Comments by "roachtoasties" (@roachtoasties) on "City Beautiful" channel.

  1. Prefer grids. I've been to Europe many times, where most cities are older and started with people riding horses, pulling carts, etc. It's hard to navigate when the major streets aren't in a grid. Tokyo is also confusing. Street addresses seem to just be random numbers and dashes.
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  2. I've only been to Berlin once, a few years ago. I didn't even know my hotel was in former East Berlin side. Aside from some areas where there are bricks in the street, telling you where the split was, along with some of the Berlin Wall left for historic purposes, along with Checkpoint Charlie, I really couldn't tell where the border was.
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  3. We're in the home stretch. Soon the waterfront, will look like, um, a waterfront, and not blocked by a giant cement monolith.
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  4. There's also a proposal for one between Los Angeles Union Station and Dodger Stadium. The obvious limit, when compared to rail, is it's mainly to get you between two points, with no stops in between. Maybe you could have stops along the way, like rail, but that would require passengers to get off and on different trams at each stop. That wouldn't be practical, so rail would be better.
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  5. What is happening are residents of U.S. cities are asked to approve a tax increase, usually a sales tax, for development of mass transit. What then happens are residents vote down these new taxes (who wants new taxes?). What is left are residents stuck in ever bigger traffic jams, because there's no money for transit improvements. Residents complain, but nobody wants to foot the bill. Los Angeles has been late in the game, but since 1980 has approved four sales tax increases (a total of 2%) for transit needs. Things are slow, but at least are heading in the right direction (I'm not going to get involved in an argument here about taxes in California). Doing nothing and complaining though, seems to be an American pastime. It's the same with development of intercity rail, but that gets clobbered in Washington. Other countries can do it, but the U.S. in comparison, can't even figure out how to tie their shoe.
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  6. Good point. Also not as practical as rail if you're carrying luggage or shopping bags. Maybe there can be a button to stop the tram for a minute when a wheelchair, or other disabled, passenger needs to get on and off. Even if the floor is moving at the same speed as the tram in a station, there still can be issues.
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  7. Are Elevated or Underground Metro Systems Better? Yes.
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  8. I didn't watch all this but if you first don't succeed, try again. Times Square isn't exactly a pedestrian mall but more of a tourist trap in a relatively small area (the pedestrian mall area is only the width of several streets, plus streets like 44th Street still cut right through it). I doubt, though, you'll see in the U.S. the successful pedestrian malls (shopping streets) like you see in European cities like Copenhagen, that branch out all over the downtown business district. We're too late for that.
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