Drew Dowdell

Why would you even look at those things individually? I clearly made them as a list to include all people who would benefit. The sum total of that list will include pretty much everyone in the metro area. You might find one non-allergy sufferer who never drives... but guess what... THEY THEN DON'T PAY THE TAX! I've also clearly been using Pittsburgh as an example of what should happen to metro areas nationwide.

Loki, What you posted isn't even relevant. Nothing in my proposals involves me or anyone else giving up their V8s. All it does is make the option of public transit available to more people who can then choose to use it or not. There is a minimum level of service frequency that is required for any transit system to maintain viable ridership. That minimum is actually rather high. That means the overhead is rather high because sometimes you are running buses that are half full. It also means that as a profit making venture, public transit is doomed. It must have subsidies to operate. In Pittsburgh and many other cities, the transit has been so much that even people who don't want to drive and want to take the bus cannot do so because service is no longer offered. Offering people the option to get out of their cars and use public transit is NOT AT ALL like the situation in the video you described.

this is how i read it, and i think this is why the nation as a whole is tired of "just raise taxes". it is niether fair, nor better than lowering expenses in budgets. it would be nice to "exterminate corrola drivers", but there are other ways to do that , which would include lowering barriers to increase car types available. why not just advocate a "C4C" program for people that don't enjoy driving? bring in your car and you'll trade up to a smart, or something with 2 wheels? this shows a use of politics for "special interests" which is how we got here. did you think of it that way? Because that doesn't address the problem of traffic congestion or spending $50+ million dollars to enlarge a pair of tunnels? A project who's budget doesn't even pass the sniff test. Raising the taxes in this case would benefit everyone. Me, the Corolla drivers, the Port Authority, the asthma sufferers, people who drive in to work every day and can't take a bus for some reason, it would help downtown traffic/congestion, it would reduce the demand on fossil fuels... in fact, the only entity that I can think of who would suffer for it is the Pittsburgh Parking Authority which is owned by the city (and not accidentally, benefits directly from the Port Authority's demise) The 30%/30%/15% service cuts that we've experienced over the past 12 months have caused HUGE, NOTICEABLE problems here in the city.

SMART was selling so well that Roger Penski threw in the towel and handed distribution rights back to MB.

You haven't really seen what Mercury would have ended up with yet. The new Mondeo isn't here. The Fiest and Focus were going to Ford always with maybe a Cabrio version going to Mercury.

it boggles my mind that people even consider that living. I get annoyed at just my 30 minute bus ride, but at least it is better than sitting in traffic for an hour just to cover 10 miles.

It was the Euro Fords that were going to go to Mercury. Mildly higher "quality" but not enough to justify Lincoln pricing. But Ford decided to just pump that quality into Ford, thus the death of Mercury.

It's a chicken and egg problem. If the cities weren't so wretched to live in, people wouldn't be trying to sprawl out to live with the Amish..... which gets back to my point - that dense urban living need not be awful. With a little bit of urban planning, urban living can not only be nice, but actually be desirable. However, one of the things it requires is a very strong public transit system. Wrong on both counts. People live in the suburbs because it's cheap. You get more house, more space, more "shiny things" for your money. Why? Because cities are expensive. Why? Because the market dictates it so via supply and demand. There's a reason it's called "suburban wasteland." There's no culture, limited shopping, little social interaction. Also, strong public transit is NOT a prerequisite to desirable urban living. If it were, Los Angeles would not exist. That's getting fixed--slowly but surely--but it still isn't a reality. To be fair, LA was built with the best public transit network in the world...but it grew and prospered after it was all ripped up. I would posit that LA is desirable in spite of it's infrastructure, not because of it. Climate, culture, and location location location. It's cheap to live in suburbs because fuel costs are low.

Have you ever shlepped home 200 pounds of groceries that 3 blocks? Commuting is easy in some cities, but anything else isn't. Of course, the high price of city living space keeps a lot of people from owning much to shlep. Some people in NYC get around like they are backpacking in the wilderness. My bag usually weighed 40~50 pounds... to go data center to data center. Try flagging down a cab when you need a something large moved. Yeah, thats going to happen. If you are in the other boroughs, you get a gypsy cab, but then you are negotiating the entire trip. "Want to go next block? $5 more dollar." Getting stuff moved through the public transit infrastructure in NYC (arguably one of the best in the US) was a constant nightmare. Hell, walking the 2 long blocks to the subway and 3/4 long blocks from the subway of my Manhattan commute twice a day was a nightmare most days... thats a 4 mile a day walk... in the heat... in the rain. And this was a relatively GOOD commute. It was a 1 mile round trip walk under the FDR to get groceries. Ugh... I'm getting annoyed just remembering it. In theory, not in practice. That dumptruck is doing more than 6~7 times the damage your friends' CR-V is doing. Look at the graph (IIRC) posted earlier in the thread, for example... at least a 10x difference in damage and thats not taking into account how cars usually vastly outnumber big trucks. Ell Oh Ell. It's not an either/or proposition, nor did I propose it as such. The point of strong public transit is that it suits 75% to 95% of your needs. It's there for when you're not schleping ten, 20 pound sacks of potatoes home all at once. Even in Cologne, where the public transit is superior, even just in ingress and egress, there are plenty of other options. There are no less than four car sharing companies who will lend you a car for a few Euro an hour. There are fleets and fleets of S-class, R-Class, M-class and E-class Mercedes cabs - take your pick. There are specialty moving services that hire out Transit Connects or Mercedes Sprinters by the hour also. As for the long walk, if you're eating 200lbs of food every week, the walk will probably do you good. If your bag really weighs 50lbs (more than six 1 gallon containers of milk, or the weight of two 1u servers, really? ) , buy a roller cart. When I was in NYC for the auto show, my two rollerbags were just murder to drag around with me and they have a weight limit of 22lbs. Stop thinking just NYC terms. I've seen what is possible with an awesome transportation network. You can live without a car if the rest of the infrastructure is there..... and it will support your either extreme exaggerations or extreme transportation needs.... either way, your covered. I will say that there is one big lifestyle difference between the US and the EU that you point out. And that is buying food in mass quantities. The Europeans prefer their food very fresh. There are butchers, bakers, and produce markets everywhere. They don't feel the need to buy 200 lbs of food at once because there is fresh food right up the street.... and they are, on average, healthier for it too.

New thread - Biggest Car Flops of the past 15 years - C&G Edition Nominations

Biggest Car Flops of the past 15 years - C&G Edition That yahoo article posted earlier was so bad, I felt that we should close the thread and show them how it's done. So have at it C&Gers, submit your nominations for the biggest car flops of the past 15 years.

That yahoo article is so bad, I think we should just close this thread and show them how it's done.

SHould have written your own article about it. I wouldn't call the EV-1 a flop. It was only available to lifestyle qualified lessors and GM had to pry the car from the lessors cold dead hands.

Because of automotive costs... whats gas in the EU now? $11 a gallon? How much to park, insure, etc. Sure, the London congestion charge helps the people willing to pay, but it is still a sign of general car unfriendliness. If the US implemented a road levy so steep only 1% of the population could afford to drive, all Americas cities would be easy to drive... but that is hardly CAR FRIENDLY. NYC is perfectly driveable for me. You simply go where the traffic isn't. I can get around NYC pretty quickly when I need to... but that is not making NYC car friendly. I've lived there first without a car... then with. Not surprisingly, I prefer the car life. Only thing I'd so to improve my car life in NYC is get a Smart... so I could park it in a parking spot fragment. Good for the Garden State Parkway... but bad for US route 9... where those 5000 people have pummeled a bridge into closure... and now US route 9 is piped over the GSP bridge for free. Of course, those 5000 cars do the same road wear as what.... 12 large trucks? This is part of why I'd surprisingly support a mileage/vehicle weight based tax in place of a gas tax... assuming I don't need weights and measures certifying my odometer every year. But that's what I've been trying to point out. You don't need a car in most European cities. That extra fuel cost goes to make sure you have a light rail train 3 blocks from your house every 7 minutes. Fuel economy is it's own weight based tax. A fully loaded dump truck gets what... 4 miles to the gallon? Weighing more causes more fuel use causes more fuel tax to be paid. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples out there where a lack of public transit infrastructure causes unintended results.

My argument is for a higher gas tax to pay for public transit nation wide. Corolla drivers don't care about driving, they only care about getting where they need to go conveniently and at the least cost possible. Given the option of very convenient public transit or driving, most Corolla drivers will choose the public transit. Getting as many people out of their Corollas and into a rail car as possible should be a goal of every one on this board. It will leave the road more open to those of us who enjoy driving. Instead of calling it a "Public Transportation Project", call it a "Corolla Extermination Project". Raising those taxes would benefit me, because it would remove the frustration of driving to work both by providing convenient bus service so I don't have to drive and removing stupid Corolla drivers from the highway when I do need to drive. It would improve the air quality of region and it would tamp down the increase in gas prices long term by reducing demand. So yes. A small tax like this can benefit all. A 10 cent per gallon fuel tax would cover the 2010 Port Authority operating deficit 2 1/2 times over. They could restore all the service they cut and then some to make the service even more convenient. Assumptions: ((2.5m in Pittsburgh region * 10,000 miles driven annually estimated low in purpose) / 24 mpg average estimated high on purpose) ) / $47 million - the 2010 PATransit budget shortfall.

Except there is clearly still an issue with the EPA test for a vehicle like the Volt. Highway travel for me in extended range mode yielded over 60mpg and I wasn't being gentle on it. No offense, but I doubt it. Perhaps you were looking at average MPG including the miles driven with electricity? If you're not "gentle on it" you should get less than the optimistic EPA 40 mpg: http://blogs.insidel...ack-part-2.html Don't get me wrong - I like the Volt. But for it to make sense on a cost-per-mile or efficiency basis, its "range" is just as limited as the Leaf's. Perhaps Ford's Energi plug-in hybrid models will represent more of a "sweet spot" in terms of EV range and post-EV fuel consumption. There were no miles driven on battery. It was delivered to me with 0 EV range. I reset the mileage indicator as I always do, and I was off. edit: reading that blog post makes me wonder what he was doing. 30 mpg? How was he driving it to get that?

German Capitalism - And you charge a premium for the milk that has that "teutonic" taste that is hard to describe, but you know it when you taste it.

The problem is paying for such improvements. We're in a situation here in Pittsburgh that demonstrates how an unwillingness to raise taxes ends up hurting everyone. PennDOT is gearing up to enlarge the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on I376. It is a major pinch point for traffic coming from and going to the east of the city. My house is another 3 miles to the east. When I first bought my house, the traffic getting into town in the morning and out of town in the evening was dense, but tolerable. However, over the past 8 years, the Port Authority has needed to continuously cut bus service county wide, with two major cuts in the past 12 months (30% service cut last June and an additional 30% cut this April) Today, the areas on both sides of the tunnel are at a near jam during all daylight hours. The Port Authority was short $45 million for this year and that covers the entire metro area. The budget for the 3 year project to enlarge the just the Squirrel Hill Tunnel is a laughably low $60 million and will cause three years of 3 lane to 1 lane traffic. I'm a staunch supporter of public transit and I hate HATE driving to work in the morning. The Port Authority can get me from my house to my office in 30 minutes as opposed to 1+ hours driving.* However, the Port Authority's service cuts have reduced service so to such a low frequency, that it is no longer a reliable way to get to and from work. The situation is the same for most others who live in the east and work downtown..... and that is reflected in the traffic jams that are now an all day every day thing.\ That's not to say the tunnel doesn't need to be enlarged, it most certainly does. The project was brought forward as a way to mitigate traffic density increases. The best way to mitigate that increase is to reduce the number of people traveling through the tunnel in the first place. *The bus uses a special highway that it has exclusive use to and completely avoids the tunnels. It is a former rail line that has been paved for exclusive bus use.

and allied bombing campaigns.... don't forget that there are many cities in Europe that were 80% - 90% destroyed in the last century. In many regards, Cologne is a newer city than Philadelphia despite being founded in 38 B.C.

Thanks for the Japanese lesson. I feel like I'm playing one of those "What's different in these two pictures?" games.

If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to kidnap you and drag you to see what a city can be like. While I know it would never suit you personally, you'd probably end up conceding that the city life I'd show you would be desirable to a great many people in this country. I'll hold you to that offer! I don't dispute the urban life is desireable to many, but it isn't the panacea some make it out to be. A population moving to urban centers presents a host of ills. Cities are most defininitely not the models of sustainability they have been made out to be. I just feel that the way we do urban living is quite poor. Cologne has 1,000 more people per square mile than Pittsburgh, yet it is infinitely easier to get around and get to the places one needs to go, the food is better and fresher, the city is very clean, and I never feel unsafe. I've been all over Cologne multiple times and I have yet to see an area that anyone would classify as a ghetto. Even the slightly sketchy areas of Cologne would be considered luxury living compared to the rough areas of Pittsburgh.... yet they have triple the population we do. My one and only complaint about Cologne: The god damn church bells that wake me up at 6 am and go on for what seems like hours. Give it a rest father! I'm on vacation!

If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to kidnap you and drag you to see what a city can be like. While I know it would never suit you personally, you'd probably end up conceding that the city life I'd show you would be desirable to a great many people in this country.

And that population has a tendency to impose their views on everyone else while living in places that amplify all of the negatives in our society. It is probably why my dislike of my fellow Americans is growing. Many see cities and urban living as some sort of solution to our problems. I see it as a backward mentality, clinging to a tribal past. The herd mentality of it all runs counter to my most basic metrics of what is good. I've always felt that humanity benefits most from a healthy distance between people, and that density breeds violence and a diminished standard of living. So, why not think of all of this in another way? With so much of the work people do today, why isn't a move toward tele-commuting at the top of the agenda? Having the freedom to make a living no matter your location seems incredibly attractive to me. There is a move to tele-commuting. It may not be a national agenda, but "the invisible hand of the market" is already pushing that one hard. Cisco is the big winner there by owning both Webex and Tandberg Telepresence. Cities don't inherently breed violence. The way we do cities breeds violence. I have to disagree on that last point. Due to your experience in cities worldwide.... or what? Have you ever left the country?

And that population has a tendency to impose their views on everyone else while living in places that amplify all of the negatives in our society. It is probably why my dislike of my fellow Americans is growing. Many see cities and urban living as some sort of solution to our problems. I see it as a backward mentality, clinging to a tribal past. The herd mentality of it all runs counter to my most basic metrics of what is good. I've always felt that humanity benefits most from a healthy distance between people, and that density breeds violence and a diminished standard of living. So, why not think of all of this in another way? With so much of the work people do today, why isn't a move toward tele-commuting at the top of the agenda? Having the freedom to make a living no matter your location seems incredibly attractive to me. There is a move to tele-commuting. It may not be a national agenda, but "the invisible hand of the market" is already pushing that one hard. Cisco is the big winner there by owning both Webex and Tandberg Telepresence. Cities don't inherently breed violence. The way we do cities breeds violence.

It's a chicken and egg problem. If the cities weren't so wretched to live in, people wouldn't be trying to sprawl out to live with the Amish..... which gets back to my point - that dense urban living need not be awful. With a little bit of urban planning, urban living can not only be nice, but actually be desirable. However, one of the things it requires is a very strong public transit system.