Study Session
I watched the study session last night and was overall very pleased with what I heard. Speaking only as a regular type citizen as far as I know (and so in reality probably some edge case from left field), here are my thoughts.
The suburbs were invented to house an automobile society. It's why every house used to have a garage and a driveway. Well over 95% of all transportation in Englewood occurs via private car. As such, well over 95% of the transportation system focus should be on making things more friendly and usable (and safe) for cars. I'm not able to get my groceries on a bike.
So enough with the bike lanes. I'm not sure exactly where it is but I was I was next to one of those things the other day. There could have been a platoon of kids and dogs trying to run in the street I wouldn't have found out about it. The bike lane thing looks like a sideways Venetian blind is growing out of the gutter. It creates so much visual clutter that any attempt to take advantage of one's natural human tendency to notice motion amongst stillness is plowed under by a construct that is not going to even slow my pickup down as I try not to hit a bicycle. It's like trying to drive through a puppet show while a bunch of those wavy car lot things are going at the same time. How any of this keeps Sally safe on her way to school is completely lost on me.
Instead, pave Broadway. I remember with great fondness that last we paved Broadway. It so smooth. That lasted about 20 minutes and then some genius decided we needed the anti-lead computer controlled water valves. These days, Broadway looks like the main runway at Ben Gurion Airport.
In addition, repave what i think they called the feeder streets. Logan, Oxford, Dartmouth,... Just that is enough. The side streets and alleys are fine.
We do not need or want a new Police Officer to enforce ticky tack traffic laws on Broadway. Total waste of time and money. First of all, during the times when it's not crowded, no one cares how fast you go. Within reason of course but the Police have always been for the outliers.
During crowded times, the peloton governs itself. Any attempt to inflict governmental improvement will have the usual result. So long story short if we need more police officers to do police work, that's fine. That would require budgetary explanation. Of which there is none for 6 over traffic tickets. So just no on this one.
This six over thing is a Hegelian Dialect. The only technology that can accurately detect six over is a Flock camera. Human Police Officers traditionally start caring around the 15 over mark because why bother with anything less when lots more will be by while I'm writing this ticket that will be pleaded down to defective taillight? So they want permission to nickel and dime us with AI. Just say no to drugs.
Data centers. I personally do not know what a data center is beyond an even larger thumb drive. I do not understand why we need them, what data they collect, who uses that data and for what, or what additional product they produce. I definitely cannot articulate how they will benefit me.
I do understand that they seem to need massive amounts of two substances that I and the other humans also need. Namely water and power. Most notably the former, but not to minimize the effects of the latter.
As such, I'm over it. I say we turn them off. Before the swarms of self guided anti personnel drones start coming out of them with permission to enforce some laws that apparently "we" must have asked for at some point. If we don't, we're going to rediscover where all those military age migrants went.
That is all. Remember, don't waste your vote on red and blue.