Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Biden’s infrastructure plan includes $20 billion to pour landfill into major access roads to cities, to eliminate racist community divides, reduce CO2 emissions, and revitalise inner cities by ensuring people who work in cities are incentivised to live near their workplaces.
Can Removing Highways Fix Americaās Cities?
By Nadja Popovich, Josh Williams and Denise Lu
May 27, 2021ROCHESTER, N.Y. ā Built in the 1950s to speed suburban commuters to and from downtown, Rochesterās Inner Loop destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, replacing them with a broad, concrete trench that separated downtown from the rest of the city.
Now, the city is looking to repair the damage. It started by filling in a nearly-mile-long section of the sunken road, slowly stitching a neighborhood back together. Today, visitors of the Inner Loopās eastern segment would hardly know a highway once ran beneath their feet.
As midcentury highways reach the end of their life spans, cities across the country are having to choose whether to rebuild or reconsider them. And a growing number, like Rochester, are choosing to take them down.
In order to accommodate cars and commuters, many cities ābasically destroyed themselves,ā said Norman Garrick, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies how transportation projects have reshaped American cities.
āRochester has shown what can be done in terms of reconnecting the city and restoring a sense of place,ā he said. āThatās really the underlying goal of highway removal.ā
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The growing movement has been energized by support from the Biden administration, which has made addressing racial justice and climate change, major themes in the debate over highway removal, central to its agenda.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/27/climate/us-cities-highway-removal.html
According to Neighbourhood Scout, Rochester has double the violent crime rate of New York as a whole, around 7.5 violent crimes per 1000 residents per annum. So if you spend 10 years in Rochester, you have around a one in ten chance of being mugged or raped.
Obviously the source of violence is the sense of distance the drug psychos feel towards cashed up workers, who selfishly roll up their windows and race home to the safety of suburbs or small towns, locked in their armoured CO2 emitting gasoline powered four wheeled bubbles, when they could spending more time in the community, helping to build a better Rochester.
Ripping up highways, bringing down barriers, so everyone can mingle together. That’s what Biden and Buttigieg appear to want. I bet their vision for a climate friendly future even includes evening singalongs in the new parks which stretch where gasoline powered automobiles once raced down highways, like a permanent carnival where children can play and adults build bonds with other members of the community, over coffee and vegan snacks.
Obviously there are a few unanswered questions, like how the coffee and muffin ingredients get delivered if delivery trucks can no longer make it through the traffic snarl. But perhaps this is what Biden means by green jobs – an amazing new opportunity for teams of climate friendly bicycle couriers, who can unload delivery trucks at the edge of cities, and deliver goods the old fashioned way along all those new bicycle tracks. Or perhaps they will revitalise inner city metros, like the old Rochester subway (see above).
Are you feeling the love yet?
Eliminating road rage without questioning culture!
Miraculous!
The solution is so simple it is above a political mind set .
Make all public transport free,
There ,the end of the problems that the green/democrats work so hard too impose on us
Interesting. Tell me actually how one can make public transport free?
Cheers
Roger
Yes Sir,
Look on the net you will see that 98 cities/countries have free Public Transport
George
There is nothing ‘free’.
If all the roads are ripped up, it’ll end all the traffic jams!
yeah, but the city folk can’t ;eave either. so there’s that
leave
They can check out.
but never leave! I like that!
If a badly designed road leads to social deterioration then an engineering solution can help.
Put it in underground and bring people together. There is a cost to broken communities.
Don’t complain about Governments spending money to improve living conditions if it can actually work, regardless of cost. It was what was asked for.
This isn’t “mitigating climate change”. This is spending to fulfil an achievable policy.
If you don’t like it, stop recounting the votes that lost you the last election and start campaigning for the next one.
Until then, the Government gets to execute their agenda.
Democracy!
You misspelled “Tyranny.” A society ruled over by a government unhinged from the people where elections are easily stolen and/or bought is not a Democracy or even a Republic, it is a herd of slaves.
M. Courtney is one of those people who doesn’t trust his fellow man. He believes that only when we are controlled by government are we capable of loving our fellow man.
Fascist
M Courtney, some of us here in the US are doing both. We are proving the 2020 election was stolen (there are many ways to do that even before forensic audits), and working to insure that 2022 is not, like sensible voter laws the left claims are voter suppressionātrue sort of, because it is suppression of illegal votes only.
Dear Mr Rud Istvan,
Mickey and Minnie have voted “Legally” in every election. They are officially registered in every metropolitan voting roll as Mr. and Mrs. M. Mouse. To suggest that clearing them from the voting rolls is not suppression is an insult to the entire Walt Disney family.
Sincerely,
D. Duck
And, Mickey and Minnie are paid to vote by Scrooge McDuck.
No, you’re not proving the election was stolen – it wasn’t. So you can’t prove that. Trump lost because he got less votes than other guy. The end. The only way you can get what you want – a right-wing nutter fascist rapist in the Whitehouse – is suppress legal votes, and obviously you’ll be happy to do that and justify it as ‘American’ and ‘Democracy’ and ‘Sensible’ so long as you get what you want. You whine about Marxism and leftists when what you want is a Fascist dictatorship that will rule for a thousand years… where have we heard that before?
And you wonder why the rest of the world regards the US as infantile and repugnant.
Do you sniff, rub and touch little kids as much as Biden or just pretend to? Do you enjoy the little roaches crawling all over your legs and letting them rub the hair down on your legs while in the pool as much as he does? Do you like commenting on the appearance of 8 year old girls in braids as much as our totally legitimate president elect Biden or do you just pretend to ignore how truly horrible this person is? Selective much, are we?
Why you sound like your afraid of what the audits will reveal! The scumbags on the election boards obviously are! Those in Fulton county have already hired criminal lawyers to defend them and are pointing fingers at each other before the real audit has begun. Those in Maricopa county have fought in every way possible to stop the audit ordered by the state senate and the DNC sent 60 lawyers to help them try and stop it. But of course they have nothing to hide. Right?
The chance that Biden/Harris received 80 million legal votes is nil. Nevertheless, there’re in office and doing a bang up job. So much so, that anger is boiling up from many places.
This needs run on national TV in a continuous loop. Pipe it directly into every Democrat member of Congresses offices, over their computers, phones, TVs and the building wide PA system.
Why? Why do we need to do that?
Ahhh, did the mean ole colored man make you cry? Good, sissies should be made to cry. In public is best.
Trump set a blue ribbon commission after the 2016 to prove that he won the popular vote ‘by landslide’
They couldnt prove that either as there there was no there there.
Apart from the recounts in various states requested by the Trump campaign, also showed he lost, but the presence of tons of paper ballot papers showed the voting systems werent hacked or manipulated. Those media that did so have now retracted their claims as they were of course baseless
Yea! Everyone knows that a senile old man who couldn’t draw flies the few times he even tried to campaign got more votes than any presidential candidate in history! Right!
And more black votes than Obama, sure that makes sense.
Yes, the old classic question, “What’s wrong with this picture?” If it looks like fraud, smells like fraud, and tastes like fraud, then it must be fraud!” (Apologies to Cheech and Chong.)
Everyone knows that Trump and his Trumpist fans only had to be sane for about 10 months straight in 2020 and they couldn’t even manage that. After years of bellicose bullying and excuse making by Orange Man, the seemingly calm soft spoken fellow was what most American voters preferred.
Part of Trumpist insanity, rah, is #LazyTrumpists like you failed to step up in public and have your guy’s back when it counted. You let the Left’s lies about your orange idol go unanswered again and again. You snooze, you lose–simple as that.
Here’s a more current example of Trumpist Lazy Crazy: You’ve known for over six weeks now that the Bidenemy has been signalling his intent to grab up the credit that belongs to Trump for the vaccines that have tamped down the CHINA-19 pandemic come July 4th. You Trumpists could have stymied this theft by the Plagiarist in Chief by holding Trump Vaccine Victory events in cities and towns across America on this Memorial Day weekend. But you chose not to show up. Again, you snooze, you lose.
The data is in. Trumpists wanted to lose in 2020. Wanted. To. And so the Orange Man lost bigly.
You are assuming that the election was legitimate. That fact is not in evidence. While we don’t know for sure one way or the other, this was a most unusual election in that besides the irregularities during the counting, there have been claims made that there are even mathematical reasons to believe that the election had been rigged, at least in some important states.
The courts have passed on getting involved by saying that the appeals have ‘No Standing’ because of a lack of evidence. It is a Catch-22 situation! There is no evidence because there have been no thorough investigations by any legal bodies with the power of subpoena!
Usually, new presidents want to be able to claim that they have the mandate of the people to go forth with changes. However, there is clearly a cloud over the legitimacy of the election and Biden and the DNC have shown no interest in removing that cloud by having a bi-partisan investigative committee examine the claims. One has to wonder why they wouldn’t be anxious to remove that cloud. Perhaps they have heard of the admonition to “Let sleeping dogs lie.” Maybe they know the answer and don’t want to be forced to share what they know, under oath.
The election was legitimate – beyond any reasonable doubt, and has been proven so in many courts of law. What you have is UNreasonable doubt. But it’s done. You lost. You were always going to lose, and now all you have is finger pointing and the blame game. The US Right Wing is very immature – they don’t get what they want, so they throw their dummy out of the pram.
Come back and talk about democracy and elections when you start shaving.
Joe Frasier has voted 3 times in Pennsylvania since he died. That takes a lot of balls.
TRUMP! made several mistakes at the beginning of his Presidency.
One was to disband the commission to review the voting during the 2016 election. He made the mistake of listening to the swamp creatures Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan. He would not have gotten as much done without Ryan, but he might have gotten Ryan gone sooner and had a new Speaker of the House to work with if he had gone after him BEFORE the 2018 election.
He will not make the same mistake next time.
You are spot on , the Demoncrats cheated in the 2016 election to but no where enough. Trump was vastly more popular than they could have imagined . Hillary was “meant” to have won , it was her turn .
The WHOLE of Washington were shocked that trump won , he wasn’t meant to , he was an outsider , not one of the IN crowd, that is, a politician , what if he proved successful (which he was) it would make a fool of them , which it did , Trump proved that he knew what he was doing and he knew what it took to fix the country .
He was half way there when they began the destruction of Trump phase . He was surrounded by filthy vermin and vipers , Their utter control of the MSM sealed it for him . There is no way you can do anything in the US unless you control the media or at least have a fair media .
Don, we’re supposed to believe that Trump was sooo popular that nationwide his vote totals came in second to Hillary Clinton’s? Hah ha. Trump only squeaked into getting the White House handed to him by the elitist Electoral College because of dedicated Republican Party activists who rallied voters in the so-called Blue Wall states and tipped a half-dozen states barely into the Trump column.
I enjoy science fiction, Don. I see you have mastered fiction but where’s your science (facts)?
I’m sooo old that I can remember when Paul Ryan held the gavel at the 2016 Republican National Convention and a block of delegates tried to make a motion to make the first ballot for picking the Republican nominee a free vote (delegates would be released from pledges to vote for a specific candidate). Many delegates, after all, were tied down by pledges to vote for candidates who had dropped out of the race months, even half a year before the convention. Did Paul Ryan recognize those delegates so their motion could be made, likely denying Trump the nomination? No. He ignored them. Bottom line: If you like Trump as President then you must love Paul Ryan or be a hypocrite. Choose one.
Also, Drake, you and your kind have been spewing hate on Paul Ryan since before Trump came along. You all could have moved to Wisconsin’s first congressional district then worked your tails off to defeat him for re-election. You didn’t. What’s more, Paul Ryan became House Speaker because you hypocritical lame-os failed to get behind a single, credible candidate. In the end, even your fellow crazies in the House Republican Conference ended up begging Rep. Ryan to take that thankless job for the good of the country and the Republican Party. Again, Drake, you’re busted for being a hypocrite.
Maybe all the obvious hypocrisy from you fans of Orange Man became too much for most American voters to take when 2020 rolled around. Did you hypocrites ever think of that?
There won’t be a next time – thank the Lord! One Term Trump. Everything else – blah blah blah.
The blue states wouldn’t give their data to the commission. Somehow all the information about voters became confidential and couldn’t be released.
(1) The People’s Republic of China is a Red state. So is North Korea. You’re suffering from color confusion, PN. Do try to shake off two decades of being duped by a former Cuomo press hack with a miscolored US map flashed by an alphabet TV network.
(2) Trump’s phony “commission” could have obtained all the data they wanted by stepping up to the counter at the Secretary of State’s office at each of the 50 states AND PAYING FOR IT just as every political campaign, party, and activist organization has always done–and still do! Your orange idol’s whinging demands that his phony commission should get it all for free was nothing more than a phony show put on for dupes like you, PN. And you fell for it. Hah ha. If you had ever been involved in a political campaign for so much as town dogcatcher then you would have been able to see right through Trump’s phony act.
I remember that. My home (blue) state specifically said they wouldn’t provide any data to the commission because Orange Man Bad, and Racism! When nearly half the states take their balls and go home it’s kinda hard to finish your work on the commission.
Orange Man Bad is a statement of fact! You don’t like it? Who cares? š
The commission went nowhere because states refused to cooperate. Without cooperation they were going to have to sue all those states and according to legal scholars likely lose. So those on the committee left one at a time until Trump had no choice but to end it.
What didnāt happen was proving there was no corruption.
The chances that Trump would – or could – have won the election, is nil. Even he – One-Term-Trump – knew he would lose and started the mock outrage and conspiracies long before a vote had been cast, as he knew what the result would be. Not because of marxism or conspiracy, but because he’s an odious piece of filth and fewer people voted for him than Other Guy. That you don’t understand or accept this says more about you – and Trump – than anything.
With all these angry comments Adrian,it sounds like you might just have a wee bit of paranoia and doubt about having these audits in Arizona and then Georgia,Pennsylvania,Michigan,Wisconsin and probably Nevada.Methinks your head is blowing up!
Somehow I don’t think you felt the same way the last 4 years. I’m sure you cheered on when every legitimate executive action was stonewalled with phony lawsuits.
I don’t know why I’m wasting time with someone employing so many logical fallacies in such a short post, but you are begging the question. Badly designed roads don’t lead to social deterioration. No proof of that is offered, it’s just a ridiculous assertion. So no, there is no engineering solution to a false premise. Please explain how you think removing a highway will reduce murders, rapes, property crimes, etc. Will removing houses and factories also do the same? Let’s just level the whole city, then no more crime!
The hardcore leftist Democrats HATE Suburbia. They HATE the fact that families have FLED the multi-culti urban wasteland. They HATE that random bullets donāt kill innocent Suburban girls in their bedrooms.
The Democrat solution? Dismantle Suburbia. Step 1: eliminate single family zoning. Eliminate all local zoning controls that make homes unaffordable for urban dwellers to move into Suburbia. Now … developers can install multi-unit apartments next door to your single family oasis. This is happening RIGHT NOW in CA.
Hint: itās NOT going to make homes more affordable. All it will do is to add density and destroy the quality of life that the Democrats HATE. They HATE quiet, safe, Suburbia. So they donāt care … blow it up! Put 4-plexes next to your one home. Itās all about DESTRUCTION. Dems donāt build anything.
The Locust Party doesn’t build anything.
WR2, if only you and your fellow #LazyTrumpists had stood up, manned up, cleaned up, and walked your neighborhood precincts a few times during the past five years (2015-2020) your orange idol might have won last November. But you chose not to.
Still, WR2, your orange idol might have squeaked out a victory in the elitist Electoral College again if only Trump and you Trump nuts had been able to act sane for just ten months in 2020. But you couldn’t. Your Orange Man was an arrogant bare-face, a bully, and a huckster of miracle cures that went bust when put to the test (e.g. HQC). Crazy. And his followers were crazy and lazy–a bad combo.
Now the data is in. You #LazyTrumpists wanted to lose. Your actions (inactions, really) spoke louder than your words. You got your wish. So why so sad?
I musta got here late bro…whatcha been takin?
You are obviously still suffering massively from TDS…but your rant seems so, disconnected, from, reality.
stay away from the incense for starters.
Walking precincts while the ballot box is being stuffed with Biden-Heiress ballots … is pointless. Election reform NOW. And then we shall see what a FAIR election looks like.
Are you about to lose your job at CNN ?They have just dropped to 5th on the cable charts.
The big problem being, of course, that this won’t bring communities together. Increased local opportunities, local job creation and narrowing the poverty gap would help – give people a tangible stake in their infrastructure and they’re less likely to riot, smash it up and set fire to it. Biden’s short-sighted and mistaken policies will only increase the existing divisions in society whilst increasing tension and violence.
The “poverty gap” has already been eliminated. The Government simply ignores 2/3rds or so of the cash benefits that people in ” poverty” bring in. Only cash incomes are counted, not “Benefits”.
Bingo! no more poverty and more spending money. The step after that is to include these “benefits” in taxable income. That will increase payments and decrease taxes, further encouraging actual work.
The final change the IRS has to make is to smooth out the rate of taxes on both the currently poor as they keep more and the currently poor who are paying extra taxes because they make too much.
These three changes:reduced taxes on current earners, smoothing out the tax curve on people who are not paying taxes on full income due to rate setting, and finally smooth out the tax/income level some people aren’t currently paying taxes on “free” income.
With fewer people running the tax system, more money coming directly to the government with much less paper work, and the workers currently paying taxes but not getting comparable benefits they will get more money to even the incomes of everybody below the “Poverty Line”.
Welfare benefits should be taxed, it’s only fair. Excess SS already is; I know.
That is what you get for being rich!! You deserve to get taxed again on SS benefits you earned by paying SS taxes that were TAXED when you paid them. You are lucky the IRS/Democrats don’t tax you again when you die. Oops, they do that too? Sorry, but you deserve it because you didn’t build that, the government did. Just ask OBiden,
SARC!!
You don’t have to be rich to get screwed by SS. This truck driver hits FRA (Full Retirement Age) at 66 years and 2 months in October this year. I started paying into SS when I was 14 y/0 when I started earning enough working in my fathers business to pay SS tax, and never missed a year from that time on. I have never made $100,000 any year that I have worked. If I file at FRA and continue to work I will be penalized and will continue to be penalized until I reach age 70 if I can continue to drive and earn what I am now until then.
“Full Retirement” is a misnomer. You can start collecting at that age without restrictions. However, you don’t get the maximum amount until age 70. That is full retirement age!
On top of that, SS is a poor return on forced investment. I have a couple of small pensions that provide me with about $100/month for each year I worked. At that rate, I should be getting about $4500 per month from SS for all the years I worked. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I get about half that from SS.
Yep. I just got my statement and I will get $2,133.00 a month.
In a few years, the SS “trust” fund is going to go bankrupt. Unless government starts filling the trust fund from some other source, SS will only be able to pay out as much each month, as is collected from current taxes.
No doubt both taxes will be raised, and payouts to anyone who has any form of alternate income will be cut dramatically.
Yes, it is all a scandal that everyone ignores. Instead of investing the taxes collected, as an insurance company would do, the government has and continues to spend, the collected money. So, those of use who were forced to contribute, and receive sub-market returns, will be asked to further shoulder the burden.
What if welfare benefits (of all kinds, Section 8, I’m looking at you) were taxed at the highest marginal rate? After all, we all know that America gets less of what is taxed the most. Presto! Poverty ended!
Oh wait, the Bidenemy doesn’t really want to end poverty.
We’re back on point!
Fossil fuels have managed to reduce poverty in China by 80% in past 30 years.And they are still building hundreds of coal fired plants.So is India,Africa and much of Asia.
I think Joe and Hunter own a few in China.
CO2 emissions are rising almost exponentially.( That means very fast)
The poor will always be with us, by government defintion.
The poverty line is defined as a fixed fraction of the median income.
That way, no matter how rich society gets, the same percentage of people will always be “poor”.
And thus we have those below the poverty line with nice cars and giant smart TVs
If the Greenists get to implement their programs for industrial and technological rollbacks, the worldwide cost in human lives to achieve population attenuation would be executing more than an agenda.
Joe Bribem will be gone soon. And what happened to “every vote counts”? Or is that only for the ones You agree with?
We have a democratic republic stupid, not a democracy!!!!!!
More precisely, a representative form of Constitutional Republic, where the federal representatives and senators are chosen by democratic vote. The Administrative branch is elected by the Electoral College, and most other positions are appointed, sometimes with the approval of the senate.
Given how publicly… ‘unusual’ Mr Biden has been recently – especially around the younger generation – I am wondering just how long before the Democrats start running with claims the election was rigged in order to distance themselves from this man.
Courtney again redirects attention off topic to fit to his agenda, which is anything but democracy. In order to do so, he needn’t read even a few of the words of the article. Simply stuffing MSM hyperbole into something loosely resembling a sentence structure, he throws a few semi-articulate phrases and obviously misplaced innuendo into an attempt to trigger a response fitting his disturbed sense of reality. Not one sentence in his post makes any sense. Think about it next time you see the name.
A road scheme that might have been right fifty years ago doesnt mean it is right now. some were under ambitious, others have created more problems than they solved whilst yet more have done the job intended.
I can think of two motorways for example in the UK which were built as 2 lane highways and badly needed to be at least 3. I can think of dual carriageways through the middle of town that don’t work, often because roundabouts and traffic lights are introduced or out of town stores built bringing huge volumes of traffic that then negate the benefit of the original road.
So plenty of lessons to be learnt of which one is that just closing or narrowing roads doesn’t make traffic disappear. it gets funneled elsewhere or gets snarled up which doesn’t help anyone
tonyb
Fifty years ago Rochester, New York’s biggest employer was Kodak and Rochester prospered. Today, Kodak has mostly dried up and blown away and Rochester is dying too.
This project has nothing to do with the Biden Administration, the official opening was in 2017.
The idea that the previous road was some kind of racist Berlin wall between communities is ridiculous. The road ran 1/2 a mile between two large commercial zones with just a handful of residential buildings adjacent, it’s more a bringing together of car parks than anything else.
The make-up of residents in the first residential zone on the outside of the destroyed “inner loop” are predominantly white (according to census data) so good news for their “social deterioration”.
In fact, in Rochester, pretty much the majority of whites live over this side of town. Black people getting hoodwinked by Democrats again…. surely not.
Rather than checking the facts you’ve gone straight to the book of handy stereotypes and cognitive biases.
I’m not against this type of initiative, au contraire, but lets not dress it all up in some fancy ideology, “restoring a sense of place”… give me a break.
People are leaving a badly run, crappy town, there’s less traffic, the “inner loop” is now superfluous, let’s get rid of it, make a bit more space for more enterprise, end of story.
Let’s look at the data in 5 years and see what’s changed… not much I’ll bet you.
If it is a community improvement, they should sell it on its merits alone without the sorry addition of the climate lie.
As for the election, can anyone honestly say that they have confidence in the process as it stands?
Government executing Its agenda is the definition of tyranny. Democracy is the process of confusion that leads to tyranny. That is why this nation was established as a Republic. The founders feared nothing more than the despotism of democracy.
First, unless we establish that the last election was fixed and a fraud and fix the problems, you are not going to simply have another bad election. There is no way that vote counts mysteriously altered both largely and small just enough for Biden to win at 3 AM in the morning. Why is heck would voting information be sent to EU countries and back during the count?
The “We Won, You Lose” BS is Obama BS. It is completely divisive as it clearly indicates that he thinks he can do anything he wants to you while in power. That is not how our Presidents and administration are meant to operate. They are supposed to care for the whole country and not just their particular party or ideology.
Government can claim that they are spending money to improve neighborhoods, but rarely if ever, do these government schemes actually help the people the government is claiming to help
Your faith in government once again fails you.
I strongly suspect you would not be as sanguine about the electoral irregularities had non-socialists been the beneficiaries.
As to your worship of Democracy, so speaks the man who is convinced that his side will always be the winner in these “elections”.
Hey! Almost all of the big cities vote blue! They’re naming their own poison. But I want a law that they have to STAY THERE and not abandon the Nirvana the vast majority have voted for. I don’t want them anywhere near my acre out here in the fields. I like the explosive collar idea from The Running Man https://youtu.be/fbvX3elSaaY
Invest in a company that makes bricks and concrete blocks.
I am so glad I moved out of Da City 20 years ago……!
Agreed. Let them poison themselves. Wall off the blue cesspools from the rest of us. Maybe some of the dependent thinkers, who flock together in blue cities, will get a brain. Not holding my breath.
The risk averse prey cluster together, providing a false sense of security. What they ignore is that predators go where the prey is.
All of this makes me even happier that I do not live anywhere near Rochester, NY.
Coming to a city near you.
Denver has it’s subterranean rebuild of I-70 “nearing completion” and the flyover promos show traffic moving swimmingly in both directions. Real-time Google maps show traffic currently moving well west to east, but rerouted altogether onto I-76 from Aurora to Wheat Ridge.
Buttigeig is a smart guy, but imparting ideologica spin to road and bridge building projects – endeavors that just need good pragmatic engineering solutions — is just ass – backwards. But then… QED
I think these projects are taking their cue from the animal re-connection schemes which knit together animal migratory routes beneath or over existing country. However they couch the outcomes, if it smooths traffic and assists the many shippers in that area, it’s doing something that is needed.
https://303magazine.com/2021/05/colorado-central-70-project-update-viaduct/#:~:text=The%20park%2C%20which%20will%20have,we%20know%20construction%20never%20finishes.
The US edition of the Guardian has picked up on the same topic with a story about re-building Interstate 81 through the city of Syracuse in an article entitled The NY Highway That Racism Built. There are two claims involved: the route through the city deliberately targeted a black neighborhood and that when the viaduct is replaced with a community grid everything will be better. In my post, Re-building Interstate I-81 in Syracuse, NY, I show that geographical constraints dictated the route through the city. I have my doubts that the new grid will spur a renaissance and re-vitalize the city like the proponents claim. I also think that the claimed improvements in air quality will not be as great as forecast either because emissions in stop and go, ground level traffic are probably equal to emissions on a free flowing elevated highway even if the traffic count is greater. Alas, none of this is about facts anymore.
Same here in Oakland, CA. Apparently 980 is a racist freeway so it has to go. I drove on it this morning and was thinking what a huge area it does actually cover and a lot of space could be freed up for development. Then I came to my senses and realized this was in the hands of libtards. Hmmmm yes, more acreage for homeless camps. Yippeee.
It would be cheaper to just close it and allow the homeless to use it as a roof.
Do the Sherriff Joe thing, enclose it in bars and make it a jail so that you can keep EVERY FELON caught with a gun in jail for 10 years for each offense.
You need a LOT of jail space to do that.
Is the “US edition of the Guardian” unfettered by the editorial policies of the home office? If not, why call it the “US edition?” It is another example of British tabloids mucking around in US politics. It seems that only British media get a pass on attempts to influence US politics.
Silly! Of course, the coffee and muffin ingredients will be made holistically by local artisans. Who’d want to leave?
From the (organic, of course!) groves of coffee bushes and fields of wheat on the rooftops of their thirty story skyscrapers.
I guess good advice not to eat the “brown” muffins… š
China Joe really is senile, then.
The civil engineering stupidity here is mind boggling. My dad was not only a AF senior officer pilot, he started out as an enlisted civil engineer converted after WW2 by the then AAF to a weather/weather radar double masters. We had many dinner conversations based on his wisdom.
There is a reason that most landfills have methane energy collection systems; makes net more money. It is because landfill stuff rots over many years via anaerobic methanogens (same as dairy cow tummies). So then the fill compacts.
Using landfill spoil to āfill inā guarantees two things:
Brilliant, warmunists. As brilliant as AOC herself. She will vote for.
Certainly surface highways cutting through cities have been a blight in the past but tunnelling of roads under built-up areas is now routine.
Individual mobility is related to social mobility, some people hate that, these projects could further ‘ghettoise’ inner city areas and that may be the intention.
This is going to make SO many immigrant truckers SO happy!!!! I GUARANTEE it!!!
I can see it now: Rt. 57, a/k/a the Dan Ryan, a major inbound and outbound route for commercial traffic w/r/t Chicago, gets shortened and cut off from access to other interstate routes so that the Pipples of Da Sout’ Side can feel good about themselves!!! Wonderful Idea.
It didn’t occur to that bunch of ‘toons in WDC that there is such a thing as commuter rail, did it? Naw, didn’t think so!
What’s next? Walls around major cities and work permits required to work IN the City Central? I’m waiting for that one, added it to an ongoing story last week.
Dis goan be good!!
????????
“Walls around major cities and work permits required to work IN the City Central?”
Eventually they put up the walls. You got that part right, but then nobody is trying to get in.
I guess you did not see the movie.
Escape From New York.
I wish I thought of that, I would have put Snake Plissken up as the top photo – this is the real New York without highways… š
Well, Eric, go the frak back in there and add Snake to the illustrations!
Don’t be shy!!!
I did see part of it, part of Escape From L.A., too, and then went back to Heinlein’s “Revolt in 2100AD”. his short story “Coventry”, etc., and there’s no difference in any of it. You’re walled in or you’re outside the walls. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World.
All that dystopian stuff – remember “Soylent Green”? You might be able to get in, but you can’t get out. Many such stories, never mind movies…. the whole “Divergent” series is based on that kind of culture. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is the same thing.
And yet, the people inside those walled cities are worse off than those on the outside, who wouldn’t go there if they were paid to.
Maybe those were all warnings to be more self-sufficient and stay the H E double Hockeysticks away from the cities…. I have to stop reading sci-fi.
So if the weather really does turn long-term sour, interferes with crop production so you can’t get strawberries the size of hens’ eggs, and watermelon doesn’t go into the cities…. then what on earth will those pipples ever do….????
But you’re right, TonyL: no one would even try to get IN. The problem would be getting OUT.
This trucker took well over 2 hours to make it from the Wisconsin state line to around Chicago on 294 to I-65 on Thursday. The afternoon rush traffic was just brutal. That after an accident in a construction zone in Milwaukee cost me a half hour. Would have been even worse if my trailer was heavier. When I took off from Gallatin, WI to head home my GPS said I would arrive back at the terminal at 22;24. I arrived at 00:05.
Sounds like it’s back to normal.
No not really. Remember the holiday weekend was coming and there is always a significant number that will turn a 3 day weekend into a 4 day weekend if they can get away with it.
Really the worst rush hours are at those times or when the weather is great during the summer and massive numbers of those that claim they love their city are fighting to get the hell out of it and as quickly as possible to spend their weekend somewhere else.
And then there is the Sunday afternoon and evening rush during the normal summer weekends. Actually worse than a workday rush much of the time, when those same ones that bailed out are now returning and drive like they are in a bad mood.
I’m not kidding about this. It’s the way it is!
And I get to see the results of these boondoggles on the morning and evening news, rah! I am SO glad I do NOT have to head from the warm, safe embrace of my little house on top of a hill to a big, congested, hustle/bustle in a major city these days!
I feel enormous sympathy for ANY trucker who has to deal with that mess. It is much worse than it was 20 years ago! FAR worse!
Feel sorry for the truckers that get paid by the mile. I get a salary! It all pays the same and so the only real downside for me when delayed is less time at my home and with my wife, both of which I Love.
The music one plays when driving effects their mood and thus their driving. When I finally hit I-65 south I put in Maurice Ravel’s Bolero to settle myself down and relax. https://youtu.be/E9PiL5icwic
Is that both wives? š
My limited experience with Chicago construction zones is that is is a signal for everyone to speed up to get through it more quickly. I’m not a timid driver, but I was nearly run off the road by people observing the mandate.
OK so now they hate transport into and out of the cities.
So they “fix” it, making city life more attractive. So far, so good.
Professional people move in, for work and to enjoy city life.
Neighborhoods get rebuilt, prices go up, poor people are priced out.
The process is called “Gentrification“, the inner cities have been protesting it for decades.
Raycis, It’s Raycis, RAYCIS!!!!
We all know how this turns out. Spend more billions to fix a perceived problem, but just make it worse instead. Then spend even more billions to correct the last fix. Rinse and repeat.
People like this is the reason shampoo needs to have the directions printed on the label.
Does anyone want to live in the cities? They were all COVID hotspots, and the commuter workers seemed more than happy to work remotely from home.
This sounds to me like more 60s style urban renewal that made people flee the cities in the first place.
In LA and SF, a lot of stores are closing due to the insane shoplifting decriminalization. Another reason against urban living, along with the homeless and their drug wastes and excrement.
I know many stores are offering home delivery and curb side PU. Is it going to go to nothing but so that the “shrinkage” can be gotten under control.
Don’t let anyone in the store and they can’t rob you blind.
The employees can also cause ‘shrinkage’.
My grandfather opened up a grocery store in a local ‘food desert’, hired local people, and trained them. Stocked the store for opening day. Opening day, the store was cleaned out without a single purchase being made. He closed the store, paying his workers two weeks severance pay. The business survived, barely. He never made that mistake again.
According the the FBI annual Uniform Crime Report, the rate of violent crimes — especially homicides — is directly correlated with the size of the cities.
Re. the photo at the top of the article, nothing indicates urban decay or societal collapse like graffiti-covered infrastructure. Maybe the bill should include cash bounties for taking out the “artists” on sight.
No need for bounty hunting, just have motion activated playing of the National Anthem to bring ’em to their knees.
Never been to Rochester, but looks like the available crossing points of the Inner Loop is not dissimilar to the number of crossing points for the railway and river.
Why isnāt the river and railway equally as racist?
This truck driver has been all over Rochester and really it is an easy city to navigate in compared to most others in NY. Much easier than Buffalo not far to the west for example.
Straight out of Agenda 21.
Oh good – give us the page it’s on then so we can read it in full then please.
Here’s the link for the download.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21
100% this
A lot of the messaging by Dems is for directing taxpayer dollars to the cities of the powerful Dems and not for general use. Know their language and tactics to understand the political con game.
Liberals in Dallas are still using data from the 1980’s as justification to tear down what is basically the Interstate 45 bridges east of downtown because it “separates” the city and homeless live under them. They want to build a $4Billion Utopia there where people live and work in downtown Dallas, where the highway now sits Traffic can find other ways to get from Houston to Tulsa.or Nuevo Laredo to Bentonville.
One Year ago this weeked, every street level window was broken out in this area and there was widespread looting that wasn’t reported by the media, because they were safe in the suburban homes doing news by zoom. If the bridge that carries hundreds of thousands of car/day was torn down and the $4B utopia was built, it too would have been looted and burned.
It probably wasn’t reported on because of who was doing the looting. You do not have to lie to deceive people, you can just leave off inconvenient facts. And it is not a left or right thing either, although it is true that leftists have taken deception to another level (as proven by this climate change nonsense).
Sins of omission.
This type of political speaking in tongues is necessary to legally use your money on select Dem projects with program design and targeted terms and conditions. It also works on the back end of failed projects like Solyndra so taxpayer loss is especially severe in places like districts and states of Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Schumer. They win, you lose.
Diversity, inequity, and exclusion.
Or is there is a more primitive motivation involved? People often belittle things they can’t afford or obtain.
The article reminded a college admissions pitch to parents: “our University is superior to Harvard, without the ostentation and at 1/4th the price.”
We will know affirmatively when the Interstates transition to gravel ten miles outside our major cities, as they do in many African nations, and it is touted as some form of eco-improvement to restore animal migration routes.
The bottom line: the US government is running out of money and they can’t admit it. IMHO
This is just as stupid as ripping up railroad lines all across the country. Now they are squawking about BUILDING railroad lines and having trains go 100 mph and faster.
People don’t have to work in cities anymore, Chinese Disease has proven that. Bunch of f**king morons.
U.N. Climate Change Policy is NOT about climate change. That is only the cover story — it’s an illusion as illustrated in my new video … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOpOnaRMGCY
Can you imagine? Like PERMANENT road construction., with no pilot cars or detours. YES! Give those blue voters their poison! But keep your grimy fingers off our rural highways.
Flip the script: Can you imagine if cities had few roads into them? Would they cry discrimination? Better have ear plugs…
Resisting Trump, raising taxes, putting people out of work, shutting down business, confiscating guns… these are the things the Biden Regime said they were going to do. Why is it surprising that they’re actually trying to do it?
this is not an intelligent solution! Biden believes people and businesses will magically reappear after 66+ years?????
Roads are fascist?? How many low income housing projects still exist from 60s& 70s? Many have been razed!!
Biden is a prime idiot!!!!!!!!!!!
Biden wants to collect bribes from people who don’t want their business destroyed. They just have to give half their business to Hunter Biden’s special company, and the destructive projects will magically disappear. See how that works?
You are assuming that it is his idea rather than him being a mouthpiece for his ‘advisors.’
Any amount of money is OK?
I say you are a cheating Democrat that believes the end justifies your means! If it smells like smoke itās straight from the pits of Hell and Iām smelling lots of smoke!!!
The COVID lockdowns and people working from home have dramatically changed the “going to the office to work” routine. Workers and businesses have continued to find ways to stay at home and work, and even work from new homes hundreds of miles away from former offices and never step foot in it again.
So decaying Blue Democrat-run cities like Rochester can try to force White Collar office workers to come back to the city for their jobs, but all they’ll likely do is give them and their employers even more incentive to stay as far awaya as possible.
I worked at a big plant back in ’80’s. Right across the street was a bad neighborhood. Car break ins and vandalism was a major problem. Then in the ’90’s the city built a freeway between the plant and neighborhood. Solved the problem.
Hometown pork for U.S. Representative Joseph Morelle to “help” small businesses in his district by destroying access and improving the lives of demolition companies hiring the lowest paid workers in underserved communities (where, as it happens, he is seeking even more federal largesse). Sens Schumer and Gillibrand also get a virtue backhander, claiming credit for destruction of critical infrastructure in order to save the poorest parts of the city. It hardly costs Joe anything, since he also gets a backhander for signaling support for the good Senators’ even less effective government waste to pretend to combat a hypothetical crime that is most likely to occur, if ever, in those same underserved neighborhoods of Joe’s district. Joe plead down (paywalled – see campaign violations on his wikipedia page) his earliest conviction for election fraud, admitting to what he’d previously had “no knowledge” of doing, but hey, its New York.
I’m convinced we live in a simulation and drunken, high ‘teenage’ aliens are running it.
Ahhhhhh………Koom by yar !!!!!!
Three bridges that desperately need replacing or to be supplemented with another bridge like they did for I-65 at Louisville. And another that should have been built already but isn’t. These are critical infrastructure projects that should have already been addressed but the people controlling the sock puppet in the Oval Office want to spend infrastructure money on the BS mentioned above.
One might suggest building tall walls about the Democrat run hell-holes.
Then fill them with water.
Was just about to mention the Rochester Subway; that highway was build in the subway bed. That subway was in the old Erie Canal route through Rochester abandoned ca.1913 replaced with the Barge Canal route south of the city. The Subway, which also served as a belt railway freight route around pat of Rochester might have worked better if it had been done earlier but pat of its downfall was it could only go where the canal did. Last run June 30, 1956–next to the last car line in NY state!
Oh, in 1911 the city had hired a consultant to recommend what to do with the soon-to-be-abandoned canal. He recommended building an arterial highway for motor vehicles in the canal bed–his idea was dismissed as a crackpot scheme!
Nate,
Thanks so much for reminding me, I’d forgotten that about Rochester. Should have known that the NYT had gotten it wrong by at least a century and a half.
Clearly the coffee and muffin ingredients can be smuggled in by pushers who always figure out how to get it done. I imagine Slo Jo & Ho see that as stimulating the economy.
Got to give the Thin (on brains) Man credit for following the demands of Agenda 21, which is to eventually destroy all high ways and isolate cities to only trains. Then the Wildlands Project moves in and isolates communities, forcing people to the cities. This is not enticing people to live in the city, it is to force them to move to the city.
100% this
I see evidence of Agenda 21/Wildlands Project in my area too. The amount of forest access roads, trails, and campgrounds that are being closed to human activity and left to overgrow in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains is scary. The process has greatly accelerated in the past few years. Far too much emphasis on preservation, rather than conservation. They will probably close so many roads and lands that everyone will be forced to move into the city center, not able to leave, travel, have privacy, or be self-sufficient.
Although this of course does not fit with the purpose of this site I cannot let this Memorial Day go by without comment. I will let President Reagan say it because he said it about as well as it could be said. Remember what those who kneel during the National Anthem are saying and contrast it to what those that have died in the service of our country said and how they said it!
https://youtu.be/QRJkj0YfakE
There is a reason why some universities demand its professors spend time
in the working world outside of academia and that is to improve their
ability and to keep them in touch with reality.
Roads, one of the prime developments allowing mankind to advance.
Easy peasy, just backhoe a trench across roadways every couple of blocks. Easily achievable fossil fuel consumption reduction…DC should set the first example….
Unintended consequences? Maybe they don’t announce them as goals, but when they are so easily foreseeable,how is it possible to say the Unintended Consequences weren’t Actually the goal?
At some point, stupidity Stops being cover for sabotage.
Snake Plissken is familiar with the concept of insuring that people live close to where they work.
It’s just one more of the items on The Great Reset agenda, beginning: no travel (save the planet – from what exactly and for whom is never spelled out); we ‘all’ live in cities (except the billionaires on their islands) and have everything delivered to us by drone, and we’ll be happy.
In other words, force people to live where the government wants them to, not where they want to.
I don’t buy the claim that roads destroyed cities. It was the welfare state that replaced fathers with welfare checks.
effing liars…
If the people of Rochester want it, they can pay for it. (And if any federal money paid to have the freeway widened last year in Henderson, everyone else has a right to be upset.)