallows ("How America Can Rise Again") provides little hope that the U.S. Government will cease arguing over the arrangement of the deck chairs and instead work on fixing the holes in our foundering ship of state. Referencing the American Society of Civil Engineers, Fallows states that the ASCE has graded our engineering infrastructure a "D" grade overall; critical national infrastructure (roads, dams, municipal water supplies) was graded as low as D- with a 2.2 trillion dollar price tag to fix things. Small wonder bridges are falling down. At some point we are going to have to reach a national consensus on what things are critical and get started while we still have the ability to do so. This will mean refraining from frittering away our remaining national wealth on pothole patching and pork barrel politics and instead working towards focussed comprehensive urban planning and a "carbon-lite" America. But neither Fallows nor I let the individual off the hook either: we will have to put far less emphasis on Ipods, gas guzzlers, McMansions, and projection TVs and more on writing a check to our state, local, and national government so we can fix what is broken rather than, like a sinkhole working its way to the surface, our ills swallow us whole. I wish us luck and thank folks like Messrs. Peirce, Fallows, and Marshall for their efforts at waking us up. In the Jan/Feb. 2010 Atlantic Magazine, James Fallows (“How America Can Rise Again”) provides little hope that the U.S. Government will cease arguing over the arrangement of the deck chairs and instead work on fixing the holes in our foundering ship of state. Referencing the American Society of Civil Engineers, Fallows states that the ASCE has graded our engineering infrastructure a “D” grade overall; critical national infrastructure (roads, dams, municipal water supplies) was graded as low as D- with a 2.2 trillion dollar price tag to fix things. Small wonder bridges are falling down.

At some point we are going to have to reach a national consensus on what things are critical and get started while we still have the ability to do so. This will mean refraining from frittering away our remaining national wealth on pothole patching and pork barrel politics and instead working towards focussed comprehensive urban planning and a “carbon-lite” America. But neither Fallows nor I let the individual off the hook either: we will have to put far less emphasis on Ipods, gas guzzlers, McMansions, and projection TVs and more on writing a check to our state, local, and national government so we can fix what is broken rather than, like a sinkhole working its way to the surface, our ills swallow us whole.

I wish us luck and thank folks like Messrs. Peirce, Fallows, and Marshall for their efforts at waking us up.

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