Subject: BIKE: At this late stage, light rail can't do what it once could Date: 10/28 9:11 AM Received: 10/28 11:04 AM From: Roger Baker, rcbaker@mail.eden.com To: austin-bikes@topica.com >This is a good and valid point. If the alternative is to >build more roads, light rail looks a lot better... Folks, Whatever else light rail may be, it is absolutely no cure for congestion. Its a day late and a dollar short. Instead it is more a symptom of congestion that would find little favor if it were not for intractable trends tied to using roads to try to accomodate unsustainable but highly profitable sprawl. Support for light rail on the part of the political establishment should be viewed as a symptom that existing highway oriented approaches have reached the end of their ability to make much difference to rescue a deteriorating situation. Light rail and transit of any kind will never serve low density suburbs very effectively except as a last choice when the roads like US 183 are clogged up and there isn't much alternative. Light rail is expensive open-heart surgery in the central city that won't help anyone until at least 2007 but provides a an option for at least a few who mostly live in the central city. Nothing can reverse the problems caused by decades of bad land use policy which amount to a costly syndrome. I helped get Cap Metro voted in 15 years ago when the promise was made that light rail would soon be implemented. Then the road lobby managed to delay it to promote highways and sprawl. The fact that the local political establishment is supporting light rail, or appears to be about to do so, is a symptom that there are no good alternatives at this point and that even the Texas politicians are beginning to wake up. Certainly they would not do anything very progressive and forward thinking unless forced to do so. If current trends could be made to work, the status quo would prevail easily and only roads would get built in the current growth boom. Light rail won't directly help biking much except that it is an ally in favoring dense mixed-use central city development that likewise benefits pedestrians along with bike riders in the long run. In other words transit is a natural ally of these other alternatives to the automobile and so transit users should ally with peds and bike riders to fight the sprawl interests, IMO. Those who seek direct benefits for bikes still have to go lobby for bicycle-friendly street and road design. But over the longer run, infill and mixed use and transit-friendly zoning will benefit bikers greatly in terms of making biking more practical as an alternative, especially in the urban core. And we must not forget that light rail cannot do much without being integrated with bus service. Light rail is generally used as a high capacity spine down a corridor with buses feeding it like ribs on the spine. So even if bike riders never use light rail, they can still benefit from improved bus service and in other indirect ways. My impression is that many bike riders do not have cars and thus use the bus more frequently than average folks to fill in the gaps. **************************** Note, incidently, that 300,000 Americans die from obesity each, up sharply in this decade, and that much of this increase is linked to decreased exercise related to the automobile. So I presume that of the 50,000 deaths directly caused by accidents, there is a much higher hidden death toll caused by decreased opportunity for excercise while commuting in heavy traffic, to say nothing of the hidden toll caused by air pollution. In other words, our cheap gas/automobile addiction takes far more lives EACH YEAR than died in the entire Vietnam War, while destroying the livability of our cities at the same time. --Yours, Roger --------------------------------------------------- BIKING IN AUSTIN: http://michaelbluejay.com/bicycle _____________________________________________________________ Got a Favorite Topic to Discuss? Start a List at Topica. http://www.topica.com/t/4