Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 2:14 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
NEOPO wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
We're not leaving, though. I'll probably have my ashes scattered out the window of a car as it crawls slowly down the San Diego Freeway.
With your PO knowledge why wouldnt you leave?
I find this quite odd.
Nothing wrong with standing your ground. Everyone at some point is going to need to draw and line in the sand and say. This is my home, this is where I'm staying, come hell or high water.
One of the reasons America is so F*cked up is that people are running around moving all over the place. All the time. They don't have any roots, no connections to anything. All these people are moving to where I live, but they don't crap about it. They don't know the history. They don't know the fish or wildlife. They can't identify the trees. The only familar landmarks are the wal-marts and mcdonalds, just like where they came from. Geography of nowhere. Why should they care that it's being destroyed? They don't know how beautiful or nearly pristine it was only 15-20 years ago. It's just another sector in the global slum now.
Part of me wants to move, but another part says stand your ground. This is my home, I have roots here. I know the land and the water. I'm like an Indian compared to these people coming in.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:48 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
TreebeardsUncle wrote:
The sickness is in people's heads as they will perpetuate the same conditions whereever they go to escape in their bloated suvs, demanding to be fenced in around their oversized sheetrock and particle board isolated inefficient
boxes, and surrounded by ugly shops too venal to be tacky with the familiar logos catering to obesity and indulgence.
Heh heh.
I just thought of something...
PO.com should sponsor a competition to see who could turn out the best single sentence slamming the energy-intensive, wasteful, lazy, gluttonous and consumerist American society.
Let's say, 100 words or less, single sentence rant, judged on slam-factor, level of disgust and howlingly trenchant literary merit. _________________ "May you live in interesting times"
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 7:09 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
Just as long as run-on sentences don't qualify. After all those are all too easy to compose, hey I do it all the time!:-)
---
San Francisco Bay Area, a couple of days ago. I had to drive from East Bay to SF to replace a PRI circuit card in a client's PBX. This had to happen after the close of the business day because it would take their phones down for a short while. And no, I can't do public transport when I have to carry three or four cubic feet of tools & equipment and the client site is a mile or two up & down San Francisco hills from the nearest BART stop.
So I look at the realtime traffic map before I leave and it shows a backup on the bridge caused by a highspeed chase that fortunately ended with no fatalities and one suspect in custody.
It takes me an hour and three-quarters to do a trip that under normal conditions takes a half hour. It would have been faster to walk the whole damn distance. And most of the clog was ahead of the metering lights on the approach to the bridge.
So yes, this crap is hitting the fan in places other than LA.
Commercial vehicles usually have no choice but to be on the road, to carry goods and so on. Commuters and pleasure-travelers on the other hand.... well let's just say I would not be unhappy if gas went to $15 per gallon. We already do the vast majority of service calls via remote modem i.e. no driving, and we'd work the gas price into our pricing for site visits. The idiots whose bovine driving behaviors are clogging up the roads would either find another way or Darwinize themselves.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 7:32 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
gg3 wrote:
(...)
It takes me an hour and three-quarters to do a trip that under normal conditions takes a half hour. It would have been faster to walk the whole damn distance. And most of the clog was ahead of the metering lights on the approach to the bridge.
(...)
That's just it - when you could have literally walked the distance faster you know things are well and truly clusterf*cked.
My disgust is so great that it wraps around and my rant-o-meter fails me. All these people packed into these giant gleaming vehicles, pissing away the last cheap oil and going nowhere. <shakes head> And it's like this in many areas of the US, not just LA.
Though I'll admit I derive a perverse pleasure from walking and/or cycling through jams like that, and making better time.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:12 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
Great thread! To me it says "who gives a crap about peak oil." The current automotive culture is so screwed who the hell cares about saving it?!?
Early in the 20th century people were wondering, "what the hell are we going to do with all this oil?" Someone had the brain wave to use it in cars rather than electric and veggie oil which were common at the time. 100 years later, look where we are. This isn't a survival issue, it's a transport issue. The current transporation system sucks, so again, who cares if it falls apart due to oil depletion? _________________ Drive to work... work to drive!
The storied New York hotel — an Art Deco landmark that inspired Cole Porter songs and even a salad — is lending its name to a Beverly Hills project that is stirring up nightmares among traffic-weary residents.
"How on Earth can you put in all this additional density and height … and not wind up with one huge parking lot?"
Good question! Not that it matters, of course. When big money is talking, nobody listens to anybody else.
The congestion out here is not limited to the streets and freeways:
If it were a hub for ships instead of trains, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.'s Hobart rail yard would rank as the fourth-largest U.S. container port, behind Los Angeles, Long Beach and New York-New Jersey.
The Hobart yard sits southeast of downtown Los Angeles on 245 acres of continuous movement. It's the busiest rail yard in the country for transferring cargo containers between trucks and trains.
But the Hobart rail yard is about to hit a wall. Late this year, Fort Worth-based Burlington Northern's BNSF Railway Co. expects Hobart to reach its capacity of 1.5 million 40-foot cargo containers, like a parking lot filling up and having to turn cars away.
Is this what you call "overshoot"? _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Joined: Jun 05, 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Portland Oregon, USA
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:36 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
Right on, Kris!
This is another one of the upsides to peaking oil production. We're in an abusive relationship with our transportation system and all of its implications for our way of life. We hate sitting in traffic, we hate filling up the tank, we hate long commuting times, we hate the high cost of insurance, and on and on. But we keep coming back for more because we don't stop to fully consider (and fund) other options.
Bring on the oil shocks! Drive the price of gas through the roof! Obviously, we'll need to be forced to change our way of life because we're incapable of doing it voluntarily.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:38 am Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
I don't know if it's necessarily overshoot, but it sure as hell is overwhelmed infrastructure. there is a point where the old style of infrastructure simply can't be built enough to satisfy demand. That's where I see places like much of cali, and Atl.
Look at the older northeastern cities and you see an older infrastructure, with different densities, requirements, carrying capacities and such.
It is clear that cities change when needed, and we are close to that now. The remaining questions are, how far along the overwhelmed and broken model of LA do we proceed? What will be the trigger that starts a different infrastructure rolling elsewhere (if at all), and what will that new infrastructure be?
Listenng to your stories, I can't help but think how nice it would be to be able to cycle through that madness, but the sad truth is that there often is no way to cycle through sprawl-focused infrastructure.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:15 pm Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
Hi.
Well, the traffic in the SF Bay and much of the Sacramento valley is approaching the level of disfunctionality one sees in LA.
What is interesting also is that there really is very little difference between the rich and poor neighborhoods. Both are subject to gridlock, air pollution, and are surrounded by the same style of disjointed developments of sterile homogenous cookie-cutter corporitist crap. It is also fitting that it was found that a lot of the plastic pollution in the Pacific emanated from LA, the plastic capital of the world in that it is ersatz -- a lipstick on a corpse city, of all style and no substance, false front glitz on a new worthless big ugly pile of crap.
g
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:47 pm Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
pstarr wrote:
Americans have it coming. We think we can live fast and cheap. We think we are cool. We think we are better than anyone else. That include the young, the old, the poor and the rich. Everyone is too busy buying crap and running around looking for the next thrill to bother with basics--like growing up, getting serious, taking charge of their lives and governments.
We will never overcome the mountain of crap we have shat on this pretty planet. In fact we are piling more on every day. It was stupid when I was kid years ago and it remains stupid today.
I tried to do something about it. I left suburbia for the city and gave away my car. I rehabbed a loft and priced myself out of the cool generation. Then I moved to the country to try to kickstart an agarian revolution. That failed. Then I built a cohousing community in town on a tired old polluted downtown timber mill. The front window looks out on highway 101. I watch the cars all day from my desk where I work. They looked stretched from a distance at 65mph. Some kind of a optical illusion I think. I can twist my head and look out of the back of the building on Humbuldt Bay Wildlife refugee and see ducks in the air. I'm lucky but I'm moving. Can't stand this child-friendly crap any longer.
I just bought a pistol. A SigSauer 226 9mm. I have land and will build a house on in the middle of nowhere in paradise in coastal california. Next I by a shotgun. Better not blame me for this mess.
LMAO! Love it! This dude pretty much somes up the mindset of posters on here - he's just farking pissed about everything. If peak oil were suddenly solved by a miracle energy source, and the government redistributed all funding from wars to sustainable food production, and cancer was cured, and racism was ended.....people on here would still be really pissed off! They would stoked for the latest Bird Flu to come crashing down on us, or something like that.
This dude did everything - from urban renewal to agrarian lifestyle to cohousing living - but pretty much decided he hated it all. Awesome. So he's going to move to the middle of nowhere with a gun.
Ok...... yeah guy. It's not you, it's everybody else. They should all be on meds.
Joined: May 15, 2005 Posts: 4142 Location: THE MATRIX
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:55 pm Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
seldom_seen wrote:
NEOPO wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
We're not leaving, though. I'll probably have my ashes scattered out the window of a car as it crawls slowly down the San Diego Freeway.
With your PO knowledge why wouldnt you leave?
I find this quite odd.
Nothing wrong with standing your ground. Everyone at some point is going to need to draw and line in the sand and say. This is my home, this is where I'm staying, come hell or high water.
One of the reasons America is so F*cked up is that people are running around moving all over the place. All the time. They don't have any roots, no connections to anything. All these people are moving to where I live, but they don't crap about it. They don't know the history. They don't know the fish or wildlife. They can't identify the trees. The only familar landmarks are the wal-marts and mcdonalds, just like where they came from. Geography of nowhere. Why should they care that it's being destroyed? They don't know how beautiful or nearly pristine it was only 15-20 years ago. It's just another sector in the global slum now.
Part of me wants to move, but another part says stand your ground. This is my home, I have roots here. I know the land and the water. I'm like an Indian compared to these people coming in.
I agree with the part of you that wants to move then okay?
Alot of people care but are powerless to stop "PROGRESS".
My people migrated from the mountain mining towns to the steel cities of the ohio river.
They were chasing a better life yet ultimately they fell into an economic trap.
I will go back to the hills and mountains and try again.
They sold the farm and I will have to go buy it back it seems.....
My hometown and surrounding area is an economic disaster just waiting for a peak oil disaster to happen.
I had to abandon it long ago if I wanted to make a decent living - sad but oh so true.
You think I should stay there and try to make it better or return to some form of wilderness and try to live sustainably?
Kinda hard to live sustainably with 1/4 acre in the middle of an easy motoring landscape dont ya think?
I know that part of you that wants to leave agrees with me
Sadly I see little hope for areas like this and I believe they will have to suffer a great deal before they ever go through any great change.
Perhaps a movement will occur and people like Zardoz will manage just fine which makes me wonder, since Z is so vocal about all of this then what is Z doing to prep, to set an example etc etc?
What are you doing to make it better Z?
Just curious. _________________ It is easier to enslave a people that wish to remain free then it is to free a people who wish to remain enslaved.
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
I live in LA County too and can sympathize with your plight. I live in the Eastern portion of the county so my freeway is the 60 and I agree one side is always a zoo if it's between 6:00-11:00 am its the west bound side if its 12:00-8:00 p.m. its the Eastbound. Of course on the weekends ironically traffic gets even crazier for some reason especially if your traveling westbound on Saturday between 2:00-3:00 p.m. for some inexplicable reason there is a nice little nighttime flairup on Saturday night.
Sunday for some reason is okay. I guess even commuters need a break from driving.
However an interesting question was asked:
Quote:
It is clear that cities change when needed, and we are close to that now. The remaining questions are, how far along the overwhelmed and broken model of LA do we proceed? What will be the trigger that starts a different infrastructure rolling elsewhere (if at all), and what will that new infrastructure be?
Unfortunately the answer here looks pretty grim. Infrastructure wise I've read that the US infrastructure in general is falling apart and the situation in California is even worse than most states so that's pretty bad.
Also the state is running mega deficits on an annual basis so its hard to see how the state will get money for new light rail projects.
Personally I feel that global warming will really destroy California. Not so much on the environmental front per see but with temperatures in Moscow in the 40's now(as of this writing) and temperatures in New York just ten degrees cooler than California its hard to see the how California can keep its original appeal as the sunshine state.
Also with the traffic and high costs of moving out here. Average home prices in LA county a just tick below $500,000 its difficult tom compensate workers adequately so they can afford anything resembling a middle class lifestyle.
A second point that was made is absolutely true:
Quote:
What is interesting also is that there really is very little difference between the rich and poor neighborhoods. Both are subject to gridlock, air pollution, and are surrounded by the same style of disjointed developments of sterile homogenous cookie-cutter corporitist crap.
I have a friend who literally spends three hours driving everyday(note that he deliberately stays late a t the office to avoid traffic) and its really impossible to avoid traffic no matter how much you pay for your home in south Orange county. I have friends that have spent nearly a million dollars on homes in South Orange county yet they have to put with traffic like everyone else.
At this point no matter how much you spend on a home you still have to deal with infrastructure problems like everyone else. Its an irrational allocation of resources in the sense that if people even spent 20% of what they spent on their housing in more public transit projects their lives would probably improve drastically.
Then of course there is the water issue in the many parts of the world and especially here in the American West. In California we are simply using up water at a faster than it can be replenished. Before the came the physical area of California only supported 500,000 people. To put that in perspective we have over thirty million people now plus agriculture,lawns and pools.
Even without peakoil California has some very serious problems that make it unviable. With peak oil thrown in its hard to see how the state can continue in its current form in the long run unless drastic changes are made. The California dream will probably prove to be no more viable than the Mayan dream.
Last edited by mefistofeles on Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Dec 02, 2005 Posts: 6786 Location: Oil-addicted Southern Californucopia
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: West L.A. traffic approaching total dysfunctionality
NEOPO wrote:
...Perhaps a movement will occur and people like Zardoz will manage just fine which makes me wonder, since Z is so vocal about all of this then what is Z doing to prep, to set an example etc etc?
What are you doing to make it better Z?
Just curious.
My problem is that I don't see any way that anybody can predict what will happen or when it will. Like I posted before: The future is like a fogbank that we're heading into in the dark. We don't know how far away the fogbank is, how thick the fog willl be, or what's on the other side of it.
I used a travel analogy: It's like we know we're leaving on a trip, but we don't know where we're going, when we're leaving, what means of transportation we'll use, what the route will be, what we'll need on the trip, what we'll need when we get there, how long the trip will take, and whether or not anybody will be going with us.
Like I said: How do we know what to pack? How do you prepare for the unknown?
How am I making it better? Well, I'm not going to purchase any land out in the wilderness and turn it into a little mini-slum like some are planning, that's for sure. We've despoiled enough land, I think. I'm doing all I can practically do, which is to reduce my daily footprint as much as possible. I try to conserve everything, and get my family to do what they can. I don't get in strangers' faces about what wasteful barbarians they are, if that's what you mean. I harbor no delusions of grandeur that I can make a dent in the behavior of 6,600,000,000 people. Not that it matters. Everybody will be getting it, soon enough.
What are you doing? _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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