Comment 73382

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted January 27, 2012 at 10:49:05 in reply to Comment 73375

Are you kidding?

Originally posted by "an open war on cars":

actively trying to rid the city of cars

Front the dictionary:

Rid:

Pronunciation: /rɪd/

verb (rids, ridding; past and past participle rid or archaic ridded)

[with object] (rid someone/thing of)

make someone or something free of (an unwanted person or thing): boil the peel to rid it of bitterness

(be rid of) be freed or relieved of: she couldn’t wait to be rid of us

Say what you want, but the implication of that comment was that the article suggested elimination of cars. Meanwhile, Hume specifically says "reduce" by a rather modest number (I think he said 15-20%). That is not the definition of rid. If you are infested with mice and you want to get rid of them, you aren't talking about a 20% reduction.

It is disingenuous comments like those which try to boil the entire debate down to to a "war on cars". Which it's not. In fact it's not a war at all.

I've said it before but it bears repeating:

Our ability to pay for our infrastucture depends on us growing our tax base. We either need to increase the number of taxpayers or increase the amount each of us pays. So if we want lower taxes we need to become more dense.

In order to achieve this we CANNOT AFFORD TO BUILD FOR CARS ANYMORE. It is a simple mathematical reality. The cost per square foot to build for cars is way too high, and the income per square foot is way too low.

So we have two options:

1 Give up a few lanes and improve access to alternatives to the car in order to service higher density (we have to attract this density using many other tools as well, but transit is a big part of it)

or

2 Continue to hike taxes until it gets to the point that no one can afford to live here, all the while suffering with crumbling infrastructure.

Comment edited by seancb on 2012-01-27 10:49:58

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