Cars and quality of life

Over at the New York Times there's an opinion piece -- "Cars Are Ruining Our Cities" -- that collects a lot of threads that often get discussed in this area about cities, neighborhoods, cars, bikes, traffic, and projects such as the Madison Ave road diet. Write Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey: "The bottom line is that the decision to turn our public streets so completely over to the automobile, as sensible as it might have seemed decades ago, nearly wrecked the quality of life in our cities." [NYT]

Comments

I really really wanted to use public transportation. I picked an apartment in Guilderland based on proximity to a bus stop. Both my home and work were technically served by public transportation however using it turned out to be impractical. What was a 10-15 minute car trip turned out to be 40-60 minutes trip with a transfer at Crossgates. I don't have an extra 1 to 1.5 hours every day to spare for transit.
There was a commuter "express" bus along route 20 that really had a nice vibe with people greeting each other, chatting, knitting, reading books and enjoying the trip however the bus runs only once an hour.

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