GM exec stands by calling global warming a "crock"

[Matus1976]

Thats easy general semanticist, build more highways. The EPA's policy now is basically to not let anyone build a new road anywhere.

Surely you don't think building more highways will solve traffic congestion? Building more highways actually encourages more traffic, "if you build it they will come". We humans need to face facts - there are limits to everything. You can only handle so much traffic with the superhighway-vehicles model. We will only solve congestion with a multitude of initiatives.

Surely I do think building more highways will cause less traffic jams, to think otherwise is absurd. "if you build it they will come" is a catchy phrase from a corny movie, not a law of nature. If every car had it's own highway, do you seriously think there would be 'more congestion' ? Of course as you build a road some people who otherwise would not have driven because traffic was so damn annoying would now go out and drive, but it's pretty easy to build more roads than the minor increase in drivers. It's very difficult to do that when there are 5,000 zoning laws in your way though. WHere I live in CT there is a major stretch if Interstate 95 which runs between NYC and Boston, part of it is one of the most congested highways in the country, it's 2 lanes each way and is a central hub between two major cities. A plan was proposed to widen it by *one* lane each way and they estimated it would take 20 years to do that and 20 billion dollars (after 10 million dollars worth of studies)

In 10 years and 20 billion dollars Hong Kong built:

- the worlds largest double decker suspension bridge

- 20 some miles of elevated highways

- a miltiple mile underwater tunnel

- 20 miles of a mass transit high speed rail system

- an artifical island

- one of the worlds largest airports on top of that island

We could build elevated highways over existing highways with higher speed limits and cut traffic tremendously. Look at Hong Kong's major engineering project or the projects in dubai. Most of our goods move over the highways and any congestion raises the prices tremendously especially as gas prices climb.

[Matus1976]

I agree that the planners have failed miserably in this respect, but that does not mean planning is bad. Our model has been economic growth at any cost but this is unsustainable. It's like those pyramid scams when everything is fine until expansion of the base reaches a limit and then the whole thing comes crumbling down.

I don't see where you are getting this from, planning is exactly what has caused these problems, that is, little social tyrants planning out what they think things ought to be like, not individual builders and home owners planning whats best for themselves (which <i>does</i> work) Left to their own selfish accords, cities would be tall and confined, not spread out over hundreds of square miles wasting ten times the resources.

The very survival of humanity <i>depends</i> on massive economic growth, you seem to think that 'sustainbility' and probably 'global warming' are the biggest threats we face, but frankly none of these are civilization killers and even by their worse estimates will just make things difficult, but do you think that when an asteroid is pummeling toward us it's gonna give a damn how 'sustainble' we are? Will a rouge planet careening through our solar system care what your 'carbon foot print' is? We face tremendous threats in the near future, and hunkering down and abandoning technological growth will *absolutely* ensure our demise and the demise of all life on the planet (don't forget, many times in the past asteroids have wiped out the majority of life on the planet) We also face nearby cosmic threats, the collapse of our magnetic field (which seems well under way) natural or artificial pathogens which could wipe out huge portions of humanity, a major biological or nuclear terrorist strike could plunge most of the technologically developed world into a new dark age, (remember, the last one lasted over a thousand years) Caldera volcanic eruptions could do the same, on and on and on. Every one of these problems requires massive economic and industrial growth to combat, we need to get off this planet and spread life out.

If you honestly care about the kind of threats humanity faces and what to do about that (environmental and being more 'sustainable') you would learn about all the ones we face and try to determine which poses the greatest threat and what strategies would work to mitigate those threats. Global warming, even by it's worst estimates is at the bottom of the list.

The only extent to which I favor sustainability is when technology makes it cheaper and easier for an individual to create the means for survival, because it makes intelligent technological life more robust. Where 'sustainability' makes it harder for people and curtails technological growth in the name of some floating abstraction of the 'environment' it's pure suicide.

[tjohnson]

Surely I do think building more highways will cause less traffic jams, to think otherwise is absurd. "if you build it they will come" is a catchy phrase from a corny movie, not a law of nature.

So which "law of nature" are you applying here?

[tjohnson]

...we need to get off this planet and spread life out.

Yes, because we are rapidly making it uninhabitable.

[Matus1976]

Surely I do think building more highways will cause less traffic jams, to think otherwise is absurd. "if you build it they will come" is a catchy phrase from a corny movie, not a law of nature.

So which "law of nature" are you applying here?

I'd ask you to think about what you are suggesting, and reduce it to fundamentals. If we build a road, the road gets traveled, and so sees traffic. But did that road cause traffic? C'mon, do you seriously believe that? Honestly I have a hard time even formulating a statement against that because I find it so absurd on so many levels.

Ok, so, If we never built any roads ever there would be no traffic jams. Do you want to live in a world with no roads? Perhaps you want to hike everywhere. That might not be a good idea the next time a storm comes your way, or excessive rain, or a small drought. Roads and easy transportation spread risks over larger areas, so no particular area is catastrophically effected by minor local events.

It's like saying if you create a medicine that cures a disease, well, that person will just get some other disease and then want a cure for that. If you make a safety improvement in a car, well, people will just want their car even safer, and then drive a little more recklessly, and need still more safety improvements. If a lake is crowded by recreational boaters, and you open a neighboring lake, will it be just as crowded? Will more people come out now that the new lake is open and less crowded? sure, but will those new boaters outpace the new area? People don't boat 24/7, nor do they drive 24/7, nor does every single person want or have a car. Building can easily outpace the growth in demand for roads (as it has in every other industry)

The problem the people who just fundamentally don't like cars, they don't like others to have too much mobility, they don't like that people want to go everywhere and trapse all over their precious earth 'ruining' it. This small elite of people have a great deal of control over building through the EPA, and as thousands of people die in traffic accidents, as energy and food costs skyrocket because everyone is sitting on congested higways for hours on end, they give themselves big ol pats on the back for 'protecting' the earth.

We have traffic jams because the number of cars has tripled and the number of vehicle miles traveled has quadrupled, while the actual amount of highways has increased by about 10%. It simple, more highways equals less traffic.

Do Highways Cause Traffic Congestion?

http://www.reason.org/commentaries/staley_20060629.shtml

The Road More Traveled

Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think

http://www.reason.org/road/

"Congestion robs the U.S. economy of over $63 billion a year and traffic delays are expected to increase by more than 65 percent over the next 25 years"

Do More Highways Cause Congestion?

http://www.ti.org/vaupdate14.html

"Highway data show that building new freeways increases per capita freeway driving. However, it does not increase total per capita driving. Instead, it shifts driving from ordinary streets to the freeways. Since freeways are safer, and ordinary street driving is particularly dangerous for pedestrians, new freeways are the ultimate pedestrian-friendly design."

On the other side, I find this

Highways Cause Sprawl

http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/transportation/cincy.asp

Which comes from the Sierra Club. What do they advocate of course, but more 'planning' !!!

"Instead it would be smarter to plan our communities better so that we aren't forced to drive everywhere, and to provide greater transportation choices such as commuter light rail and expanded bus service."

Funny that 'planners' always seem to find more reason to make more 'plans' even though all the problems they are trying to fix come from the failures of their previous plans.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Matus1976

[Matus1976]

...we need to get off this planet and spread life out.

Yes, because we are rapidly making it uninhabitable.

You love those emotional appeals to gross generalizations. How are we making it uninhabitable? Give me some concretes. We live longer and healthier lives than ever before in the entire history of humanity, yet the world is on the brink of being 'uninhabitable' based on what evidence? How will it become uninhabitable, if it is warmer, it is, in fact, more habitable, not less. Plants love warmth and grow faster in CO2, humans love warmth as well. Of course, that will displace people and cause problems, but nothing that technology couldnt handle (like, say, nuclear powered desalination plants) but of course, environemtnalists damn cars, damn nuclear reactors (the safest form of energy we have ever created) damn agriculture, damn technoloy in general, they damn our very existence. If we don't have sufficient technology to detect and mitigate existential threats, which will only come from industrial and economic growth, ALL LIFE on this planet WILL END. ALL LIFE, every microbe, every cute squirrel, mucusy slime mold, all of it. It is not a quesiton of 'if' but only 'when'

[tjohnson]

Funny that 'planners' always seem to find more reason to make more 'plans' even though all the problems they are trying to fix come from the failures of their previous plans.

Yes, and since the first attempts to practice medicine sometimes harmed or killed the patient we should have abandoned that as well.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/506639-buil...-traffic-issues

[Matus1976]

Funny that 'planners' always seem to find more reason to make more 'plans' even though all the problems they are trying to fix come from the failures of their previous plans.

Yes, and since the first attempts to practice medicine sometimes harmed or killed the patient we should have abandoned that as well.

What is the relevance of such a comment? Medicine is a process of understanding the way the natural world works, and failures will necessarily occur. Planners are attempting to control and manipulate people, and nothing but failure will always result. Understand nature is far different than seeking to enslave people. You, and these planners, are nothing more than frustrated little social tyrants who are annoyed that other people don't choose to live the way you think they ought to choose to live and are perfectly content in leveraging police and SWAT teams to do your social engineering. Like Mao, you think that people are books full of blank pages ready to be molded and formed to what you think is best. Perhaps I've misjudged you, please feel free to clarify, but your adament defense of planning and controls suggests you follow the same line of thinking.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/506639-buil...-traffic-issues

Despite it's grandoise headline, this article is saying that it is more cost effective to solve dubais traffic problems through mass transit than it is to solve it through building more highways, which is entirely plausible in many cases.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Matus1976

[Matus1976]

So are you suggesting that

Would actually create MORE traffic congestion?

Why did the Bush Administration open up more federal aviation lanes for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season in 2007, and why did that opening up of more lanes (more airline highways, essentially) lead to reduced air traffic congestion and fewer delays? Why is building more highways different?

Or, furthermore, if we should someday have 'flying cars' would that not indeed open up the skies to be literally thousands of highways? So by your reckoning, each and every one of these sky lanes will be bumper to bumper traffic james? Such is the ridiculous nature of the claim you are making. Yes, one or two more highways, in the short term, will raise the number of cars on the roads, but as these studies I provided show, this is because the vehicles are coming off of secondary roads (where more car drivers and pedestrians are killed) but in the long term they will lead to less traffic and congestion. 10 or 20 more highways will definately reduce traffic and congestion, 100 or 200 across the nation will absolutely and markedly reduce traffic right away.

When was the last time you actually have seen a highway constructed? Not in my whole life have I ever seen a highway under construction, I drive on thousands of miles of roads, I've seen interchanges updated, but I have NEVER seen a new highway made. And yet, somehow, amazingly, traffic keeps getting worse and worse!!!

There is a 7 mile stretch in CT that CT has been trying to finish for 30+ years. There are even paths cut through the granite hills where the road will go, there is a bridge which crosses over a 2nd road which has no highway on top of it. Instead, traffic comes to the end of the section of highway which was built, gets off, and drives a secondary road, Rt. 85, where giant signs demand that headlights remain on at all times and 1 person per year is killed in accidents on this 7 or 8 mile stretch of road. I am sure that, when the remaining part of that highway is finished, if ever, it will have traffic on it no doubt, but this would be traffic that moved off of a secondary road and traveled faster and in more safety than it otherwise could have.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Matus1976

[tjohnson]

Despite it's grandoise headline, this article is saying that it is more cost effective to solve dubais traffic problems through mass transit than it is to solve it through building more highways, which is entirely plausible in many cases.

But isn't mass transit socialism and involve planning and against your individualism?

[tjohnson]

...yet the world is on the brink of being 'uninhabitable' based on what evidence?

I'm pretty sure no amount of evidence would convince you.

[Matus1976]

Despite it's grandoise headline, this article is saying that it is more cost effective to solve dubais traffic problems through mass transit than it is to solve it through building more highways, which is entirely plausible in many cases.

But isn't mass transit socialism and involve planning and against your individualism?

What? Uh, no it's not.

In densely populated areas mass transit makes economic sense, in sparsely populated areas it does not.

[Matus1976]

...yet the world is on the brink of being 'uninhabitable' based on what evidence?

I'm pretty sure no amount of evidence would convince you.

You know nothing about me, why would you think that?

I'm pretty sure that you actually have no evidence to back that up, because there is no evidence suggesting that we are making the planet 'uninhabitable' and this statement of yours is just an evasion so you don't have to try to provide evidence for something that has no evidence.

[Matus1976]

I'm still waiting for an explanation of how this would actually cause more traffic congestion

(interestingly, these pictures from Dubai about traffic congestion show very few cars actually on the roads)

[tjohnson]

I'm still waiting for an explanation of how this would actually cause more traffic congestion

(interestingly, these pictures from Dubai about traffic congestion show very few cars actually on the roads)

Sorry, I'm speechless! You should send that to some highway engineers and get their opinions.

[Matus1976]

I'm still waiting for an explanation of how this would actually cause more traffic congestion

(interestingly, these pictures from Dubai about traffic congestion show very few cars actually on the roads)

Sorry, I'm speechless! You should send that to some highway engineers and get their opinions.

You seem to be afflicted by speechlessness throughout this thread - anytime that I have tried to dive a little deeper into your opinions of these matters.