Show Toronto how Paris built 13 tram lines in the last 20 years. Make sure to do it in Parisian French too.
Of course my city is delaying the construction of a fucking BUS line to 2030 because the freeway build out (which is about 3 miles away from the someday bus line) is delayed. Why these two are connected, the public isn't sure. Given my city's ineptitude, at least Toronto is trying at all so I can't throw any bricks.
Edit: but we did declare a downtown parking garage a historic building and put it on the historic register so we have that going for us.
The dumbest part of the US's "fuck you poor people, die in the gutter" approach to homelessness is that it's more expensive than using a system to provide homes to people:
"A further study of Finland's Housing First program found that giving a homeless person a home and support resulted in cost savings for the society of at least €15,000 per person per year, with potentially even higher cost savings in the long term.[7] These cost savings for society are in part a result of reductions in usage of emergency healthcare, police, and the justice system when homeless people are given a home."
[7]"London wants to eradicate homelessness. Here's how Finland is doing it". cbc.ca. Canadian Broadcasting Centre (CBC). 28 January 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
(From Wikipedia)
Children are especially vulnerable and costly to not provide housing to. The US is, at its core, an essentially a selfish and heartless nation. You can removed all you want about that stance, but a budget is a statement of your values. Those values don't include helping people and they don't include being cost effective, so what is being achieved here except paying more to be cruel to children and their families?
I'm not convinced of the author's details and models on fares vs taxes. The overall concept seems on track, but there's differences between direct fees (bus fare) and general funding (taxes).
The US has a long history of not understanding just how valuable and efficient shared resources are, even with the overhead of government administration. In fact, government administration is usually much more efficient than private corporation administration of the same kinds of services so we get a lot more bang for our buck.
The author does leave out the libertarians of the world. They do want every bus ride (even school busses), even police, fire, and library service paid for via contracts with the person receiving the service. It's completely infeasible and never works in practice, but they're out there.
The vast majority of public transit systems that go to a fully (or nearly fully) non-fare based model do great. People use the busses, trains, and other resources. They make better transit choices and have more money to spend in the local economy. The author hints at this, though I'm not sure they really made it clear in their writing.
To sum up: make the transit paid for by the community at large because the community at large benefits from it, even if they're not actually riding the bus. It gives us freedom as a community to have free public transit and our economies are healthier.
It's also California: the weather is usually really good. Maybe this "Becker" should add an amendment that requires bike roads to be built instead of parking spots.
I assume he's against being proactive in problem solving, though.
My city did a redesign about five years ago. Our flag was in a D to F tier flag ranking. After the redesign it's much better, but still feels like a logo more then a flag. At least they got rid of the written slogan, though!
Props to Chicago. Put that flag on everything.
I'm hoping Milwaukee adopts of the People's flag of Milwaukee soon. That's a serious banger too.
Yeah, the US has reached an incredibly low standard of literacy for what is supposed to be a developed nation. The numbers on reading level are scary. Also look at how much people read as adults. We just don't learn how and then we don't practice during our lives. It's a nation of partial literacy being kept together my hyper nationalism and smart phones to distract us with 6 second videos.
Using a capitalist/economic solution to solve a resource scarcity problem?!? We can't have that (says the hard-line capitalists).
Congestion pricing works and should be the rule in every notable city. We need fewer card and car trips as part of the transformation of humanity's civilization to adapt to a limited world. The line cannot go up forever.
We also train young adults to gather evidence, use a skeptical process when presented with ideas, and have enough resources to speak up about problems in communities.
Ah yes, yet another way to control and hurt women. The whole idea of medical care during birth is based on situations where you happen to need it. If things go well, they go well. Being at the hospital or having a midwife is about when things go off the rails. The vast majority of people want you and your child to survive childbirth, which is a dangerous and difficult process for many out there. Anyone who says "just don't have help you might need, it'll be fine" is either a liar or actively trying to harm you.
This is just another branch of "under the hood" religious nutjobiness like Tradwives which all boils down to active alt-right control over women.
Show Toronto how Paris built 13 tram lines in the last 20 years. Make sure to do it in Parisian French too.
Of course my city is delaying the construction of a fucking BUS line to 2030 because the freeway build out (which is about 3 miles away from the someday bus line) is delayed. Why these two are connected, the public isn't sure. Given my city's ineptitude, at least Toronto is trying at all so I can't throw any bricks.
Edit: but we did declare a downtown parking garage a historic building and put it on the historic register so we have that going for us.