It Is Time For Innovation

In a recent transportation newsletter this statement was made: “The Hudson Valley is a centrally located region with abundant fresh water that could absorb millions of new urban residents. By 20th century thinking, this would mean more highways and parking lots to accommodate auto-dependent living. Nobody wants major urban growth. People prefer green valleys and hills with low-density development. So Cuomo’s staff aren’t even thinking about this, let alone devoting planning resources to an APM-centered future.”  Since; “Nobody wants major urban growth. People prefer green valleys and hills with low-density development” how can this type of urban growth continue?  The statement that followed “Nobody wants major urban growth” proves a very problematic conclusion that government planning staffs are doing the opposite.  How is this legitimized?  In the world of government, politic's campaign contributors are considered the players and receive favors for their contributions.  These favors are free deeded properties, grants and zero interest loans. 

California legislators have drawn attention to their environmentally strict policies while the status-quo of deteriorating infrastructure is a malignant cancer.   Rather than purifying the quality of the State’s well-being, it has caused a malicious growth of financial favoritism which diminishes its citizen health.  Under Governor Reagan the CA EPA was established to provide protection to the environment.  All public jobs are now required to adhere to a EIS (Environmental Impact Study) with a maximum 300-page report (EIR, Environmental Impact Report).  The politicians have twisted the significance of this report to make the inclusion that if the project is unable to comply with environmental requirements, due to a myriad of reasons, then it doesn’t have to comply, upon the approval of the project’s governing body.

As an example; CA HSR project spent over $800-million to produce a useless and incomplete 12,000 page EIR.  The project was ruled by Jerry Brown to be exempt from CA environmental rules and regulations.  His friend and husband of CA’s Senator is the largest single shareholder of the firm that held the EIS contract.

The travesty is damage done to the decaying infrastructure.  Automobiles are fundamental to urban growth in the automobile centric design.  Within the government planning agencies there is a self- gratifying term used called: “Smart Growth”.  Lipstick on a pig.  When planners use this term they consider themselves smart.

    

Outside the spheres of the government’s malignant tumors is a tool called innovation.  It is time for a revolution in thought, creativity and fairness.  First task: modern transportation.