Notices by Dan Lyke (danlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host), page 3

@Mallulady yes, and: public transportation is more usable when we build livable neighborhoods that people can walk in. If we're bussing in people from 20 miles away, we still have economic segregation which lets us ignore the deeper social problems.

@clacke my turning moment started when I read her Letters articles about patents, and in support of the space program. Those two bits of writing weren't consistent with her epistemology and started the "aha". Of course as I learned more economics and gained more work experience the rest of it came crashing down.

@ablackcatstail yep, although as other folks have pointed out in this thread, the kinds of jobs that are work from home tend to be pretty middle-class.

In my area, much of the push for more lanes seems to be to allow service workers (retai) and manual labor (construction, poultry processing) to commute in from further away.

The fact that we mandate that all of those workers can afford cars is pretty awful and is a deliberate barrier creation.

@LGmedia Yeah, the particular examples that I'm looking at are things like retail and personal services jobs, and things like poultry processing (from my town). We've got 20k people leaving town every day (probably mostly for jobs that could be telecommuted) and 20k people coming in (probably for jobs which can't so.much), and the solution seems to be more highway miles. Not walkable bikable housing.

@realamy but also, the thing that started this thread was that folks in my region are pro more highway lanes, and anti new housing.

I live in a very nice walkable neighborhood. I often stop at the grocery store while walking home from work. The two bedroom house across the street just sold for a million bucks, and any attempt to build density is met with huge public outcry.

We'd much rather import our laborers and retail staff from elsewhere than let housing get built.

@realamy and we massively subsidize the roads and cars (with dollars, yes, but also with lives and health), and yet when we try to solve traffic by putting funds into buses and walkability and bikability, people scream about "subsidies" and socialism and crap.

@wimluyckx @realamy even more nuanced than that, it means that we're creating policies that sprawl market rate homes in sprawling isolated clusters.

And, yeah, parking minimums that create acres of unwalkable asphalt around us are a part of that.

@NataliaArmyOf1 100% agreed. And if we stop subsidizing automobiles so heavily and lay that cost back on those benefiting from the imposition of the automobile on the public space, we all win.

@NataliaArmyOf1 cars have huge negative external impacts. From collision deaths to tire dust pollution to the space needed to park and drive them, we as a society pay at least half a buck to subsidize every mile driven, probably over a buck, all so we can hide behind large angry grills.

We should be pursuing fiscally sustainable mobility policies that make us happier rather than angrier.

@Urban_Hermit As long as we're subsidizing automobile-focused roads to the tune of subsidies that run over half a buck a mile, probably over a buck, much of that subsidy in negative health impacts, the demands for roads will remain insatiable and unsustainable.

A developed country is one in which the rich use public transit too.

@devxvda telecommuting is great for that class of jobs, but if we continue housing and mobility policies which deepen isolation by class, it becomes just a symptom of further segregation by class.

@samhainnight @FransVeldman yep. Although, Petaluma has 20k people commute out every day, and 20k people commute in. I believe that most of those are income and skills mismatches, and if we had more lower income housing here we could have a lot fewer commuting in.

@samhainnight yep. Adding lanes to 101 so people can commute in from Ukiah vs adding housing in Petaluma should be a no brainier, but here we are, making it all worse.

@FransVeldman mmmaybe, though my particular issue that spawned this is more of Marin and Sonoma County lobbying for more highway lanes while fighting like hell any attempts to build dense walkable housing that might make those areas affordable.

It's pretty much explicitly a "keep the poors out" set of policies, designed to make service workers commute.

@katow pretty sure we're seeing that. It's a disaster, with externalities of at least half a buck per mile, probably actually over a buck, and a bunch of entitled whiners complaining about traffic.

But, because the loud voices win, we'll keep killing people so that we can live in isolation. Sigh.

@orionkidder and since the gains of mass transit are really dependent on development patterns, and since development patterns are hugely skewed by automobile subsidies, at some point this loops back around to being about housing.

Stop asking how the poor are going to get to work without cars, and start asking why the rich won't let the poor live close to their jobs.

@ablackcatstail Yep. And I'm still resentful of the upbringing and education that sent me through a big ol' Ayn Rand phase back in my 20s.

These days I'm getting into local politics, though as my friend who was recently elected Mayor observed, if we're asking people to choose between staying up late for city meetings and going to their kids' evening activities, we're still doing it wrong.