Rent to ride....We like it, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Chron.com
Of course the Gang likes a bike share program in Houston. I just can't help but wonder if they'll like it as much during July and August when the seat temps are so high they fry riders thighs? For that matter, I wonder if we'll get any meaningful reporting on the usage levels of this when the temperature levels rise to brutally hot instead of the current hot, humid but the breeze makes it tolerable?
My gut feeling is no. We won't. We'll get a passel or reporting saying that while ridership is "disappointing" they have high hopes for the future. Then they'll roll out this tired old canard:
But now, on the heels of theKinder Institute's survey, which stated that over 50 percent of area residents would prefer to live within walking - or biking - distance of work
Sure they do, if they don't have to give up anything. But let's ask these same study participants if they'd like to do that if they live in a multi-family domicile, if they are willing to give up their cars, their lawns, their privacy and their freedom to move about. All things people have now, and which real estate patterns are saying more and more people are taking advantage of.
The big problem with the Kinder Institute survey is that it assumes there are no trade-offs. In life, we understand that their always are. It started as a graduate project and it never developed anywhere past that level. It's a neat little toy to allow lazy journalists to take data that can be spun to say that "Houstonians" want the things that the Gang wants for them.
They'll then beat that dead horse into submission, until reality once again intervenes and tells them that this great Utopia is not taking place. Then they'll spend print inches telling us why it just needs more time (and money).
It's the Houston way.
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