gmayer’s Recent Comments

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  TRAIN SERVICE

  Kudos for somebody finally getting serious about AMTRAK.

  We have a train system here that would embarrass some Eastern European Nations. I live in California, and the main rail line between San Diego amd Seattle is a largely single rail unelectrified line, with slow diesel powered passenger trains running maybe 4-5 times a day.

  Hello? Is this Bulgaria? Last time I checked we were still thinking of ourselves as an intelligent, technically first rate country. How can we so consistently and completely ignore trains? They are as necessary a part of the transporation system as are bicycles, buses, light rail, subways, inter city trains, and airplanes; and cars.

  We have been so obsessed with cars that we all have fogotten how well trains can serve a community. Commuting on a train can be a joy rather than sitting in a car in a traffic jam, because first of all, train arrivals are predictable and can be largely depended on, and second - you can do stuff on trains, like work, read, watch movies, listen to music, be drunk occasionally... and chat up your fellow train riders. There is a social scene on trains that is just not know to us here.

  Hmmm.....

  Gerhard W. Mayer The Conceptual Motion Company an urban repair enterprise

  On Could intercity public transit finally be getting some support from Congress? posted 2 years ago 7 Responses

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  atreyger --

  I can't resist either. Cities, large or small, are the solution to our resource crisis - as long as they are good cities, not the awful polluted crime ridden congested cancerous behemoths we get dangled in front of our ideas so often as the 'inevitable' future form of urbanity.

  The Organization 'Walkable Streets - www.walkablestreets.com' includes an article that is called 'NYC is the greenest city in America'. There might be some interesting reading there.

  By the way, just to be clear, I am not personally advocating to make us all live in Manhattans; been there and done that. But surely, there is a lot of middle ground between ranchettes and megacity, and in this huge middle is where the solution lies to our sustainable future.

  Gerhard W. Mayer The Conceptual Motion Company an urban repair enterprise

  On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years ago 65 Responses

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  cars

  It is fascinating how few people are capable of conceiving a world with fewer cars, even in this greenest of all online communities.

  The car and oil companies implanted this dream of car based mobility in the american psyche in the World's fair of 1939, and they did a great job. Anybody who knows about projecting, visioning, NLP etc. should study this as a test case how it needs to be done.

  Sprawl, and what the dream of spawl promises (individuality and physical and emotional distance from each other) is one of the main reason why the world is in trouble. Few of the promises of sprawl have come true. Instead of distance and tranquil solitude, we get stuck in traffic jams. Instead of having lavish private estates our individual houses are so jammed together that we look into each others sideyard windows and we can hear our neighbors whisper. And instead of indivually styled residences, we live in PUDs that dictate which shade of beige is the approved one. And for that we gladly accept spending hours in cars going almost nowhere.

  Yet we are still operating with the dream that 'getting away from it all' into our suburban enclaves is the best thing that we can achieve in life, even though our conscious mind knows that it cannot be done. But we hope. And even though by today this once understandable dream has turned into a grotesque nightmare in almost every way, we are still all programmed to desperately cling to it.

  We need a new dream, one that eveybody (inlcuding the proverbial Joe Sixpack) intuitively can grasp and strive for; a dream where we all can live happy and fulfilled lives and don't need our neighbor's resources to do so. A dream with fewer cars, for sure, and better cities.

  SOLAR GREG

  you might want to look into
  http://www.ruf.dk/
  

  Gerhard W. Mayer The Conceptual Motion Company an urban repair enterprise

  On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years ago 65 Responses

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  suburbia

  To me the comments about suburbia being an energy resouce problem are missing the point.

  Suburbia is first and foremost a space problem.

  Humans without cars can very happily live together in relatively confined spaces. We visit those communities all the time in Europe and marvel at the charm and intimacy of their small villages and cities.

  And then we come back here and conclude that we can't have this here, because what would we do with the cars?

  It is by now an unwritten assumption that humans are born with the space for an automobile attached to their navel. According to today's zoning rules, our cities are planned primarily for cars, and secondarily for humans; and that makes them huge, empty and phenomenally inefficient.

  The idea of suburbia is simply not attainable for all people on the planet. And it is only attainable for the US by depriving the rest of the world of their resources so that we can waste them on our carland over here.

  Coming back to the original article, we are not only running out of oil; we are also rapidly running out of space, out of breathable air, out of water, out of time we spend stuck in traffic.... etc., and much of that has to do, directly or indirectly, with suburbia.

  Suburbia may be very nice for a subgroup of people in a particular phase in life. But to make it the predominant organizing principle for everybody's form of habitation is simply insane.

  Cars are wonderful machines for particular purposes and pleasures, and ideally suited for individual mobility when that is needed. But to organize a transportation system around nothing but that is even more insane.

  And to fight wars to keep both of the above possible.... oh well!

  Gerhard W. Mayer The Conceptual Motion Company an urban repair enterprise

  On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years ago 65 Responses