Reply to Va official thinks md won’t fix the beltway

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You fix the Beltway by making it possible for people to get where they're going without being forced to sit in a car on a highway at the same time as lots of other people sitting in cars on a highway.

You "fix" the Beltway by spending a kajillion dollars so that even more people are forced to sit in a car on an even bigger highway at the same time as even more other people sitting in cars on an even bigger highway.[/quote]

This has indeed been the experience in LA, Houston, and many other cities.

“Just one more lane, bro.”[/quote]
I am sure that you are correct that both LA and Houston regret their highways. [/quote]

There shouldn’t be any question that the lives of most Angeleno and Houstonian commuters would be much better if the city had been designed around public transit rather than highways.

I would never want to live in Houston. LA would only be bearable if the office and the home are within walking or biking distance.[/quote]
Way to demonstrate how out of touch you are. LA is the second largest city in the US by population. Houston is the fourth. Out of the top ten cities in America by population, all except Philly and NYC grew so big due to car centered post-WWII growth. It is almost as if the automobile was what made these major cities major cities. [/quote]

Houston is built on oil money and LA is based on culture and weather. If cars made cities desirable then Detroit would be at the top.[/quote]
LA is a collection of cities that were able to consolidate into the agglomeration it is today thanks to the automobile-centered growth and sprawl. [/quote]

I mean, yes? If there hadn't been the automobile, LA would not have been built around the automobile. I thought that went without saying.[/quote]
And it had instead decided to eschew auto-centric growth in favor of maintaining a car less streetcar driven development, it would still be a collection of provincial cities and not the second largest city and second largest metropolitan area in America. That was facilitated by the fact that they had a lot of spare farmland for greenfield unhindered freeway construction. This was a major competive advantage that LA had over cities that were much larger than it at the end of WWI, including Baltimore, Detroit, etc. [/quote]

If the automobile industry hadn't dismantled the streetcars, LA would have been a different city, with better transit, and a lot more compact.

"Spare farmland" indeed.[/quote]
I agree it would have been a different city. It would have been a much smaller and poorer city.[/quote]

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