Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:41:31 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>,
    WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Metro is 30
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 3/30/2006 07:30 AM, Candy Madigan wrote:

>I have said for years (and of course, everyone always tells me how wrong I
>am) that we need to raise gas prices to $15/gallon and use the extra money
>to pay for mass transit.  The reason I (and I am guessing most people like
>me) don't use public transportation is that it is totally inconvenient and
>doesn't go where I need to go when I need to go there.

Let me join the legions of people who have said how wrong you are on this.
;-)

Mass transit works well in large cities where the population density is
high.  It also works well enough between large cities for moving from one
to another.  It does not work at all well outside of cities for getting
from one random point to another.  It can't, and pretending that it can
just shows a serious lack of understanding of the problem.

Individual cars are the most efficient way of dealing with getting people
from one random point to another in low population density areas.  Trying
to run busses, or set up light rail or whatever doesn't work since setting
up such things to cover the required area would use more material, money,
energy and time than just using individual cars.

Taxing one group for the benefit of another is a recent aberration in the
USA (started about 100 years ago), but it is a poor way to proceed.  If
mass transit is really workable, it will be able to pay for
itself.  Putting the costs on the backs of car drivers as a way to fund it
and to convince car drivers to use it is a doomed plan.  It would be doomed
even, or especially, if it succeeded.  If mass transit can't support
itself, what will fund it when all the car drivers switch to it and aren't
paying gas taxes anymore for instance?  Or when they switch to cars that
don't burn gas, or anything else paid for at a pump?  Remember, you can't
change just one thing...

It's worth noting that most of those who died in the floods in New Orleans
were reliant on mass transit...they didn't have cars to use to escape the
city prior to the storm.  Once the mayor and governor shut down the airport
and bus lines, they were stuck there with no way out other than walking,
which wasn't practical in the time frame.  Some of these were poor folks,
some were tourists, but they didn't have their own transport, and the mass
transit systems failed them and many died.

We should try to create good, efficient and convenient mass transit in
cities, and between cities, and we should work on ways to make cars and
other individual transport more efficient (longer lasting, more energy
efficient, safer).  We should not be dividing up into separate opposed
groups pointing at the other's solutions and yelling: "Heathen!"  That
won't solve anything.

-- Mike B.
--
Optimists think this is the best possible world.  Pessimists fear they are
right.