Bill Bryson Quotes

At least in Phoenix, you can get off the main highways and take side streets to where you want to go. In L.A., you can't. You're stuck.

Coming from Mumbai, the one thing that always amazes me about Noida is the roads here. Such wide roads are something you don't get to see in Mumbai. Driving around here is surely a pleasure.

In 1970, Los Angeles became the first place where the total acreage used for roads and parking exceeded the amount of space given over to habitation.

Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building.

I don't like L.A. It's just not fun. I don't know why, but I just don't get it. You have to drive to get everywhere, and when it rains everybody freaks out.

We did such a great job of creating the interstate highway system in Oklahoma City that we don't have traffic congestion. You can actually get a speeding ticket during rush hour in the city. That's how great our traffic flows.

We identify New York with the great bridges and tunnels and roadways and subway system and so forth.

The Dallas model, prominent in the South and Southwest, sees a growing population as a sign of urban health. Cities liberally permit housing construction to accommodate new residents. The Los Angeles model, common on the West Coast and in the Northeast Corridor, discourages growth by limiting new housing.

Fifty years ago people were talking about Sydney's sprawl, but nobody does anything about it.

I really don't know the Chicago School. You see, I never walk. I always take taxis back and forth to work. I rarely see the city.

Any urbanist has to appreciate New York City and the way it works. The public transit is astonishing.

I don't think the state of California realized there would be this many people here caught up in the freeway system.

In the same way we have a long-term plan for building roads, we have to have a long term plan to build transit.

Infrastructure deficit is an issue in all urban areas.

I grew up in L.A., and it's one of those cities designed around cars instead of the people that live there. I spent hours every day stuck in traffic, having the experience of looking around and seeing one person in every car.

This is critical to the region. Every other major city has public transportation going downtown. We have a world-class airport now, and this could be an important additional piece to the airport development. This is a significant investment and one that should be seen as a significant long-term commitment to making this a reality.

If we were redesigning around people instead of around automobiles, which I think the market is more or less going to do, although too slowly, than I'd be a lot cheerier.

Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeless land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air.

What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.

The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.

One important role for the city is to conduct studies to document areas of greatest need, and to facilitate coordination between our public and private transportation options to weave it into a dense tapestry of accessible and reliable transportation.

Expanding the Toronto Island Airport will undermine the downtown's economy and liveability and intensify pollution and smog from Oshawa to Oakville. I urge Torontonians to close down this dangerous Trojan horse and get on with planning constructive and delightful ways of using our magnificent lakeside assets.

The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.

One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.