[geeks] Taxes

[Phil Stracchino]

Sandwich Maker wrote:
> " From: Phil Stracchino <alaric at metrocast.net>
> " 
> " Do you burn more fuel crawling to your workplace through near-gridlocked 
> " city traffic, or driving 50% further on less-loaded and relatively 
> " free-flowing roads?
> 
> but city density does support mass transit and foot traffic as valid
> commutation methods.  in nyc, car owners are the freaks.  otoh when
> cabbies went on strike gridlock was cut by half...

So does a smallish town.

Background:  I used to live in one of the UK's New Towns.  They were 
founded after WW2, about 35-40 miles out in a ring around what was then 
the outer edge of London, leaving a sizeable "green belt" in between. 
Mine was Stevenage, built around the core of a village that had been 
there at least since 1066 (it was recorded in the Domesday Book as 
Stignace).  The school I went to was founded in 1558, by which time 
Stignace had become Stevenage.  It was a town of about 75,000 at the 
time, with an industrial belt along the southwest side, largely filled 
with aerospace and electronics companies such as British Aircraft 
Corporation, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, Marconi, and Ferranti.  Most, 
though by no means all, families owned a car; but the town had a good, 
well-thought-out bus network, and it was completely viable to get from 
any part of the town to work or to the "downtown" shopping district by 
bus.  At peak traffic times, there was a bus every 7.5 minutes on all 
routes.  At the time we moved there, around 1969, we were on the edge of 
town; by the time we left in 1980, the edge had moved out as far again. 
  It was ten minutes to the town center on my bicycle, and I could walk 
to the industrial area from home in about half an hour.

> in a lot of ways that's exactly what i have in this city.  there's no
> place i'd consider safe to leave my bike though.

Stevenage was very bike-friendly, with a separate network of cycleways 
and underpasses to avoid the need for bicycle traffic to use or cross 
major roads (though I frequently did anyway; I rode a racing bike and 
was travelling as fast as, and sometimes faster than, the motor 
traffic), and extensive town-provided bicycle racks at shopping centers etc.


-- 
   Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
   alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
          Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                  It's not the years, it's the mileage.