Posted by NV Yea, that's the thing--our urban areas are now so spread out that you pretty much need a car to get around. Asking someone to cycle 60km each way for their commute is asking an awful lot. Hell, asking someone to take the bus 60km each way is asking a lot!

Check out this development here in Burnaby. This is a good example of what we need more of. If people would just live closer to their place of work, learning or play, [when and where possible] urban sprawl and the associated environmental concerns would be mitigated.

http://www.univerc.../cornerstones.html

Implementing any sort of change would take massive government intervention, which is slow and costly and entails sacrafices that a lot of people would be reluctant to make.

I don't see a need for the government to get involved at all. If you change the mindset of the people, away from 'needing' their own 1/4 acre and two SUV garage, towards one based on logic and reason, the problem solves itself. DO I NEED to get an SUV to be safer? It makes people in small cars unsafe, thus perpetuating the desire for big cars. If everyone rode bikes, we would only be in danger of 40km/h accidents at worst, and then only being hit by something weighing less than 300lbs.

Yes, only in Canada can I get away with metric and imperial measurements in the same sentence.

The government could get involved by issuing tax credits to those living in 'enviromentally friendly' or 'approved' locations, but the money saved in NOT maying the taxes associated with higher vehicle maintainance costs etc is a credit in itself.

If you can't tell by now, I am a bike commuter. I'm not a raving loonie who throws rocks at cars and curses every one of them, but I have been riding 13 kms to work for 3 1/2 years now, and I've saved AT LEAST $6000 in car insurance, gas, associated taxes etc. Fitter, healthier, happier, all because I changed my mindset.
/soapbox

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Posted by SnakeCorp The current proposal in the UK (and it's a serious one) is that all cars are fitted with a black box and then charged per mile for every journey. Journeys in cities could be as much as £1.50 (about $3) a mile, whilst a journey in the country would cost from a few pence per mile.

There is a similar deal going on here in the states. I cant remember the city/state but seems like it was nebraska. There supposed to be testing it in some city. The thought is most money raised for road expansion and maintenance is thru gasoline taxes. The thought has always been that hey if you want to drive a gas guzzler you sort of have to pay the penalty. Then some people got together and said wait a minute I have kids etc.. and need a bigger car or I'm poor and cant afford a newer car that gets good gas milage. So the plan is to drop all gas taxes and as part of the inspection or license registration you get a box installed that tracks how many miles you drive and pay taxes based on that at the time of your registration each year. That way all pay the same amount based on the how much they use the roads. Sort of makes sense but I alot of privacy people are concerned as theres talk the boxes can also be tracked and used like a gps to determine where anyone particular car is at any time .... and that is a bit creepy!

Hi all,

I guess this may be somewhat of an introduction/my thoughts reply to this issue.

I've been a member here for over a year now, back when there was no 'full member' status...I just enjoyed passing my time checking out some pictures. ANyways, now that 'full membership' is required to see a lot of the sites, it's become necessary for me to start contributing. So anyways, here we go...

I'm from the outskirts of Toronto, and nearly every new development in town has been designed used the whole 'smart-growth' principles (small lots, community green space, improvement of tranportation infrastructure). I'm not going to lie, for a long time I was really skeptical about it's effectiveness, especially given the shoddy bus system that we had in place at the time. Now, a few years later, things are starting to look up. We have a totally new bus system in place, and are finally starting to see some public-transit friendly infrastructure.

I'd like to hear people's opinions on the whole gap between personal space (which led to urban sprawl), and the movement towards public green space (smart growth, with developments built around shared greenspace). I've grown up in the suburbs of Toronto, and have become used to having a decent sized fenced in yard. As well, I'd also like to hear what you guys think we should do with the current sprawl, as so much land has already been used that it makes all new smart growth developments seem like worn bandaids trying to stop huge wounds.

interesting read relating to all this:

outside lies magic by john stilgoe.

fabulous.

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