u/PiLinPiKongYundong

One thing that makes car culture a bit less horrible is carpooling. It reduces congestion, pollution, and general one-car-one-driver loneliness.

But I feel like, at least in my experience, it's extremely rare these days.

I used to work for an audit firm. The entire audit team would commute sometimes from one metro area to another metro area, sometimes a few hours away. In theory we all could have carpooled, and thus saved gas money and driving effort and gotten a little teambuilding in along the way.

But it literally only happened once, when my manager's car was in the shop or something.

Do any of you guys ever carpool? I feel like we're getting/have gotten to the point as a society that we feel weird without our Own Personal Vehicle™ at hand at all times, kind of parallel to the way we treat our personal smartphones, and we would rather drive and spend more if it means we can keep our own car-oriented freedom of movement at all times.

I hear more about carpooling in previous decades; is it dying? Do any of you guys carpool? Or is this just another way that car culture is leading to more personal atomization and waste?

I was just reading a random article about highway "welcome to wherever" signs and the Post & Courier apparently thought it be fun to randomly poke at Spartanburg County lol

I, for one, would actually be extremely curious to see what a red clay interstate welcome sign would look like. Let's build one next time!

https://preview.redd.it/h0bjj4j64ash1.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=cee367028ec42aaea7002e49401ce6a06298293a

‘Welcome to Charleston County’ says new $500,000 I-26 sign

This happened recently in my awful state of South Carolina. 3 teenage kids were out on their bikes at 9pm (which honestly isn't that dark in the summer time).

They got hit by a reckless driver with a massive rap sheet, no registration, open container, AND left them lying there in the road and added a hit-and-run to his previous exploits.

In this kind of situation, most people will readily assign blame where it belongs, on the driver, but there is no lack of people who want to blame the kids on bikes and the kids' parents. I saw some Facebook bigbrain saying that the parents of the dead kid should be arrested for allowing him to be out on his bike at 9pm.

It's totally insane.

If it's a question of visibility (and I'm not even sure it was in this case with this driver being so awful and reckless and impaired), then should we not, as a society and legal system, required drivers to drive at safe after-dark speeds?

Like, if we've known that visibility is worse after dark and that cars tend to have more deadly accidents after dark, WHY DON'T WE LOWER THE AFTER-DARK SPEED LIMIT? Why don't we require drivers to drive at a speed that can lower the risk in a known dangerous time of day?

It reminds me of the rovélo creative quote:

https://preview.redd.it/ojeoeenijshh1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ccd2b4705464403fae04bb7a8f7cb4a33b90a7d

15-year-old bicyclist dies in South Carolina crash

If you spend too much time on FB or ND, you might think that Mr. Average Citizen doesn't like trails/multi-use paths due to silly crime or privacy concerns.

But it turns out that would (thankfully) be the wrong conclusion!

I was filling out this survey for Folly Beach, SC, trying to give them some urbanist feedback to counteract the hordes of carbrains asking for more free parking, and Question 11 asks what type of parks & rec infrastructure the community wants more of.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see that trails & multi-use paths got the largest support, by far!

https://preview.redd.it/3bycmcx4p8ch1.png?width=961&format=png&auto=webp&s=69f5ad2a10ba227303a2376d8a4505474a894acc

Perhaps all is not lost.

Folly Beach 2026 Comprehensive Plan: Leading in Resilience - Adapting with Purpose - PublicInput

I was thinking about mandatory parking minimums today in the light of the amazing news that North Carolina (!) has basically passed (just needs gov's signature) the most ambitious state-wide parking reform bill in the nation (H162, the Parking Lot Reform and Modernization Act).

So we've been forcing developers to provide "free" parking pretty much everywhere for decades. And this was essentially politically uncontroversial. Even when it meant developers were shelling out hundreds of thousands or millions of $ on unnecessary parking that they would never get a dime for in parking revenues, your average voter didn't really care (since your average voter isn't a developer).

Just imagine what we could have done with that money! We're talking absolutely massive private-public (coerced) investment here! We could have required new development to connect with existing bike lanes or transit lines or sidewalk networks. Why not? If it's legal for the government to force developers to create acres of parking, wouldn't it be legal for the government to force them to enhance the walkability or bikeability or bus-ability of the area instead?

Such a wasted opportunity. So much money thrown into making our built environment worse when it theoretically could have been used to make it better.

Will Bluffton be home to a 5,000-acre state forest?

It's almost a true-ism that rich NIMBYs want everything to be a park, right? No matter what is proposed, they're always crying out for more green space or parks or whatever.

So you would think that this proposal for Beaufort County (in SC) to pay over $40 million of taxpayer money to buy a massive chunk of land next to the hoity-toit neighborhood of Palmetto Bluff would be a huge win for said rich people, right?

WRONG! Silly county government forgot that the poors might want access to the proposed conserved land. And how might they access it? Through the Palmetto Bluff neighborhood???

Actually, no. The chair of the Green Space Advisory Committee even clarified that the access would be via another random road; not through the exclusive enclave.

But have facts ever mattered to NIMBYs?

>After a lengthy discussion, Council voted 6-5 to delay a vote on the New River Forest deal until June 22. The matter was referred back to the Natural Resources Committee, which scheduled a special-called meeting for June 15 to allow Palmetto Bluff residents and other county residents time to voice their qualms about the project.

https://preview.redd.it/eejpc051z18h1.png?width=798&format=png&auto=webp&s=19b4c539fb4def632bed205f2157a76db41d999d

That's right! For my 3rd and final post in this series, I'm really going there.

I'm not going to present any bigbrain statistics or arguments in favor of data centers.

All I'm going to point out is that my uncle lives in Virginia (which has something like 600 data centers!), and Virginia is fine! It's actually a super nice place to live!

It has not become a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of rolling blackouts and eternal water depletion.

It's possible to have data centers without the world ending. That's all.

Think about it. Most American neighborhoods built in the last 80 years are full of one thing, and one thing only: single-family homes.

Thus, it's very common for NIMBYs to say that any proposed project (assuming it's not single-family homes) "doesn't fit the character of the neighborhood."

But like, a monolithic neighborhood like that NEEDS something different. It needs a corner store; it needs a laundromat; it needs a church; it needs a doctor's office; it needs a daycare; IT NEEDS LITERALLY ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT'S NOT A SFH.

That makes sense right? Just from an urban planning perspective, don't you want a mix of uses in any given neighborhood?

So it would seem that "not fitting the character of the neighborhood" would be a plus, not a negative.

Of course, it's just because other metro areas got worse, so....

https://preview.redd.it/3iz8x67sti6h1.png?width=731&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ad499d5c253765df742efeb7d08de806d239914

Dangerous by Design - Smart Growth America

This one is a real keeper:

https://preview.redd.it/j8wgsv8vpg6h1.png?width=643&format=png&auto=webp&s=03fadc7ed988a41a21e71d6836bcf21cf3e2341c

In an age of political fragmentation and polarization, why not pour some fuel on the flames? That's right! I'm talking geographical fragmentation! Yeah, boy!

Check out this interesting map from the vote reporting website.

If I'm reading it correctly, the western side of the county went for Crawford and the eastern side and a southern chunk went for Stacy, with a couple sprinkles of Angermeier and Whitener as well just for fun.

I always enjoy a good map graphic, so I thought that was pretty cool.

https://preview.redd.it/9shqrrctpd6h1.png?width=1374&format=png&auto=webp&s=4e0ec1fb8aa7088693f0601eeef24dfb560d4e00

Election Night Reporting

Since my previous post about the Johnson Group was such a success (I currently have a net of 3 upvotes over there lol), why not follow up with OneSpartanburg?

I just saw in this newsletter I get from them that they have...

>been named a finalist for the 2026 U.S. Chamber of the Year Award, alongside the Greater Des Moines Partnership in Des Moines, Iowa, and the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, in Mobile, Ala. Presented by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, the award is the most prestigious in the industry, recognizing excellence in operations and community impact.

Here Spartanburg is with a nationally recognized Chamber of Commerce, out there doing pretty normal Chamber of Commerce stuff, yet to read the Facebook comments you'd think they're in their office eating children or something.

https://preview.redd.it/hgcqiag6yi5h1.png?width=996&format=png&auto=webp&s=4fc48c83ef14256c8f6b99a9a3ce5e55526d73c1

It's like all nuance is out the window. You have the anti-data center crowd hardcore demonizing anybody who disagrees with them. Do people think the Chamber of Commerce is going to be against economic growth and investment? That's literally all they do! They advocate for and coordinate with business and industry and try to recruit more. They're a Chamber of Commerce!

Hear me out!

You know what people say every time a national/out of state builder tries to build something around here?

"These out of state companies are building stuff, selling it, and running off! They don't have to deal with the consequences of what they're doing. They don't know or care about our area!" i.e. municipal-level xenophobia; insiders virtuous, outsiders bad. Lock the city gates!

And yet, when we do have an example of a hometown company (i.e. the Johnson Group), we move the goalposts and figure out a way to demonize them too. Now instead of distant conglomerates, it's good ol' boy cigar smoke and back room dealing.

"Everyone on county council is getting kickbacks, didn't you know? Not a single decision goes through without a bribe!" i.e. any decision I disagree with is the result of third-world style corruption

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Do we want local developers or national developers?

I think it's great that we have a local company that has enough confidence in Spartanburg to invest here.

Okay, now you can downvote me. I've said my piece.

I get this SCDOT newsletter and they say there's a service they've got that "can assist with any vehicle needs" in an emergency. Anybody ever use this? Anybody know how it works?

https://preview.redd.it/zgbv6b1g9v4h1.png?width=601&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f8ad86d07f2e693abe533efbbefe2c303ed9bcd