Sure, turning Houston into Madrid would be very hard. But this is one of the most incrementally solvable problems I've ever seen. There are hundreds of low-cost, low-effort ways to start making things better.
Lord help you if you need a variance, and I cannot even imagine what eminent domain on that scale would look like. I do not see how the change would even be possible without tearing buildings down and building new ones closer to each other, and to do it legislatively adds unimaginable legal expenses, I presume.
Edit: Also note the popular local opinion in many places is keeping a place car dependent means the population who cannot afford a car is kept out.
A few more buses and trains are not going to cut it. You need to outcompete the convenience of a personal car. The bus or train has to run at least every 10min, otherwise one missed connection and you’re wasting 20min+ with your refrigerated groceries.
And that type of frequency is simply not economical without density. Chicken and egg at this point. Best case scenario is to build outwards from already dense areas, but it will involve eminent domain and demolishing buildings and parking lots to make new ones that are pedestrian friendly and hostile to cars.
Allow someone to build an apartment building on top of that enormous parking lot next to a shopping center, and in many cases I don't think you'd need eminent domain; it'll happen simply because the apartment building is more profitable than the surface parking lot.
(Though a good form-based code might help to nudge things in the direction of walkability too.)
So add more buses and trains.
> You need to outcompete the convenience of a personal car.
More buses and trains will make this happen. More bike lanes will make this happen. With the proper infrastructure people can go longer distances without a car. All these things can be done incrementally and you're trying to claim they can't be.
> The bus or train has to run at least every 10min, otherwise one missed connection and you’re wasting 20min+ with your refrigerated groceries.
No it doesn't and your groceries are fine being out in the heat for 20 minutes. They won't go bad. They could be out there for 2 hours and be fine.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/are-you-stori...
> Refrigerate or freeze perishables right away. Foods that require refrigeration should be put in the refrigerator as soon as you get them home. Stick to the "two-hour rule" for leaving items needing refrigeration out at room temperature. Never allow meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, or produce or other foods that require refrigeration to sit at room temperature for more than two hours—one hour if the air temperature is above 90° F. This also applies to items such as leftovers, "doggie bags," and take-out foods. Also, when putting food away, don't crowd the refrigerator or freezer so tightly that air can't circulate.
On top of that, this two-hour thing is a general guideline for maximum safety and is overly restrictive on purpose to avoid ambiguity. Realistically you could leave things out for longer but the FDA would never admit that because it sends mixed messages.
It's not 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes more than the normal trip duration.
That 2 hours rule seems to be health related. But a lot of food gets bad much before it becomes unsafe to eat.
Anyway, city traffic is not caused by people getting to a grocery store. That's all a red herring.
Name one that does that in a 6 hour time period.
> It's not 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes more than the normal trip duration.
Tomato tomato. It's a negligible time period. Food out for 3 hours and 20 minutes is not going to be worse off than food out for 3 hours.
> Anyway, city traffic is not caused by people getting to a grocery store. That's all a red herring.
City traffic is caused by people driving cars. People drive cars to grocery stores.
City traffic isn't caused by bike lanes, buses, or trains either. That's all a red herring.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...
[0]> But fluid and traffic are not the same thing, as shown by 60 years of governments trying and failing to road-build their way out of congestion. The idea of induced demand – more road space brings more cars – has been known for decades, and it also works in reverse. This is especially so with bike lanes, which are such an efficient use of the same space that they can often mean the same amount of space carrying more people overall.
[1]> Yes, traffic jams have worsened in some cities where bike lanes have been built, but studies show this is largely down to other factors, for example the growth in the number of Uber-type private hire vehicles and Amazon delivery vans.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de...
[1] https://content.tfl.gov.uk/understanding-and-managing-conges...
Ice cream that somebody already said around up-thread is an example. So I guess you are not very open to them.
> Food out for 3 hours and 20 minutes is not going to be worse off than food out for 3 hours.
There is a lot of difference between 30 and 50 minutes. But yeah, if you compare it to a decade, it's irrelevant too.
> City traffic is caused by people driving cars. People drive cars to grocery stores.
People drive cars to go to work and school. But yeah, why talk about 95% of the problem when we can focus on solving the 0.2% of it.
Cars are VERY convenient, so public transit needs to be on time, frequent, and very close by to compete. The other option is to make cars inconvenient, which is politically unpopular.
At what point can we as a people say: screw it, break the laws and just get it done. it'll be worth it in the long-run.
I used to think this as well, until I started sitting in on HOA and city council meetings. Good lord, even the most seemingly simple proposals are drenched in red tape and artificial barriers imposed by busybodies. I'm not sure how to get around this, sadly.
https://open.substack.com/pub/matthewyglesias/p/community-me...
Being able to see other people's windows from your windows is an inescapable consequence of living in a city. If that's not acceptable to you, then you buy an acreage in the woods somewhere. It's not a reasonable thing to be protesting a development approval over.
But we got such laws and processes for a reason.
In no other scenario do we have a process of public meetings to decide whether or not to follow the law.
Which is longer than the elction cycle in most counties, not just the US. Herein may lie part of the problem: its hard to incentivise politicians to solve long-term problems when doing so does not help them get re-elected.
Incrementalism is difficult when the longest any single policymaker can be guaranteed to be office is 2 years.