The New Republic has a piece of Mitt Romney’s latent urbanism. I found this paragraph noteworthy:
Then there was the day Romney and Foy were together at a ribbon-cutting for a traffic-calming project and Romney started lamenting that Salt Lake City’s streets were too wide because they were designed in the days of wagon trains that needed to be able to turn around. “He thought that that was a problem and that New England had thankfully not had wagon trains, so its streets were more tightly knit … and more pedestrian-friendly,” Foy remembers.
Though Salt Lake City is not pedestrian friendly, the wide berth of its city streets is perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the SLC auto transit system. It’s absolutely amazing. One of those anachronisms that proved the city particularly well-suited for the age of the automobile. That’s not to say that there isn’t significant traffic downtown, but (a) it’s still considerably better than most places I’ve been and (b) due to the fact that all of the streets are so wide, it’s remarkably easy to avoid the worst spots. Or was when I was driving down there regularly. The freeway system is nothing but headaches. I look forward to getting off the interstate and onto the city streets. There aren’t many places I would say that about. At all.
To deal with the increasing downtown traffic, though, they’re doing something rather neat with the busier areas in order to cut down on left-hand turns (h/t Abel). They show a sign for the “thruturns” and I swear that I have actually seen it before but didn’t know what it meant. Now I know! It’s a pretty great concept, where you get to take a protected u-turn away from the congested intersection. It’s the exact sort of thing I do on a pretty regular basis when I can’t get to the right lane in time, except it’s implemented into the system.
Colorado tried something interesting where they sped everybody up by keeping and enforcing a 55mph speedlimit. By enforcing, I don’t mean straw-picking to get a ticket, but rather police cars out there actually making sure nobody is going faster than 55. If the age of antcars ever come, this should prove to be a real timesaver.
The Atlantic endorses congestion pricing. I am actually sympathetic, though tired of hearing about how “increasing the size of freeways doesn’t speed traffic up.” It’s not true anecdotally, and arguably not true at all or at least not true in any universal sense.
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Hopefully Romney knows what the voting age is.
RIP Patrice Oneal 1969-2011
That’s what detail men are for.
When the detail in question explicitly appears in the Constitution, Gov Perry had best not farm it out to his detail men.
To make him look worse, he was 21 when the amendment was ratified. I guess he was too busy getting mediocre grades in college at the time.
Salt Lake City’s streets were too wide because they were designed in the days of wagon trains that needed to be able to turn around.
That is so awesome! Man… I have got to get down there and visit someday… that part of America seems like it may as well be a different planet.
Knight, I wasn’t being serious. Of course, the thing is, if Mitt Romney had gotten it wrong, I would have shrugged it off. Like with Obama and the 57 states. But with Perry, well, it’s just not safe to assume it was a modest slip.
That is so awesome! Man… I have got to get down there and visit someday… that part of America seems like it may as well be a different planet.
SLC is a really neat place. Very methodical and organized. Spend enough time there and you can find a lot of places you’ve never been just by looking at the address.
I wasn’t being serious.
It’s ok. I was just piling on for the people in the audience who didn’t know what I was talking about.
Sometime before the Iowa caucus, you should do an analysis of the candidates. If not here, then perhaps somewhere else.
Sometime before the Iowa caucus, you should do an analysis of the candidates.
Too depressing.
What I will say, though, is that the number of people who have to be kicking themselves about now has to be legion. But for a hike on the Appalachian Trail, Mark Sanford might have it wrapped up by now. Pawlenty might have gotten his turn and actually made something of it. Were it not for a French racial slur at an Indian-American, Senator George Allen (if he hadn’t gotten the nomination in 2008) would be the Next-In-Line and probably would have sewn up the nomination by now (okay, so that’s one silver lining…).
Yet somehow, we somehow live in a dimension where Newt Gingrich has the lead. And he is a more logical candidate than most of his predecessors as the anti-Romney candidate.
If this were a plot for a TV show, I’d dismiss it as the unrealistic brainchild of a writer that knows nothing about politics. I’ve actually said that about writers who have come up with less unrealistic scenarios than this.
I’m debating whether I should put a Johnson or Huntsman sticker on my car.