I like you, Gary, and my kids love you, but I haven't responded to you directly before because we seemed so far apart that I figured "what's the point?" You have seemed to be so narrowly focused on the bicycle thing that I didn't see how I could get through. But I'll try now.
I wrote an essay to this List a number of months ago explaining how cars benefit Society. I can send you a copy if you wish, but I don't want to clutter up this message with it now. Suffice it to say that the speed and flexibility of cars enable denizens of the Twin Cities to easily vary their jobs, shopping habits, and leisure time activities, which adds greatly to the weatlh and freedom of the area. I can see the advantages of an automobile in my personal life. I commute to Minnetonka every workday, pick up my daughter at daycare in Mpls, and occasionally drive my son to soccer when it's not in the neighborhood. On the weekend, my kids have various activities and see friends that are 5-10 miles away. We sometimes drive to stores several miles away. Many of these things would not be feasible without a car. Sure there are some neighborhood activites that we can walk to, but our lives are greatly broadened by having the whole metropolitan area available to us instead of just a small piece of it. There are many disadvantages to depending on a bicycle for your transportation. It's hard to carry things, or other people, it can be difficult and uncomfortable to use in inclement weather, it's hard for the infirm to use it, and a bicycle can't go as far or as fast as a car. I've read your postings to this List, and perhaps you have solved some of these problems with your tricycle, but there is still a large gap. Your tricycle is a great idea as a substitute for much of automobile transportation in the city, but certainly not for all. I'm not about to give up the geographic range that my car gives me, and I doubt that many others will either. I agree that people don't get enough exercise and people drive too much for short trips. It would be nice if most people walked or biked to distances within a mile or two. I'm always telling my kids they don't get to ride when they're only going a few blocks. I think I'm mostly in the minority on this. However, I don't feel I have the right to tell other people that they can't drive. Also exhaust from cars does affect the health of everyone else. We need to encourage less polluting vehicles. But attacking cars is counterproductive. Pollution has actually decreased in the last few decades, even as cars and industrial production has increased dramatically. Cars and factories add to our economic wealth, which in turn make it easier for us to spend more money easing pollution. Of course pollution doesn't automatically decrease as wealth increases - we need to make it more expensive for people to pollute. The best way to do this is by charging a tax on pollution. I think we need to increase gas taxes dramatically, until we are up to European levels. The biggest issue I have with your ideas is in policy that attempts to punish car use. The focus of activity should be on mitigating the problems of cars, mostly that of pollution and safety. Safety (for those not in cars at least) will be most enhanced by separating cars from neighborhoods, which means more lanes of highway. That should help get many cars out of the neighborhoods. When the highways are in gridlock, drivers take to neighborhood streets. Someone asked if I'd been to Atalanta or Houston lately. I assume this was to show that new highways don't reduce congestion. I'm not sure about Houston, but I know that Atlanta is a boomtown. I'm certainly not surprised if there's a lot of congestion there. They probably haven't built highways fast enough or in the wrong places. I've note been to Atlanta or Houston recently, but i have been to L.A. and New Jersey. Both places have a whole lot more people than the Twin Cities, and yet their congestion isn't any worse than the our southwest metro, that I traverse every day. It's probably because they have ten lane highways to carry the cars. Actually, building more lanes might not reduce congestion on the highway so much as get the cars out of the neighborhods. I also like the idea of closing down some streets to cars altogether, so people can wander freely without having to watch out for cars. But of course if we shut down some streets, that will mean that others will be busier. We need to create more barriers between residential areas and the major streets that carry the most vehicles. On 50th Street they have this program to slow down traffic. What a losing battle they are waging. There needs to be safe ways to cross the street, but they will never succeed in treating 50th as a neighborhood street. I also like the idea of safe bike routes. Unfortunately bikes and cars are somewhat incompatible. But we need to have safe routes for bike traffic. Bikes have too many disadvantages to ever supplant cars, but it'd be nice if 10-15% of commuters used them. The bike lanes on Park and Portland are very good, and I'd like to see streets devoted to just bicycles. The Greenway along 29th St is a very nice bike route, although I don't know if it goes anywhere useful. The 40th Street "Greenway" nee the River Lakes "Greenway" is a poor idea, but that's another essay. I could go on and on, but I have to go to bed, and anyone reading this has probably fallen asleep, so I'll stop for now. The important thing is to give people choices on how to live their lives, and we'll probably end up with the best city we can. Don't force people to live the way some utopian thinks everyone should live. Mark Anderson Bancroft Neighborhood ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 9:10 AM Subject: Re: [Mpls] Traffic Reduction (Hey, Mark -- is this our first direct dialogue on the Minneapolis Issues List? It seems funny, after having spoken in person while neighbors and while MG & I were doing childcare in the Bancroft neighborhood.) <snip> --Gary Hoover King Field _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
