Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 06:21:14 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: Candy Madigan <candymadigan at mindspring.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Metro is 30
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 11:41 AM 3/30/2006, you wrote:
>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.

Didn't I *just* say that the reason I don't use it is that it doesn't go
where I want to go?  Isn't that what I said?  I would have *sworn* that was
what I just said.  There are ways that mass transit could be set up to get
people from where they are to where they want to be, and I would have no
objection to subsidizing those ways with an exhorbitant tax on gas if I
thought they would actually *use* the tax money on mass transit.

Come on, SF Fandom has one of the highest concentrations of brain power
around, if we aren't smart enough to figure out a way to do it, then it
can't be done.  (Oh, and I do have several ideas on how to do it, but I'd
rather not be rudely shot down again).

>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.

Candy
(301)345-6635