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@mateosfo

Jan 22

I'm not sure if this is a first-ever but ... this the first I've ever heard of a City Attorney for a major US city say that blocking streets off to cars "does not exclude any members of the public" from using the streets.

It's kind of revolutionary ... documentcloud.org/documents/2118…

If you know how lawyers' brains' work, this is a stunning development. For a century, the car/oil industry and drivers have bullied cities into giving them most of the land in most cities for their exclusive use. But no one ever accused them of "excluding" ...

... all the uncarred humans who couldn't use that land, even though car traffic is incompatible with most human activities/land uses.

But now, SF City Attorney has turned that on its head and said that restricting "certain types of vehicles" does, in fact, *increase access.*

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(((Matthew Lewis))) enjoys being offline

@mateosfo

Jan 21

At this stage I’d say there is a small but reliable base of support among US urban “progressives” for a Chinese-style Hukou system of residence permits.

Their solution to people experiencing homelessness is deport them to economically collapsed areas w/ vacant, dilapidated homes

… thousands of miles from their real homes (most people experiencing homelessness lived in houses in the neighborhoods they currently inhabit.)

Their solution to the housing shortage is 100% social/subsidized housing, which requires a lottery system with 10-15 year waitlists.

While it’s not 100% identical to Hukou — in China, it’s applied mostly to poor rural residents seeking jobs and housing in older cities — it is very much an American version, where currently-housed “progressives” have decided they’d like to control the number and types of people

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(((Matthew Lewis))) enjoys being offline

@mateosfo

Jan 19

One thing drivers do, if they're committed to their dissonance about cars, is point out small, trivial errors.

For example, I made the statement "cars are the leading killers of children on earth" -- but actually, this is only true for children between ages of 5 - 19.

Gotcha!!

I of course did not mean to erase the world's toddlers, or the challenges of overcoming malaria, dysentery, etc.

But if you're born in the USA you are still more likely to be killed by a driver than anything else before the age of ~ 40.

That said ...

If drivers really cared about the lives of children, we'd take the same, aggressive, no-holds-barred approach to traffic violence as we've taken to eradicating the water-borne and nutrient-related diseases that kill so many kids around the world.

But something tells me ...

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(((Matthew Lewis))) enjoys being offline

@mateosfo

Jan 19

Having done my best to piss off a lot of people on this website one thing that stands out is how people who are accustomed to driving their car everywhere have never even really given car culture any thought.

Like, no part of it.

People don't know how roads are paid for -- or that their taxes don't cover them. People don't know driving is the leading cause of climate pollution in the US. People don't know cars are the leading killer of children on earth, and leading cause of hospitalization for all humans

People don't know that their suburban, car-oriented lifestyle leads to virtually guaranteed municipal bankruptcy. People don't know that it's not actually cheaper to "drive til you qualify" when you ... include the cost of the driving.

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(((Matthew Lewis))) enjoys being offline

@mateosfo

Jan 18

https://twitter.com/stan_okl/status/1482921176141680640

Among the many reasons that vehicle weight taxes are good is, carmakers are planning to replace 5,000 pound gasoline SUVs with 8,000 pound battery/electric ones and, as usual, stick us with the bill for the increased deaths and road damage.

Nope. Pay for that shit yourselves.

https://twitter.com/stan_okl/status/1482921176141680640

I've been arguing for ~ 15 years all road users should pay taxes proportionate to road impact -- as long as it's based on physics.

So, for example, biklings should pay $1 per year for wear and tear we cause roads -- if drivers pay $17,000 per year. streets.mn/2016/07/07/cha…

I'm open to negotiation on this. So, if drivers don't want to pay $17,000 per year, then ... we could pay cyclists $1,000 a year to ride their bikes, and in exchange for the dramatic reduction in road wear, charge drivers only, say, $10,000 a year.

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(((Matthew Lewis))) enjoys being offline

@mateosfo

Jan 18

This is the best argument for safe streets I’ve ever read.

“Despite the common misperception that Slow Streets are designed for athletic ‘tech bro’ bikers, they aren’t the ones who benefit most. It is people like me who need more space to feel safe.” sfchronicle.com/opinion/openfo…

“Rather than taking away transportation options from seniors and mobility impaired people like me, Slow Streets offer us new, healthier possibilities.”

Dear drivers, they’re not your god damn streets, they being to us all and your time monopolizing and dominating them is over.

One thing that makes violent drivers so pernicious in their anti-safe-streets advocacy is, most people don’t know the details behind their lie:

Victims of driver violence are overwhelmingly NOT athletic “tech bros.”

They’re children, the elderly, disabled, & people of color.

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