Removing Freeways

[ghettopalmetto]

Atlanta's congestion is the result of what I mentioned earlier, too many single occupancy vehicles, poor land use decisions, and long commutes. Freeways are not the problem its the people who use them that are!

1. The single-occupancy vehicles are the result of highly dispersed patterns of settlement and employment., which are in turn due to:

2. Poor land-use decisions made by PLANNERS, who assume that everyone will drive everywhere. When congestion hits, everyone moves...

3. OUTWARD to escape the traffic, lengthening commutes. The state DOT, in it's infinite wisdom, sees all the new subdivisions the PLANNERS have approved, and widens the freeways again, anticipating a growth in traffic [[that somehow ALWAYS materializes--go figure!).

If freeways are not the problem, why did Atlanta's suburban boom only occur after the multi-billion dollar "Freeing the Freeways" program of the 1980s was completed? Are we supposed to assume--like you do--that the bad traffic there is merely the result of the sum of several million incompetent, individual drivers?

[ghettopalmetto]

Here's some of that famous "public involvement" that DetroitPlanner is describing. This is a project in my state. If the public is involved in the entire process, I wonder how the engineers managed to ever make a conclusion before sending their PR rep to the first public hearing! The "public involvement" process amounts to nothing more than:

1. Here's what we're gonna do, come hell or high water.
2. Bitch all you want, it ain't gonna help.

http://www.scdot.org/inside/I-20/pdf...mment-form.pdf

[[see on the public comment form, how they already proposed widening as the solution???)

As an engineer who practices in an objective manner without pre-ordained conclusions, my natural question is--where the hell are the alternatives that were considered??? Public involvement, my ass.

[DetroitPlanner]

Its not the planners its the apathy from the public that results in poor land use decisions. A planner's role is to advise. A planner cannot approve or execute a plan.

[eastland]

Warren and Sterling Heights are cities?

I think they are cities. Cities with a combined SEV greater than Detroit's unfortunately.

[Detroitnerd]

I think they are cities. Cities with a combined SEV greater than Detroit's unfortunately.

And completely lacking downtowns, unfortunately.

See, this is the reason metro Detroit is a failure. Nobody can seriously consider working together for the common good of the region. It all comes down to ridiculous ideas of comparative wealth.

The region, as a whole, is tanking. Even Oakland County is having trouble, to say nothing of Macomb County. Foreclosures, municipal deficits, school system deficits and other problems are affecting not just Detroit but Ferndale, Royal Oak, Birmingham, Troy. The list goes on. You want to talk about comparative wealth and perceptions of other communities? Other regions look at this poor-ass, bickering, backward-looking region and say, "I'll pass. There's no way I'm investing in that. There's no way I'm relocating a business there. There's no way I'll create a job there." Is that what you want?

If so, keep on picking on the next poorest community. It's the surest way for us to all swirl down the shitter.

[Augustiner]

And completely lacking downtowns, unfortunately.

Hey, now, Warren has a couple blocks of old houses at Mound and Chicago. They even put a carriage wheel in the median of Mound so all the motorists blasting through at 60 mph know when they're passing through downtown.

[Detroitnerd]

Hey, now, Warren has a couple blocks of old houses at Mound and Chicago. They even put a carriage wheel in the median of Mound so all the motorists blasting through at 60 mph know when they're passing through downtown.

Haha. I stand corrected. Meet you at the median for drinks tonight?

[ghettopalmetto]

Its not the planners its the apathy from the public that results in poor land use decisions. A planner's role is to advise. A planner cannot approve or execute a plan.

Perhaps you can explain why all new suburbs look damn-near identical, then. This is the part where you tell us how six-lanes of perpetual traffic, strip malls galore, and plastic subdivisions are merely "what the people want". That is, regardless of location, history, climate, socioeconomic makeup, or anything else, we all just happen to want environments the looks exactly the same, no matter where we go. BULL. SHIT.

I suppose it's just coincidental that diverse groups citizens across the entire nation have *just so happened* to adopt IDENTICAL zoning regulations, isn't it???

The problem isn't apathy. If it were, you'd see *zero* planning in our cities in towns. The problem is that everything is OVERplanned. Yet somehow, that's not the fault of the planners, is it?

Just like new and wider freeways aren't the fault of the roadway engineers--it's the fault of the apathetic people for not stopping them, right?