Comments by "Bushrod Rust Johnson" (@MilwaukeeF40C) on "City Beautiful" channel.

  1. Downtown Chicago is deserted after 7pm or 5pm in some areas.
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  2. "Giving important and beneficial services to the community in order to benefit the community = LITERALLY GOMMUNISM" Kinda, yeah. "Tax funded transit doesn't mean communism. Just like the roads you likely use, or the school you likely attended or the water you drink or shit, the phone network you use. All funded by taxes at some point and *wouldn't exist otherwise*." Bullshit. "Belgium is communist because we have to pay the most taxes of the world to help poor and sick people and to build infrastructure?" Yes.
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  3. The "honor system" with those goons that go around checking cards is the stupidest shit I've ever seen. Yerkes "the straphangers pay the dividends" would have a heart attack.
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  4. Global population is projected to peak this century. There is absolutely no shortage of living space. Every resource shortage (hunger) is political, not practical or natural. The U.S. does not have a production problem. People buy and throw away more food than ever, and individual expenditures on food have outpaced inflation because tastes have gotten more expensive.
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  5. All indications are that the "millennials" are going to bail from cities back to suburbs again.
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  6. Most highways are "free" for all traffic. The damage that trucks do is not proportionally recouped by taxes they pay. There are really two sources of damage to pavement- weather and heavy axle loads. Theoretically for rigid concrete pavement, without weather damage, the lifespan is essentially infinite if only cars used it.
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  7. Are you accusing corruption?
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  8. The housing is all behind the commercial property. Zoning is probably less of an issue for car dealers than the internal incentives/requirements for inventory that the corporate financiers have. Last year I got paid to measure and prove how much potential inventory space a dealership company had in their lots. It seemed shady.
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  9. Modern day land developers do not accept cross access arrangements very much. People buy huge chunks of land and waste it.
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  10. "why I, a person who doesn't own a vehicle in my city and walks or bikes most places, should pay taxes to support the free ride for cars on roads." Roads should not even be subsidized. Landowners used to take care of them. It is still somewhat common in U.S. cities for sidewalks to be maintained by landowners. Frankly, nobody is entitled to roads being convenient or in any particular condition. "If you don't like the idea of taxes paying to ensure everyone can get around, then I guess you should be happy to fork over a bit of coin every time you pull you car out of your driveway" This is kind of stupid. The concept of a public right of way comes from Lockean common law. Typical roads were already dedicated by past landowners for the primary purpose of direct access to the adjacent property, or became prescriptive easements held by the public similar to adverse possession, so access can not be restricted. This should prevent congestion fees as well.
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  11. "Except roads are paid for by gas taxes and you also use them to get any of the goods you utilize" Ordinary streets are actually mostly paid for with property taxes (and debt). Some fuel tax money gets distributed too, but there isn't really even enough of it to pay for Interstate and U.S. highway routes. Initial construction costs are usually paid by land developers, who decide how the streets get laid out too.
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  12.  Marc T  I like four square corners on a lot and property lines that aren't full of buckthorn.
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  13. "I think it goes back to the 1950's when America was covered in mass transit lines, interurbans, and intercity rail all built mostly by private investment with some land grants. When the US government decided to get involved building transportation, they only focused on highways and highways only. This government backed program put everything else out of business." It was in the 1930s. Most city transit companies were bankrupt by 1920 after the U.S. government switched to inflationary monetary policy, and forced companies to bargain with unions, and utility companies were prohibited from owning transit companies. Then the socialists got heavy with road subsidies in the 1930s.
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  14. Metric units are derived from theoretical scientific shit that is not very intuitive in an everyday setting. A meter is based on the transmission of light. A foot is about the length of your foot. Any arbitrary unit can be made to work like the metric system does with multiples or fractions of ten, so who is to say that the "meter" shouldn't have been made slightly shorter or longer?
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  15. In my profession, converting from English to Metric is not legally advisable, because of how the measurements may have been obtained and precision error from any of several conversion standards. A foot may not be a foot, but may have a scale factor, horizontal feet may be different than vertical feet, and there is distortion over larger distances. I have never checked, but I am pretty sure that British counterparts in my profession are just as experienced with the English system as I am.
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  16. National City Lines bought systems mostly in small cities, and most of those were decrepit. Their goal was to make money by moving people. If they hadn't invested in buses, those cities would have ended up with no transit at all. Some of L.A.'s streetcar lines actually outlasted NCL ownership. Then there were things like Montgomery that turned a lot of people away from transit in some places. NCL actually lobbied against segregation a while before that issue boiled over because it was a pain in the ass for them to enforce.
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  17. At a place with level "F" traffic, there is probably no room for a roundybout.
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  18. That's gay. Commerce should not be up for a vote.
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  19. Liquor should be central to all commercial development plans. Secondly, CUT TAXES, YOU FUCKS.
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  20.  @Pierrot9315  Roundabouts suck up too much buildable land.
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  21.  @BryantheArchivist  I live in a jaded community.
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  22.  @Strideo1  "As an American who lives in a more urban walkable area I can't stand strip malls. They helped destroy the charming mains streets and commercial villages we centered neighborhoods around before the automobile became the sole focus of city planning." Road subsidies should be blamed. The idealistic setting you desire was what existed during a more free market before the government started interfering in transportation and land use.
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  23. "Huh?" Read the fucking comment thread.
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  24.  @kansasthunderman1  Walking was the only option until about 150 years ago. Horses were for rich people.
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  25. People get real pompous about food. You can get all the same or better shit in the suburbs of Chicago.
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  26.  @raney150  If all you know are average ass pizza places you aren't getting out much.
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  27. "So much money is wasted paying administrators to fight one another over whether or not a procedure is covered by an individual's healthcare insurance." I'd rather have that, and keep the option to pay for stuff that I can afford that might not even be allowed at all in an entirely socialist system.
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  28.  UggoDoesStuff  College campuses have the cigarette butt addicted squirrel urban legend.
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  29.  @PopeSixtusVI  The bandana colors indicate different willing sex acts.
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  30. For all intents and purposes buses are just as good as streetcars/trams, but much cheaper. Rail does not make sense unless there is enough demand for heavy rapid transit or mainline commuter rail.
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  31.  @saxmanb777  You mean any town approximately from the mid 1800s to 1940s. There was no transit before mechanical propulsion. People walked. Horse and water based transportation was mostly anomalous.
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  32. The stock purchases and financing were really what the "convictions" were all about. I really don't see what is wrong with that kind of setup, and neither did the judge. It is like having to buy supplies only from McDonald's when you own a McDonald's franchise.
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  33. Parking on sidewalks is legal NOWHERE in the U.S. The sidewalk and parkway grass is part of the street's fixed right of way from when the land was first officially divided. Technically the city or local government does not own the right of way, it is just a custodian. The adjacent landowners retain some real estate rights (mainly direct access and reversionary full ownership if the street is ever abandoned), while "the public" has dedicated rights such as travel, vehicular operation, parking depending on the facilities. One more thing: nothing requires the city government or anyone to provide any level of facilities in the right of way, the right of way is just the designated area reserved for that by a land developer. Most towns have some right of ways that are never used.
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  34. Having to pull into driveways and stuff like that to pass does NOT save fuel.
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  35. Streetcars and private transit companies thrived when there was very little government involvement in transportation and land use.
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  36. Single family houses tend to get built more where land is cheap regardless of zoning. Suburban zoning follows demand patterns, it is not imposed to begin with. The "streetcar" style of town development is the old pattern of additions and blocks with most streets being through streets. Private land developers had to do it that way in order to have marketable lots before people had cars. Nowadays large parcels of formerly rural land between old country roads get turned in to subdivisions. The old country roads become the arterials, and there are many regulatory restrictions on new street connections to those roads as well as through streets between adjacent new subdivisions.
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  37. Track wears out. Electric railway equipment is actually also quite fragile and needy.
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  38. I've heard of SCAG from halfway across the continent. The old Soviet post-fall exile they have/had amongst their higher ups is a pompous prick. I guess he had to find some other place to lord over and found welcoming company in California.
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  39. You're a civil engineer, not a bureaucrat.
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  40. "the lines being more or less a bait and switch scam to sell houses that were only valuable because of a system the owners of both the land and the system had no intention of maintaining" The railroad is not the only reason the houses were valuable. Every lot has a street adjoining it as well. Lots have no value at all without that. By the time the communities had matured, they had value aside from the existence of the railroads. The passenger trains were breaking even financially before automotive technology was viable and government started subsidizing highways. Pacific Electric had a huge freight business paying the bills and some of these lines still exist.
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  41. Typical U.S. street right of way width is 66 feet (one chain), or 60 feet or sometimes 70 or even 80 feet. This goes back to English land divisions based on the chain and the earliest days of U.S. settlement, well before cars existed and roads were dirt. It is not going to change on existing platted subdivisions, and new ones still have plenty of land to find something to do with. The real estate is there, why not have some breathing room for moving trucks, garbage trucks, fire trucks, and houseparty parking for the occasions it is needed? Sure, parking lanes probably could be cut from two to one. We don't want to litter streets with "hazards" like the social engineering Europeans do, as this interferes with the common law purpose of a right of way. Most of that trendy complicated "green" shit is not going to be maintained properly either. The wide right of way widths will be appreciated in existing platted areas if they ever do densify.
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  42. It happens in teardown neighborhoods as it always has. Ones with long, straight, wide streets like the one at the very beginning of the video are ripe for it especially if they are somewhat close to a "downtown" or new office center. The two "extra" lanes may be utilized for parking or travel. Ranches and splitlevels? Nobody wants those anymore. I'm not so sure how modern isolated, curvilenear subdivisions will turn out in 50 years when the dwellings depreciate but some of them are already getting pretty worn out. There comes a time when housing ages to a point where it is only valuable for renting. Large sections are purchased by investors. Homeowners associations go away or get court appointed trustees, and renters don't complain about redevelopment with as much skin. Some structures are lost by attrition. Eventually the townhouses, condos, and apartments come in whole blocks. The other option is lot consolidation with fewer, bigger houses. That still pushes development or redevelopment somewhere else. Nobody does this in neighborhoods that are complete shitholes, just dated ones. At some point housing just has to be replaced and the "natives" can't do much about it, but hopefully the land is still wanted. Otherwise we will end up with suburb versions of Detroit and south Chicago. It is not going back to farmland. I am ignoring government driven redevelopment and eminent domain schemes because I hate them. But those happen too.
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  43. I would never live in a shithole neighborhood that won't let me store a canoe on the side of the house.
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  44. I'm going to put a poop down on the sidewalk.
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  45. I could run laps in my townhouse. I'm not going to though.
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  46. Only if there's a Sbarro and a Taco John's. Two places you never see outside a food court.
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  47. This is true. Desubsidize everything.
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  48. "Lobbying" is what happens when everything is allowed to be up for a vote. People and organizations SHOULD be lobbying when the government can interfere in economics and individual liberty. Nobody had to lobby to buy transit companies. They were private entities that could be bought out by others.
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  49.  @tonyk8368  I read your comment in the voice of Snoopy adults.
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  50. Under common law, roads should be open to all forms of travel that fit as a public property right, but should not favor any particular form in convenience. That's why I am in favor of Bangkok driving rules. Motor vehicle licensing and registration are also deprivation of a property right.
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