{"id":236,"date":"2014-02-02T13:38:35","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T21:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/?p=236"},"modified":"2019-07-09T11:03:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T09:03:25","slug":"travels-deeply-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/travels-deeply-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Travels Deeply South"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photos from a whirlwind trip to the Deep South are online<\/a>.\u00a0 Your lucky correspondent traveled in the fourth week of January, and not the fifth; I missed out on the wince-making weather miseries<\/a> recently described in big fonts on news sites.\u00a0 The needle dipped below freezing in Birmingham, Atlanta and Asheville, but skies remained clear and dry, and I suffered nothing worse than chilled fingers while touristing about with my camera.\u00a0 Georgians stranded overnight in snowbound traffic on Interstate 285 won’t have much sympathy to spare for me.<\/p>\n

In the mid-nineties I visited New Orleans for a science conference, but that had been the extent of my travels down south.\u00a0 The press warned ominously of growing polarization<\/a> between red and blue states, and most of the red states seemed to be in Dixie.\u00a0 I am retired now, have time to travel.\u00a0 Why not see the South for myself?<\/p>\n

\"House<\/a>
House on East Battery Street in Charleston, South Carolina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few newcomer impressions:<\/p>\n

Southern courtesy isn’t make believe.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I look, talk, act — and, for all I know, smell — like a Yankee, and had expected my California accent to earn at least an occasional hostile once-over while refueling my rental car in the Deep South boonies.\u00a0 My expectations had been shaped largely by Hollywood, after all; didn’t I remember how Rod Steiger had snarled at Sidney Poitier over a lukewarm cola in Heat of the Night<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Well, no one like Mr. Steiger snarled at me.\u00a0 Maybe I was lucky, but I will no longer dismiss posts like this one<\/a> as wishful thinking.\u00a0 Even the gas station attendants were nice.<\/p>\n

At least superficially, the South is more thoroughly integrated than the North.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is controversial.<\/p>\n

An Asian friend who visited the South frequently in decades past experienced small discriminations never encountered out west.\u00a0 Mississippi minister John Sanders, met by happy chance while strolling Jackson’s downtown, noted that electorate decisions often break along ethnic lines.\u00a0 Jackson has a black mayor because Jackson is mostly black.\u00a0 In contrast, white lawmakers retained the Confederate symbol on the state flag because they had the votes to get their way.\u00a0 How ‘thoroughly integrated’ is that?<\/p>\n

\"Ministers<\/a>
John and Daisy Sanders pose at Fallen Fire Fighters Memorial in Jackson, Mississippi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just the same:<\/p>\n

I included the Lakeshore megachurch in my itinerary after reading that it boasts the largest denomination in the country.\u00a0 I’ll have to fall back on the same homely phrase: the 8:30 a.m. service on January 19 was the most thoroughly integrated I have attended in a lifetime of admittedly irregular churchgoing.\u00a0 I say this less because of a tallying-up of represented ethnicities than because of the easygoing vibe I sensed while there.\u00a0 I don’t know much much else about Lakeshore, and don’t want to hold it up as an exemplar of other virtues, but at least give it credit on that score.<\/p>\n

At a morning breakfast buffet in Hoover, Alabama, in the cheerful give-and-take at a Charleston delicatessen, in a Birmingham supermarket: the comfort level between the races simply felt different than the norm out west.\u00a0 In the South blacks and whites seem thoroughly used to each other.<\/p>\n

Houston deserves special attention from transit geeks.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not because Houston is a transit city — trust me, it’s not — but because Houston may be the leading example of the Other Way.\u00a0 I have never visited a place so dependent on car ownership.<\/p>\n

\"Highway<\/a>
On westbound 290 in suburban Houston.\u00a0 Photo by Joe Wolf, Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To explain why, I will offer two points gleaned from reading Texas author Oscar Slotboom’s excellent, even-handed Houston Freeways<\/a>:<\/p>\n

(♦)\u00a0 Houston cut back on freeway construction when the nationwide ‘freeway revolts’ struck in the 50s and 60s, but then grit its metropolitan teeth and forged ahead with more freeways in the 70s.\u00a0 Los Angeles, in contrast, held the line with the Century\/105 freeway, opened in 1993.<\/p>\n

(Give credit where credit is due here, incidentally.\u00a0 Houston does seem to have ‘built their way out of it,’ although transit experts have assured repeatedly that this can’t be done.\u00a0 Houston led the nation in traffic congestion in the early eighties, and is now ranked seventeenth on the Inrix scorecard<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

(♦) Houston encouraged what might be termed ‘freeway oriented development’ with a gridwork of frontage roads, a.k.a. ‘feeders.’<\/p>\n

Mr. Slotboom describes this system in Freeway Metropolis<\/em>, his book’s second chapter.\u00a0 (The book is available as a free .pdf on the website, although used hard copies go for north of $90 on Amazon<\/a>.)\u00a0 If you’re willing to open a new browser window, I’ll be honored to show you:<\/p>\n