Originally Posted by
wphamilton
In the case of high speed rail between cities, the rail will be as substitute for trips, not car ownership.
I don't think you'd seriously expect proponents to say that one high speed rail could replace car ownership?
Any form of transit requires the ability to get around car-free at the destination points unless people tote their cars along with them (e.g. auto train). There's no simply economic relationship between cars and transit. There are different ways to connect destinations and different ways that demand is elasticized or inelasticized according to the connectivity of the network.
Originally Posted by
rossiny
Totally agree with this comment.. Most people take it as a personal attack on them. I am an AMERICAN BY GOLLY AND I WILL DRIVE MY 455 cu in 8 mile per gallon truck whether I need it or not. Im an ********.....
Maybe some people think like this, but think about the people who would actually like to use transit more but there schedules don't mesh with the transit schedule; or they don't want to depend on taxis to get to stations/ports, etc. It's not that everyone wants to drive a car no matter what; it's that it's difficult to find adequate alternatives at the practical level of planning a reliable round-trip between A and B.
Originally Posted by
Dave Cutter
No I am NOT. The word sprawl had a meaning LONG before cars. The examples you give for sprawl are best suited to the word "growth". Since the nations population has expanded rapidly most cities have GROWN (no sprawl). The fact that some environmentally religiously faithful have adapted that word as part of their faith.... does NOT alter it's meaning. America has experienced no actual sprawl (with the possible exception of Detroit).
Growth can occur in dense cities. Densification is a form of growth. Regardless of how you understand the word, "sprawl," it is the word commonly used to describe driving-dependent areas that are driving-dependent precisely because they have expanded for many miles in various direction with a level of density low enough to discourage alternatives to driving at the practical level. I don't accept you trying to obfuscate discussion by scuttling a word that is commonly understood in a contemporary context to refer to driving-dependency sprawl.
The word sprawl is used to explain a spreading out of a population despite a lack of growth. As an example: Your cat can sprawl across a chair, couch, bed.... taking up considerably more space than when snuggled in. This occurs without the cat becoming large in mass or numbers. However... if your cat grows very large and heavy and as a result of it's "growth" now takes up more area than previously.... this is NOT called sprawl.
The issue with geographical sprawl is increased driving-dependency. That's the only issue that's relevant in a discussion of car-free living.