Talk to anyone who leaves NYC and they'll tell you the reason.

No, it's not "taxes" or "oppression" or "crime" or whatever nonsense FoxNews and the Post push regularly. It's housing costs. That's it. We've added a shit ton of jobs over the last 10 years and almost no housing.

All the ppl fighting Hochul's Housing Compact plan need to fucking ask themselves: where the heck do you think your kids will live? Do you think they're gonna live down the street? Or are they gonna have to move to CT or NJ (which have added a lot more housing)? Or do you not give a shit cuz you already have plans to leave?

This quote from the mayor of Bellerose in Long Island shows this craziness the best:

> BELLEROSE MAYOR KENNETH MOORE hopes that his three adult children who live with him will be able to move out on their own soon.

> “Believe me, nothing would give me more satisfaction than if they were to say ‘Hey Dad, we’re moving out,’” he said of his kids, ages 30, 27, and 23. “But they just can’t afford it yet.”

> Moore also opposes adding any new housing in Bellerose, where home prices regularly approach $1 million and building new housing has been banned since 1976. With excellent schools and a half-hour commute to downtown Manhattan, it’s a highly desirable place to live — and an exclusive one.

> “We don’t want to change the laws and we don’t want housing,” Moore told New York Focus.

Seriously, this is nuts. I love how he says "yet". The "kid" is 30, what does "yet" mean?

Seems like a simple solution: don't allow cars on it (or heavily limit them).

They should keep it and restore it. Looks nicer and helps prevent speeding.

Overwhelming majority of people do not know what bail is.

Yeah, the sad reality is that outside of NYC (and other major cities such as Chicago and Boston), America is pretty starved for local journalism.

Urban Sprawl makes local journalism difficult.

I remember the first time I told a relative who said that (also lives in Florida) that Florida has a worst crime rate, they looked shocked.

Idk why, they've told me about insane shit that has happened right in their housing complex and to people they know. But in their heads, that's not "crime". Well it is, but not the kind of abstract crime that gets talked about in the news.

It's also funny that whenever I visit, they have NYC news on.

NYC is gonna look like the Expanse intro.

But sure, let's keep "compromising" with coal barons in West Virginia, complaining about bike lanes and "lose of parking", complaining about congestion pricing, complaining about all of the little inconveniences we have to make in order to NOT have to build walls around NYC.

Electric NYPD cars don't make much sense, this all just feels like greenwashing. If they get into a crash, you would need to scrap the entire car as the battery may be damaged. EVs are also more expensive than ICE cars.

We need the NYPD to move away from cars altogether and use smaller modes of mobility. Most police work isn't chasing down people on highways or transporting people, so why do they need so many large cars? Just give every department like 20 e-bikes for every car, only keep a couple of cars per precinct for people transport.

Not only would it increase police efficiency (no traffic restriction), but it would also open up the NYPD to be more empathetic and better at policing. Being in a protected, metal box leads to a disassociation from the surrounding space and people (you may as well be in a private house, not a public space). This has been shown to lead people to become less empathetic (this is also why perfectly normal people can sometimes become lunatics behind the wheel). We don't want police officers that don't feel part of the place they are patrolling, that's how you end up with afraid, trigger-happy officers.

Don't worry, this only costs 2 year of funding from a school.

Don't you feel safer already?

In theory, yeah, you can. In practice, you would need to convince people to remove an area that is currently dedicated to car traffic, in order to turn it into a canal.

Though a canal is way better than car traffic, currently, turning one of those car-traffic-shocked streets into anything but that (eg. bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, etc), is a massive political undertaking. Imagine doing that PLUS coming up with the funds to rebuild and maintain a canal.

The fares should NOT cover the total cost of the system. No transit system works like that.

The simple fact is that transportation has to be subsidized, it can't ever be "profitable". And that's all transportation, even private car usage is heavily subsidized.

One of the big reasons public transit sucks in this country is that we keep demanding that it be profitable, all while not demanding the same from other forms of transport (aka, the car industry).

Yeah, I suspect Staten Island, as well as the other more suburban parts of NYC will be 100% NIMBYs. My CB covers a good amount of suburban areas in Queens, but all the density along Queens Blvd may be canceling it.

I may be spoiled, as I'm part of Queens CB6. Though it has its nimbys, they don't seem to run everything.

If you don't get it, see if your CB has "public members". These are like board members, but:

1. They can't vote on the main board meeting
2. They don't have to show up to the main board meeting
3. They are only assigned to one committee (board members are assigned to at least 2), which they have to go to, and they get to vote on

This is a great way to get involved, without the large time sink, and usually increases your chances of getting into the main board in the future. Also, note that the committees are where stuff usually happens. The main board vote is big and loud, but committees are the ones that actually get shit done.

Not all CBs have public members though. So email them and ask if they do. If they don't accept you, you may get automatically invited to be a member, but check with them anyways.

I mean, elected officials can ignore you too. The point is to get your voice out there because complaining on Reddit isn't gonna do anything.

And if they are still ignoring you, well that means you're easy to ignore. You gonna have to build a small movement. Having a petition signed by ppl locally usually gets their attention.

CBs are supposed to allow a Public Comments section at the beginning of every meeting. All you have to do is sign up to speak and they have to let you speak. There are also committees for all sorts of topics, where you can sign up to present and get resolutions passed.

> Webex mute button made it possible.

Randomly speaking during the meeting isn't ok. Webex made that simpler, but CBs have to meet in person now, so that's out of the window.

Community Boards may be advisory, but their advice is often the only one heard by council people.

If you ever wonder why your local politician seems to only do boomer shit, it's because only boomers are going to these meetings and talking.

Wanna change that? Get involved.

The party of family values, my friends.

But it isn't. The charter schools can and do kick out kids. In fact, a common tactic we hear often about is charter schools taking in X kids, then taking in Y dollars per kid (X). But then, mid-way through the year, after all the checks have gone through, they kick kids out due to low performance or "because we don't have the means to handle children with mental disabilities", but do they give the money back? No. They keep it.

So the kid is now back in public school, but the money for them isn't there, it's in the charter school.

Because the money comes from the same pot as the general education one. Additionally, unlike public schools, charter schools have all sorts of issues like kicking students out that don't perform well. This essentially means you aren't really trying to educate the public, you're just subsidizing a couple of already-well-educated students while filling the pockets of the administrators.

In general, it is just not a good system and just another way to defund (truly) public services for private gains.

The worst is whenever there's a new bike lane being proposed and ppl say "how many ppl even bike? Deliver workers don't count".

I've heard that many times. Ofc when asked "why don't they count?" they get very quiet.

Never been.

The only thing I know about LA is that several ppl, who lived in LA and left it, have told me something like this:

"LA has the worst parts of city living. High density but no way to move around that isn't a car, so horrible traffic you can't escape."

Idk how true it is, but I know LA traffic is "notorious".

> Can you provide a reference for the typical construction type of a six story apartment building in Europe?

I cannot. Because I'm not a construction expert. All I know is that Europe and Asia has older cities, with older buildings, which I'm sure aren't up to code, as well as newer, taller buildings than what we have. And yet, they managed to figure out how not to use expensive, massive trucks. So I don't buy the whole "old buildings that aren't up to code" or "massive newer towers" are real excuses.

I'm no expert, like I said, I'm just a street safety advocate that's annoyed that we have such dangerous streets because we need to keep them do damn wide. So we should be figuring out how to make them smaller, to save lives (not just from fires) and money.

Somehow this is not an issue in Europe and Asia, where they have even older buildings, and even taller newer ones.

You keep really trying to drive this "building materials" point. Do you have any source that Europe and Asia just build their stuff from better materials and that that's the reason we need bigger trucks?

I've researched this topic a bit and I've never heard that excuse. The only excuse I've found for why they are so big in the US is just that the streets are wide, and since they are wide, there's no reason to make them smaller. Now, with cities having budget issues, there may be a financial incentive to go smaller.

This article goes over the differences: https://www.fireapparatusmagazine.com/fire-apparatus/fire-apparatus-united-states-vs-europe/#gref

They mention the "aerial trucks" and make the point that one difference between the US and Europe is the methodology. Over there, they focus on rescues, not so much on fighting the fires. I could see that being a major difference.

Regardless of the reason, we need to find a way to make them smaller. We can't keep our streets as wide as they currently are, too many ppl are getting hurt.