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Menu: Home Grumblings UP A Nation of Cowards TIA is a PIA Used car kiddies State Religion Bomb Building Hints Australian bigots Critics sued E-book woes Government murderers Enviro-WHAT? All The News Minimum Wage Scam Shaving sucks Bad coffee sucks Dreams that Die My Evil Twin Corporate Puppet Corporate News Whores Mass Delusions Invisible People Employment Myth Diets suck Lewinsky Chewinsky Road bikes? Where? E-RATE follies Lying politician Links Contact Info My Resume My Public Key EMAIL Eric BadTux Portal[et]	Mass Transit Derailling So I read with bemusement in the Arizona Republican that politicos are wanting "light rail" to enrich their contractor friends while carrying 1% of the population (max). The problem is, mass transit does not work in Phoenix, Arizona, and never will, for the following reasons: Racism Cowardance Convenience (or lack thereof) A city designed for cars Racism "Only poor people ride busses", sniff the intelligencia. Everybody talks about mass transit, but nobody rides it, because then they would have to share a bus with the shambling homeless or with "those" people (where "those" people are people with a darker skin color than their own). Nobody admits it out loud because hey, it's not politically correct to be a bigot nowdays, but it's a lie. We choose to live in racially segregated communities (the United States is more segregated, housing-wise, than it was before the Civil Rights movement!), and we choose NOT to ride the same bus with people of another race. The reason people are talking about light rail rather than busses is because light rail isn't associated with "undesirables". Rather, it's kind of classy, like an old Agatha Christie novel or a trip to San Francisco to ride the cable cars. The hope is that people will forget their bigotries and ride the rails, despite the fact that the rails cost much more per mile and are much less convenient than busses (because routes cannot shift with changing needs, it's harder to double-up when needed, etc.). This is a forlorn hope. Obligatory story: One high school that I visited during my teaching career had a 49% minority population. The teachers and staff were frantically looking for jobs at other schools, and I asked why. They said, "the moment that the minority population reaches 50%, every white student in the school will disappear and many of us will be out of work." Sure enough, the next year (after I'd transferred to another school district) the minority population reached 50%, and sure enough, by the end of that year that school, which started with 1600 students, only had 800 students left. All minority. So has the United States changed? Are we less bigoted than we used to be? Yeah right! Cowardance Let's face it, Americans aren't racist because they're bad and evil people. Americans are racists because they're cowards. I don't know what happened to the children of the World War II generation, but they grew up to be a nation of cowards who are afraid to speak up for what is right, true, and just, and who are afraid of their fellow Americans. A typical example is the Ahwatukee neighborhood in Phoenix. This neighborhood has close to 250,000 people in it, the size of many mid-size cities, yet has exactly five entrances (four through I-10, and one through a private golf resort). If you decide to drive through Ahwatukee, you won't see much unless you choose to turn into one of the cul-de-sacs because all the houses are walled away behind stucco walls. That's how the residents of Ahwatukee want it. They're scared of their neighbors, scared of the "brown people" who live just on the other side of the mountain (thus their refusal to let the city drive a new access road through a mountain pass to their neighborhood), and want to cringe in their gated community in mortal fear. Not to mention denial. According to the New Times, which did an article on gangs, Ahwatukee is now the fastest-growing gang territory in Phoenix. Said one Phoenix gang-squad detective, "our biggest problem is that when we go to parents in Ahwatukee and tell them that their kid is in a gang, the parents' first reaction is to hire a lawyer and tell us to get the hell off their property." But we pretend that if we just huddle in our gated walled communities and wish the world away, that the world does not exist. Cowards. Delusional cowards in denial. Foo. Convenience Let's face it, mass transit is inconvenient. I drive a car not because it's faster than car-pooling. I live in the same neighborhood as two of my co-workers, and we could use the HOV lane to get to work much faster than crawling in the regular lanes during the morning Ahwatukee Traffic Jam. But: One co-worker regularly leaves early to pick his kid up at school after band practice. The other co-worker keeps 9-to-5 hours (but works a lot at home). And I like to stay late at work to catch up on things that I should have done but didn't because I was writing stupid stuff like this (grin). In other words, I could gain close to 45 minutes of leisure time in my day if I car-pooled, but I would lose the flexibility to come to work when I want to, and leave work when I want to. The only places where mass transit carries a majority of travelers are places (overseas) where there is a maximum 5 minute wait between subways, and where the cities are compact and vertical (see below). Cities designed for cars Manhattan was laid out and built before the automobile, and thus has a mass transit system that works great. You can reach anywhere in Manhattan in 30 minutes via the subway and bus system. Phoenix was designed around the automobile. To get from Ahwatukee to North Phoenix via freeway could be a 40 mile trip. There is no mass transit system in the world that could maintain a 30-minute travel time over a 1600-square-mile area. We can huff and puff and wish all we want, but we're not going to make mass transit work -- unless we somehow redesign Phoenix to be mass-transit friendly. And that isn't going to happen. TO BE CONTINUED See the next installment: What DO we do about the stifling traffic jams in Phoenix, anyhow?!

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Mass Transit Derailling

So I read with bemusement in the Arizona Republican that politicos are wanting "light rail" to enrich their contractor friends while carrying 1% of the population (max). The problem is, mass transit does not work in Phoenix, Arizona, and never will, for the following reasons:

Racism
Cowardance
Convenience (or lack thereof)
A city designed for cars

Racism

"Only poor people ride busses", sniff the intelligencia. Everybody talks about mass transit, but nobody rides it, because then they would have to share a bus with the shambling homeless or with "those" people (where "those" people are people with a darker skin color than their own). Nobody admits it out loud because hey, it's not politically correct to be a bigot nowdays, but it's a lie. We choose to live in racially segregated communities (the United States is more segregated, housing-wise, than it was before the Civil Rights movement!), and we choose NOT to ride the same bus with people of another race.

The reason people are talking about light rail rather than busses is because light rail isn't associated with "undesirables". Rather, it's kind of classy, like an old Agatha Christie novel or a trip to San Francisco to ride the cable cars. The hope is that people will forget their bigotries and ride the rails, despite the fact that the rails cost much more per mile and are much less convenient than busses (because routes cannot shift with changing needs, it's harder to double-up when needed, etc.). This is a forlorn hope.

Obligatory story: One high school that I visited during my teaching career had a 49% minority population. The teachers and staff were frantically looking for jobs at other schools, and I asked why. They said, "the moment that the minority population reaches 50%, every white student in the school will disappear and many of us will be out of work." Sure enough, the next year (after I'd transferred to another school district) the minority population reached 50%, and sure enough, by the end of that year that school, which started with 1600 students, only had 800 students left. All minority.

So has the United States changed? Are we less bigoted than we used to be? Yeah right!

Cowardance

Let's face it, Americans aren't racist because they're bad and evil people. Americans are racists because they're cowards. I don't know what happened to the children of the World War II generation, but they grew up to be a nation of cowards who are afraid to speak up for what is right, true, and just, and who are afraid of their fellow Americans. A typical example is the Ahwatukee neighborhood in Phoenix. This neighborhood has close to 250,000 people in it, the size of many mid-size cities, yet has exactly five entrances (four through I-10, and one through a private golf resort). If you decide to drive through Ahwatukee, you won't see much unless you choose to turn into one of the cul-de-sacs because all the houses are walled away behind stucco walls. That's how the residents of Ahwatukee want it. They're scared of their neighbors, scared of the "brown people" who live just on the other side of the mountain (thus their refusal to let the city drive a new access road through a mountain pass to their neighborhood), and want to cringe in their gated community in mortal fear.

Not to mention denial. According to the New Times, which did an article on gangs, Ahwatukee is now the fastest-growing gang territory in Phoenix. Said one Phoenix gang-squad detective, "our biggest problem is that when we go to parents in Ahwatukee and tell them that their kid is in a gang, the parents' first reaction is to hire a lawyer and tell us to get the hell off their property." But we pretend that if we just huddle in our gated walled communities and wish the world away, that the world does not exist. Cowards. Delusional cowards in denial. Foo.

Convenience

Let's face it, mass transit is inconvenient.

I drive a car not because it's faster than car-pooling. I live in the same neighborhood as two of my co-workers, and we could use the HOV lane to get to work much faster than crawling in the regular lanes during the morning Ahwatukee Traffic Jam. But: One co-worker regularly leaves early to pick his kid up at school after band practice. The other co-worker keeps 9-to-5 hours (but works a lot at home). And I like to stay late at work to catch up on things that I should have done but didn't because I was writing stupid stuff like this (grin).

In other words, I could gain close to 45 minutes of leisure time in my day if I car-pooled, but I would lose the flexibility to come to work when I want to, and leave work when I want to. The only places where mass transit carries a majority of travelers are places (overseas) where there is a maximum 5 minute wait between subways, and where the cities are compact and vertical (see below).

Cities designed for cars

Manhattan was laid out and built before the automobile, and thus has a mass transit system that works great. You can reach anywhere in Manhattan in 30 minutes via the subway and bus system.

Phoenix was designed around the automobile. To get from Ahwatukee to North Phoenix via freeway could be a 40 mile trip. There is no mass transit system in the world that could maintain a 30-minute travel time over a 1600-square-mile area. We can huff and puff and wish all we want, but we're not going to make mass transit work -- unless we somehow redesign Phoenix to be mass-transit friendly. And that isn't going to happen.

TO BE CONTINUED

See the next installment: What DO we do about the stifling traffic jams in Phoenix, anyhow?!