- But air quality aways changes
- Man can’t affect the air (weather)
- There is no consensus
- plants and animals adapt
- Ozone is Oxygen which is good for us
/s
Don’t forget that this state is not one cohesive government. The CITIES where this is being said are largely blue cities that absolutely believe in climate change and do things to prevent it (though probably not enough). So please don’t assume all the governments here are as stupid as the state government
Houston: “We’re a blue city and we believe in climate change!”
Also Houston:
Just one more lane bro, one more lane will solve our transit problems bro
Aw gee! Are y-y-you sure, Rick? I mean, it’s congested as fuck either way!
Is Houston in control of that? Or is that TxDOT?
Maintained by TxDOT
If I remember correctly, the way texas operates in metro areas is that a ‘community’ has influence on the roads. I can’t remember what they call it, but it’s something like a district road authority. Austin, for example, is not well served by expanding roads indefinitely, but the other cities that are around austin are benefited by expanding austin’s roads so their citizens can commute into austin. The other communities collectively have more of an influence/vote on the authority’s directives, and thus, the roads in austin get increased.
There was a really good video from a youtube channel that talks about why I-35 should be buried underground and shrunk, but it won’t happen because of the government structure around road building.
Tell me you don’t know how a metropolis works without telling me.
That is an interstate highway running through the city of Katy. The Houston Metro area is made up of over 100 cities and 40 unincorporated towns.
Houston has soent the last 40 years paving over the Katy prairie and are shocked that they keep getting floods and heat waves
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No shit, do I look like the city planner? I’m saying that people need to look at these large cities with more nuance than “Big City Bad” and realize that things are more complicated than one singular governmental body. In the case of Houston and more specifically this stretch of highway, You have the state government with an overarching control of I-10 through Texas, then this particular stretch of it goes through the cities of Katy and Houston, connecting dozens of other smaller towns and cities with in the metro area.
To look at one single stretch of highway and pretend it is emblematic of the entire state/city is idiotic and shows a bad faith attempt to paint the populace with as wide a brush as possible.
I am only pushing back on this because I am just so damn tired of the constant “Texas Bad” posts comments that are unwilling to engage in a meaningful conversation about the topic and pretend like my state is full of the dumbest most right wing shit heels, while we also have some of the largest left leaning cities in the country.
I am only pushing back on this because I am just so damn tired of the constant “Texas Bad” posts comments that are unwilling to engage in a meaningful conversation about the topic and pretend like my state is full of the dumbest most right wing shit heels, while we also have some of the largest left leaning cities in the country.
Believe it or not, I’m a bike/ped/transit activist in Atlanta. I understand both “how a metropolis works,” and your sentiment, better than you realize.
Having said that, I still stand behind my cynical comment. Let’s not pretend the Houston city government hasn’t been largely complicit with this shit for decades, regardless of how “blue” their constituents are. Frankly, even some of the most bleeding-heart liberals here throughout America get real mad, real fast, the instant anybody makes even the meekest suggestion that maybe they should try getting out of their cars. (Or, very relatedly, suggesting that maybe we should allow more housing density anywhere near their single-family homes, for that matter.) That laziness and NIMBY sense of entitlement (for a lifestyle built on redlining and Ponzi schemes, no less) is emblematic of how even the the “bluest” American cities are run, across the board.
It’s starting to move in that direction, but extremely slowly over the decades. Think more a park & ride (i.e. drive to parking lot then ride a light rail the rest of the way to work) vs. a subway system the whole way. It’s only liberal-ish in relation to the rest of Texas.
Tell me you listen to the propaganda about induced demand without… there are ways to add lanes without making it worse. But they don’t want to pay for it.
And the rural asshats are 100% going to drive into town in their giant trucks because city folk said not driving is a good idea…
Leapords slowly ate the state.
You left out EVs being just as bad
Ozone protects us from UV radiation
I’m not a Texas fan or defender by any means, but I do know Texans, and the state telling them to not do something will make them do it more out of spite
TEXAS NOOO PLEASE DON’T CREATE MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, MY LIB SENSIBILITIES WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT.
I personally feel owned by interconnected light rail, not gonna lie.
I didn’t really need to go anywhere today, but now I’m considering it. Fuck you Greg Abbott. You can’t scream oil at me and then tell me not to use it!
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Texans, by Roald Dahl
“Why do they love acting so tough?” she used to ask.
“Because they’re children,” Ed would answer. “They’re dangerous children who go about trying to imitate their grandfathers. Their grandfathers were pioneers. These people aren’t.”
As a former Texas resident: The Texas government can fuck alllllll the way off with that. Design a city that doesn’t need cars and people won’t need to use them. Residents HAVE to use cars because the place is so fucking unfriendly to pedestrians.
Houston is one of the worst cities I’ve ever been to. Fuck you if you’re trying to walk anywhere, fuck you right in the heart. That includes if you’re walking to and from your
car.massive truckAlso fuck you are you trying to drive? You fucking crazy?
I’ve hated only a small number of cities I’ve visited. Denver comes to mind, Los Angeles, Wichita Kansas, and if you took all the hate I have for those three cities, injected it with hgh and heroin, it would be a small shadow on the wall for the pure unadulterated rage I have for Houston Texas.
Gary Indiana wasn’t as hostile. Fucking Ferguson during the protests wasn’t as hostile. And I saw a carjacking 10 minutes after stepping off the fucking plane thé last time I was there.
Fuck Texas. Give it back to Mexico.
Mexico doesnt deserve that burden, lets just burn it down and declare it a national park.
I think you mean meth, not heroin. Heroin would have the opposite effect
I will very slightly disagree. You can live without a car in Houston in some areas so long as you work in the same area (or from home) or one nearby with bus service. I lived in the Montrose and could mostly walk/cycle to anything I needed.
That said, most places in Houston are going to be a lot more difficult for that or impossible. Had I lived that close to the job that moved me to Houston, it would have been in one of the higher-crime-rate areas and not good for walking.
As a fellow former Texas resident, I can confirm and endorse this statement.
The Texas government can fuck alllll the way off with that…and many other things cough cough women’s rights cough cough
As a pedestrian in one of the mentioned cities, this is accurate. We have an ok bus network but the schedules are terrible and getting around on foot is dangerous and it’s like 100 degrees out with 90% humidity. Very few people put up with it and literally no one will because of this.
I’m from Texas, this isn’t feasible. If you need to get from anywhere to any place else you’re driving there. Depending on where you are busses may be hit or miss & may not even be an option. Pretty happy to live in a place now where I haven’t needed to drive for years.
I know multiple people who don’t even have a driver’s license (and before I get comments about ‘Europoors’ – No, it’s not because of money, lol), including myself. Never needed one. Within the city I can walk, go by bike, there’s buses and trams. For traveling farther (also internationally), there are trains. Most of the time I just walk everywhere. Multiple supermarkets within walking distance, train station within walking distance, bus stop in front of my door, tram stop 1 minute away.
My husband does have a license, but we own no car.
Can’t imagine being forced to drive a car due to lack of other options. For a population very obsessed with so-called freedom, Americans seem to accept and demand very little freedom sometimes.
I have a friend that works in Texas and his IT department literally forced all their employees who have been WFH since COVID to start coming into the office 5 days a week again. So literally the opposite of what this article is stating. Companies need to be held liable for this shit, especially if they have infrastructure in place to easily adopt WFH.
An ask like this means at best the folks invested in fixing the problem are inconvenienced, while the “fuck you, I got mine” contingent keep on trucking (probably literally in their Fx50s).
Pass laws that incentivize doing the right thing, or don’t pretend you in any way want to fix it.
Meanwhile, Ken Paxton has sued the city of Austin for ‘misleading’ people when it comes to the voter-approved light rail transit expansion. Oh, and TxDOT is widening I-35 through downtown Austin despite countless folks protesting and some organizations suing them to stop it.
Transit across the state SUCKS. Bike lanes are never properly separated. Light rail is sparse. Busses literally everywhere suck.
In Texas? Good luck. This is the state where people express themselves by putting horns on their cars.
It’s also the state where you sometimes have to drive two hours just to get to the supermarket.
Yeah, I think the latter component is what makes this request ludicrous. Everything in Texas is so spread out. It is not a place you can reasonably get around without a car. Mass transit exists, but it’s pretty inefficient in most the cities.
People who’ve never lived in Texas really don’t get it. Everything is spread out to an almost ludicrous degree. I drive an hour to get to my friend’s house, and I don’t even consider him to be far away. We both live in the same metroplex.
Public transportation is almost complete failure here due to not being prioritized, and driving anywhere is a pain in the ass with drivers from all over just winging it on congested streets. Don’t even get me started on overpriced tolls that have become the only reasonable way to travel 30min+
Texas is not ok.
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These sort of horns-
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You do know that’s not the only car in the world with horns on it, right?
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It was literally the first image I saw and it was an example of what I meant. I really didn’t think it was necessary to check the license plate design.
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Not always. okay fine so always
They also jack up the trucks by putting on wheels that are themselves taller than the fuel-efficient cars that they drive over like pavement.
There’s also the trucks that do the “rolling coal” shit.
Fucking shit - TIL that’s on purpose!?
Yep. As a Prius driver, they do it to me all the time, because apparently paying less for gas than they do makes me a communist.
Hehe, if I was there I would wear a mask everywhere I went, just to fuck with people:-).
Even/especially inside of a vehicle.
Fun fact: they have to modify the emissions system of the truck to do it, violating Federal law (the Clean Air Act).
If you try to “roll coal” in an unmodified diesel (in proper working order), the “best” you’ll get is a light haze of soot, not a black cloud. This is because the manufacturers do actually try to design them to be efficient, and every bit of soot represents unburned fuel that didn’t get converted into propulsive force.
Yup, they remove the particulate filter and DEF system to get those clouds. Arguably, those systems do hinder efficiency in the system, but at the cost of pollution.
I have a 2020 Ram 2500 for a work truck, and I’m constantly amazed how quiet and efficient this thing is for 8000lbs, even with all the emissions stuff in place. I wouldn’t remove any of it because I’m not about to be part of the problem as best I can, but it seems like manufacturers are starting to figure out a balance.
It’s not just that; they also modify the ECU tuning and maybe even swap out fuel injectors themselves to dump in lots of extra fuel that there isn’t enough air to burn. Even without particulate filters and DEF, Diesels don’t naturally produce anywhere near that much soot. You’ve got to deliberately force them to be that bad!
(Source: I have a '98 VW TDI—made before DPFs and DEF were things—that I’ve modded for more performance, and even in the worst-case scenario of flooring it while running dino-diesel, it barely produces a haze. On B100 biodiesel, it’s even cleaner.)
Bottom line is that if a Diesel is producing lots of visible smoke, it’s either really, really old and shitty (think pre-1980s non-turbo indirect injection), or it’s severely worn out, or somebody made it do it on purpose.
violating Federal law
Ngl, that sounds like a “feature”, not a bug, given that we are talking about Texans here. I’m not even being pejorative, that’s literally a thing they often proffer as worth being proud of, Remember The Alamo and such.
And yes that is a fun fact - thanks for sharing it!:-)
Unfortunately there are only a few cities where this is a reasonable ask in the United States, and none I know of are in Texas. Most are in colder parts of the country.
The Texas state government’s path forward here is to do what they can to pedestrianize and densify their cities, but that’s a long term project.
The Texas state government’s path forward here is to do what they can to pedestrianize and densify their cities, but that’s a long term project.
I know you probably didn’t mean it as them actually doing it, but good lord, that statement made me laugh. The governments in texas are so focused on bullshit that increases the problem. A friend just sent me an article his city put out with the headline “YY city is XX% developed, with plans to finish it out by year 20ZZ!” Their “finish it out” means removing 95% of the remaining greenspace and paving it with concrete businesses that have just enough plants to be aesthetically pleasing when the landscaper crew cuts it.
Shit, texas is literally trying to make “one more lane!” a constant thing. When I had to drive through any of their big cities, it’s just a massive construction sprawl, because as soon as they finish one section’s extra lane, they start on the next section.
Seriously. I had to drive through Texas a few months ago, and not only was I shocked at how you can have 6 lanes in both directions STILL being in bumper-to-bumper traffic with constant ‘construction zones’ that were adding another lane into the shoulder.
I wasn’t sure if the construction was to actually help, or just so they could charge double fines for speeding ALL the time.
Texas is what happens when conservatives have unchecked power to govern. People governing on complex issues like climate science based on nothing but “gut instincts”
If by"gut instincts" you mean “gets me paid”
My gut instincts tell me that the people who are smarter than I am and actually checking out the cause of and what might happen because of global warming are probably at least 95% right about the things they say and the other 5% is just semantics.
Is it even possible to get around USA without cars? There’s not even proper paths everywhere for pedestrians.
In certain cities yes, but not many places.
You can pretty easily do it in lots of large cities. Here in Seattle it’s not hard at all going North-South with public transit. East-West is another story…
This is still harder in Seattle than in a lot of major cities, but far better in Seattle than in many other US cities. The thing we have going for us here is that we are constantly expanding and improving our public transit.
It’s possible, but it’s a challenge, and it often involves hiring a car (like an Uber or a taxi) for at least “the last mile” anyway.
Electric vehicles. Did you forget?
Also, the reason why walking, running, or even biking to get around 99% of the US isn’t feasible is because the distances are too vast. The average commute time for people in the US is 26.7 minutes and most of that will be on a highway. Covering the same distance on a bike would take 3-10x longer (why 10x? Because of soooo many bridges that don’t allow bikes or pedestrians!).
Electric vehicles. Did you forget?
They are still cars.
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Then it’s a public transport failure, USA has horrible train infrastructure.
But even suburbs lack paths for pedestrians, even if you wanted to walk into town it’s dangerous from the get go. The whole country is designed for cars and nothing else, there have been projects I have seen though in some cities where they tear down highways and build pedestrian areas instead, so it’s not an unsolvable problem if they can beat the lobbying.
for a country that supposedly values freedom its amusing to note how few things are considered freedoms:
driving = freedom*
walking = not freedom
clean air = not freedom
quality public transit = not freedom
*with purchase of expensive vehicle
driving = freedom
*with purchase of expensive vehicle
And legally-required insurance, and being licensed by the State to operate it…
It’s entirely consistent with freedom. Freedom to build with little thought to long term effects. Freedom from paying for infrastructure that benefits everyone.
To do things correctly you need to restrict and regulate.
Suburbs have great pedestrian paths - if your only goal is to exercise. Those paths don’t go anywhere, but living in the suburbs I many people using them for exercise.
Even for exercise they tend to be non-existent or suck, which means people end up driving to the few that are good rather than starting their jog from their front door.
Not in the suburbs near me - they are all new suburbs build in the last 3-10 years though. (3 years is important as sidewalks are built last so until the houses are all done the sidewalks don’t connect). Older suburbs though, rarely have sidewalks.
That’s because of urban sprawl. People prefer to drive farther and longer rather than living in higher density housing.
People prefer to drive farther and longer rather than living in higher density housing.
If that were really true, it wouldn’t be necessary to restrict residential zoning density by law because people wouldn’t choose to build multifamily housing even where it was allowed.
In reality, it’s the opposite: dense housing is severely restricted by law, but because so many people do want to live in it, the price gets driven up to the point that they can’t afford to anymore and are forced to drive farther and longer instead.
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It’s a selection effect. Those that remain are those that prefer that kind of isolation.:-) (or are trapped bc they don’t know how to move away)
If you wanted to e.g. own animals like horses it can legit be better to live in a more rural area.
Lol, you do realize you debunked your own claim by the end of the paragraph, right?
The claim that USA has extremely lackluster pedestrian and public transport infrastructure? No, I don’t think I did. I merely pointed out steps are being made in the right direction.
Sorry, that was meant for someone else, lol.
I used to live in a very car dependent city and now I’m somewhere that I can easily walk or bike anywhere I need and get there within 15 minutes and I am very grateful for that. Our biking and public transport infrastructure keeps getting improvements, too, which is awesome.
If they want people to use their cars less they need to start making that an actual option. This is not on the individuals but the government.
People are pretty predictable ultimately, we take the path of least resistance most of the time. If it’s quicker or cheaper or easier to do something one way then we’ll do it that way.
I’m calling bullshit. Walking for 15 minutes puts you in a circle about 1-2 miles in diameter, a bike, maybe like 5-6 miles in diameter. You simply cannot pack every place you would want to regularly go to, into an area that small, and still have room for people to live unless you severely restrict your lifestyle and become a hermit, or live in Kowloon Walled City.
I appreciate your maths but you’d be pretty surprised how much stuff can fit in that area. I probably also live in a very ideal spot in my city, it’s certainly not the case for everywhere. I’m pretty much right between a suburb full of housing and our ‘nightlife’ area. And the inner city where I work is just next to that. I am not exaggerating that I can get to work on my (e) bike in 15 minutes. And there’s heaps of things in that area. It’s a big place, though, so sometimes I do need to get an uber but I often go weeks and months without needing to.
I’m sure my boss will understand that I can’t make him a dollar today because Texas said not to drive.
I have nothing in walking distance. Not even a convenience store.
So you could ask me to not take a road trip or to reduce the number of trips I take in my car today, but avoiding the car entirely isn’t physically possible.
I’m pretty sure that’s all originally by design.
It’s ok Abbott will reassure us it’s all nonsense and defund anything environmental before they can do anymore damage to the god fearing Texan minds that depend on his leadership.
Oh! They’re building more public transportation?
