Let me posit this hypothesis, liberalism is the new secular Puritanism. Instead of believing in a just and almighty God they believe in government. Instead of basing their beliefs and religion on the Bible they base it on their own – ever expanding – belief system: the principles of government. The Puritan ideal of living a life of pious, consecrated actions translates for the new Puritans to insisting that YOU live a pious life, consecrated to THEIR principles. Because you were born too stupid to determine what’s best for you. Hence the need for social engineering; here’s an example of that at its finest:
Portland City Council approved a plan Wednesday to study short-and-long-term strategies to charge people to use city streets, an effort intended to reduce congestion and curb carbon emissions as the region expects as many as 500,000 new residents by 2040.
The city will create a Pricing for Equitable Mobility task force to study and recommend potential road user fees – such as cordons, where drivers are charged to use certain streets in the city center or potentially more robust freeway tolls in the area…
Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the transportation bureau, said the city must take bold steps to try and get people out of their cars. “We are going the wrong direction on transportation,” she said.
In other words, they are going to pursue (taxpayer funded) ways to manipulate you to do what we want you to do, which is “get our of your cars.” No matter how they attempt to package and sell it, its always about control. And it’s always them, controlling you.
Portland expects an increase of half a million people in the next 2 decades. I suspect more than half of that is due to illegal immigrants but that’s beside the point. If you’re expecting that kind of increase in population (Portland’s current population is 632,000, the whole county is 808,000) 500,000 is nearly an 80% increase. I don’t think bikes are the answer.
I would think they would be doing something more than figuring out how to legislate you out of your car. Like maybe adding new highways and/or expanding the ones you have to accommodate that kind of increase. How about expanding public transportation, the left’s normal go-to device to control your driving habits? But no, they prefer to manipulate you through taxes and regulation. It’s way more lucrative and fun.
To be fair Portland isn’t the only municipality failing to expand the road system to accommodate increased traffic due to population growth. Around here they are constantly doing construction but over the past two decades it has been predominantly repair and replace, not expand. So if we had 2 lanes in 1970 by 1990 we might have gotten 4 lanes. But now, if we had 4 lanes in 1990…we still have 4 lanes - unless they convert one of the traffic lanes to a bike only lane.
And whether the bureaucrats like it or not, traffic has increased geometrically since the 90s. Roads and highways around these parts are crazy. At any given hour the expressways and surface streets around here look like what was once only rush hour. Rush hour looks like LA, which is to say gridlock. Our construction budget has been diverted to patching and then eventually paving over existing roads and spending the rest on creating new roundabouts that everybody except traffic engineers, concrete contractors and road builders hate, hate, HATE!
Yeah, this makes more sense than a traffic signal. And look, a greenspace! (that nobody can get to)
Oh, and new bike lanes on existing roads which further deceases the traffic load they can accommodate.
I’ve got an idea: let’s take a 4 lane street and turn it into a 3 lane street with a bike lane! And concrete boulevard!
It’s no coincidence that you keep hearing that Millennials don’t want to own cars. It’s just something else they’ve been brainwashed into. Cars are bad! Therefore let’s not waste our time trying to figure out how to actually accommodate the traffic load that comes with an increasing population and a good economy. After all, getting new right-of-ways for new roads is hard! And new roads cost a lot of money we’d rather spend on other stuff, like welcoming illegal immigrants into our community. Besides, most problems can best be solved by writing regulations to control your behavior. It’s both fun and easy!
How about your communities? How much repair and replace v. expanding road capacity? Just curious.
Posts
