Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 23:16:06 -0800, The Real Bev
wrote:
How many times has this argument been performed? Has anybody ever
changed his/her mind or are we all just circle-jerking?

Actually, we're really just trying to avoid talking about bicycles.
--
Rick Onanian

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:56:38 GMT,
, "Buck" s c h w i n n _ f
o r _ s a l e @ h o t m a i l . c o m wrote:

"Zoot Katz" wrote in message
...

Devoting so much space to the car spreads the city out further and
makes car ownership even more necessary and inevitable. As we spend
more on roads, bridges and overpasses, we have less to spend on public
transit infrastructure to nodes of higher density mixed use
developments. There could have been more pumpkin patches in green
belts between population nodes instead of strip mall parking lots.

Even when we have public transportation in place, people don't want to use
it. Look at the failure of the BART system, or the more recent light-rail
system in Dallas.

This is a situation of media created and pervasively reinforced
cultural bias. Cars got popular when the population became hypnotised
by television.

As a test, count the car ads versus adds for public transit in any
prime-time hour of television. Analyse the characterisations of
transit riders versus car drivers in any popular TV program that even
acknowledges that some people may in fact ride buses.

Trying to superimpose a functional light rail system or transit system
on an existing urban form that's been shaped by the car will pay
dividends when the urban form adapts to the new transportation link.

We also know that preserving open space, while necessary,
comes at a social cost that many cities were unwilling to pay in times past.
It's hard to ignore property owner's rights, especially in the U.S. Forcing
an owner to give up the economic value of his inner-city property so it can
become a park is a sticky political issue that many aren't willing to
tackle. And the city's coffers aren't big enough to provide fair-market
value.

As it now stands almost every city already owns thirty percent or more
of the inner city land. It's under asphalt.

Now we can agree on the need for more mixed-use development. There are some
market segments that can utilize it. But if you are thinking that we should
have scrapped suburbia in favor of only mixed-use development, you are
ignoring market needs. On the ownership side, there is a market desire for
homes with private yards.

Row housing offers the same privacy in ones yard as the typical
suburban home. It's the same hedge, chain-link or board fence dividing
the plots. Try playing bag-pipes nude in your backyard.

On the commercial side, there will always be a
market need for high enough traffic voumes (whether by foot, bicycle or
auto) to support the businesses, especially in these markets with smaller
margins. This is why businesses are concentrated around larger collector
roads. Place them on a smaller secondary road and unless they are within a
niche market which will seek them out, the business is doomed to fail
because the competition is on the main road.

Substitute "larger collector roads" for "convenient public
transportation" and you don't need huge parking lots to support a
business. When the adjacent secondary roads are walkable, they can be
full of life too.

When the houses are all spread out to make room for
streets and driveways, the land requirements are greater, therefore
more expensive. Because the building lots and houses are larger to
accommodate the cars, they're more expensive too.

There may be slightly higher costs in infrastructure and materials, but the
land costs at the periphery are so low that you can buy much more home per
dollar in suburbia than you can in the inner loop.

And then you spend two hours a day getting back and forth to work to
pay for the car you must have to live there. Sprawl is subsidised so
it appears cheaper than it actually is. It's most expensive and
detrimental in the long-term when it paves over farm land.

You also ignore the
increased costs of building materials and construction complexity when
building multi-story housing in an urban area. The only way to offset the
increased costs of building and land is to increase density (greater number
of living units per lot).

Four story frame housing construction is pretty much the same as
single story except it requires less material. More than five stories
puts people out of touch with what's happening on the ground. Except
for monumental buildings that create centres, four stories is
generally high enough to support densities worthwhile for local
businesses and public transit without having the negative
psychological impacts or cost of high-rise living.

This results in a living situation that is
obviously undesirable to a majority of the population.

A bare majority that will become a minority as the world's population
continues to urbanise at exponential rates.

And if we have to
build at higher densities, we cannot include those gardens that our houses
are supposed to be designed around!

Not with our presently instituted method of plunking down cookie
cutter buildings on a suburban grid imaginatively overlayed with some
cutesy new designer version of cul-de-sac hell.

When the first household expenditure surveys were conducted in 1901,
(cycling's heyday) transportation accounted for less than 2 percent of
the family budget - now it is 18 percent and rising. With
transportation costs eating up a bigger percentage of household
budgets, saving for a home becomes increasingly difficult.

We can blame much of this on the manufacturer unions and our general
greediness in this modern society. Everyone wants to make as much money as
possible,

Enron was a union shop?

and unions can enforce pay rates. This is why a guy who picks up a
brake caliper and bolts it onto a car can make $35 an hour.

While his wife has to work too so they can afford their pre-packaged
version of the "American Dream" the television is selling them.

And we wonder
why our manufacturing base is leaving the country?

It's so executives can earn 450% more than the guy making a measly
$35.00 an hour.
The utopia that a few people around here envision is not the utopia for
everyone. I like cycling and even commuting by bike, but I'm not willing to
give up the amenities of suburbia. I think that small-town USA is more like
what everyone wants. It's small enough to have few traffic problems, small
enough to bike in, small enough to know your neighbors, but needs to be big
enough to have a local economy of some measure. I grew up in a town like
this. Living in the suburbs of a big city is not quite the same, but is
close enough for now.

The malls serving sprawl killed the small town main-street. Now the
big box stores are killing the malls as sprawl reaches ever further.

Check what's happening in Duncanville, TX. Christopher Alexander, who
is perhaps even more contemptuous of the disneyland style 'new
urbanism' architecture than you or I, has been asked for a proposal to
re-make the downtown area. It was his work that has influenced the
building forms this generation of 'new urbanist' architects are
plopping down on the same old grid. They're merely paying lip-service
to the concepts he distilled and codified. He identified features that
appeared across all history and all building cultures, features that
gave real buildings and cities their quality for fostering life. See
if you can get your head around what he's talking about. I laughed
when he related that during discussions one of the Duncanville city
officials asked if he was a communist.

Thinking about all of this does make me wonder about your living situation,
Zoot. Does your home share a wall with someone else's?

Two and a ceiling. But my neighbours are quieter, smell better and are
less likely to kill me than the cars going by my front door.

Do you have any kids to think about?

Not mine, but yeah, I work toward making this a better place for them
to grow up.

How much access to open space do you really have?

The same as the coyotes that also inhabit this city. But I have a
bicycle so I can go anywhere. Check a map of Vancouver. There's a
relatively huge amount of open green space when also considering the
other available amenities of a world-class city.
--
zk

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:39:09 -0500,
, Rick Onanian
wrote:

Zoot, it sounds to me like you dislike the culture and the legal
system, as well as the masses, in your country. That's a lot to
dislike and still stay. What's so compelling about it that you stay
despite those major issues?

Well, at least I don't have to drive thirty miles before finding
somebody who doesn't think I'm an asshole. The cops call me 'sir' and
I return the courtesy.

I just had to pedal 9 km to downtown and found plenty of bike-culture
with the Critical Mass folks. We talk and joke with the mayor when he
rides. Then there's lots of regular cycling club's rides too, plus the
chopper rides, fetish rides, naked rides, raptor raids, holidays,
fund-raisers, festivals, parties and just helping out at OCB!

Why stay?
It's the only English speaking city in the top three worldwide. And
it's a nicer climate than other possible contenders in the top ten.

Vancouver is developing a transportation infrastructure that, by
officially adopted policy, prioritised pedestrian and bicycle
amenities, public transit, and the movement of goods ahead of private
automobiles. The regional district and outlying towns are adopting
plans limiting sprawl. There's constantly work to be done toward that
end and it's the citizens' responsibility to create the reality.

So what if we're also known as 'la-la-land'.
--
zk

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:29:34 -0500,
, Rick Onanian
wrote:

What do you think would make it illegal for
the driver to park on that street?

By-law ordinances.

On-street parking is prohibitted in many areas outside Dogpatch.
Traffic flow, street sweeping and snow removal are some reasons
on-street parking is regulated. And here, if the tags or insurance
have expired, the car can't be on the street at all - not even parked.

All the residents without cars should be allowed to park their sofas
on their streets and let's see how drivers would like that.
--
zk

Zoot Katz wrote:
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:29:34 -0500,
, Rick Onanian
wrote:

What do you think would make it illegal for
the driver to park on that street?

By-law ordinances.

On-street parking is prohibitted in many areas outside Dogpatch.
Traffic flow, street sweeping and snow removal are some reasons
on-street parking is regulated. And here, if the tags or insurance
have expired, the car can't be on the street at all - not even parked.

All the residents without cars should be allowed to park their sofas
on their streets and let's see how drivers would like that.

I saw a van for sale for $500 a couple of weeks ago. I thought
briefly about buying it solely for use as a low-cost storage
space, but then I figured it would be a real pain to move it
twice a week for street cleaning, plus it might have been
tempting to drive it somewhere, so I decided against it.

--
Steven O'Neill
www.bridgetolls.org

In article , says...
Zoot Katz wrote:
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:29:34 -0500,
, Rick Onanian
wrote:

What do you think would make it illegal for
the driver to park on that street?

By-law ordinances.

On-street parking is prohibitted in many areas outside Dogpatch.
Traffic flow, street sweeping and snow removal are some reasons
on-street parking is regulated. And here, if the tags or insurance
have expired, the car can't be on the street at all - not even parked.

All the residents without cars should be allowed to park their sofas
on their streets and let's see how drivers would like that.

I saw a van for sale for $500 a couple of weeks ago. I thought
briefly about buying it solely for use as a low-cost storage
space, but then I figured it would be a real pain to move it
twice a week for street cleaning, plus it might have been
tempting to drive it somewhere, so I decided against it.

Where do you live that you get your streets cleaned twice a week!!!???
Around here, it's normally twice a year if we're lucky! Often it's only
once around mid-spring or early summer, when they sweep off the
accumulated sand from the winter.

--
Dave Kerber
Fight spam: remove the ns_ from the return address before replying!

REAL programmers write self-modifying code.

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:57:36 -0600, Kevan Smith
wrote:

Because cars are the bigger and worse offenders on public roads. As cyclists, we
see the carnage cars produce every day in the form of road kill. The only real
difference between animal road kill and humans is we clean up human bodies.

Aw, geez, Smith, now you're gonna get an "equal rights for animals"
thread started...
--
I accidentally reversed the polarity on my cable modem.
With a single click of my mouse, I just enlarged my
mortgage and refinanced my penis.

David Kerber wrote:
Where do you live that you get your streets cleaned twice a week!!!???
Around here, it's normally twice a year if we're lucky!

Brooklyn, NY. That's just the side streets. I live on 7th Avenue,
which has meters and is cleaned every day but Sunday (in
theory). The sidewalks, however, are another story.

--
Steven O'Neill
www.bridgetolls.org

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 23:38:54 +0000 (UTC),
,
(Steven M. O'Neill) wrote:

I saw a van for sale for $500 a couple of weeks ago. I thought
briefly about buying it solely for use as a low-cost storage
space

I recently spotted something similar in a British car-nut rag. People
using old Land Rovers as storage sheds. Parked up tight to a wall,
sorta half on the sidepath, or across the apron and sideways against
the garage door.

My friend up-country has a big-old Grumman step-van parked on his
property he used as a shed while he built his house. Last I heard, he
was going to bury it for a survival shelter.
Buddy's got a back-hoe/loader. There ya go.
--
zk

Rick Onanian wrote:


I know that my Pontiac Grand Am v6 was only listed for 1000 pounds
-- wtf can I tow with that? Sorry, a utility trailer weighs most of
the capacity of a compact car's towing ability (the 4 cylinder
version, btw, is not rated to tow _anything_).

Sorry, a utility trailer can be very light. The one I built weighs
roughly 300 pounds and has a tongue weight of just a few pounds, yet
it's carried many hundreds of pounds of rocks, soil, etc. It's been a
big help with at least three moving projects. And my other post
mentions towing a camping trailer coast to coast with a Honda Civic.

I understand that everybody who buys a pickup just knows they'll need to
haul two tons of stuff weekly. But in _real_ life, a light duty trailer
is a perfectly workable solution to almost all hauling needs. It's just
that it doesn't occur to most people. It's not trendy enough.

--
Frank Krygowski