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- Newsgroups: sci.environment
- Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!quake!brian
- From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
- Subject: Re: Clinton, Gore, and the End of the Automobile Age
- Message-ID: <Bs13Bu.tJ@quake.sylmar.ca.us>
- Organization: Quake Public Access
- References: <1992Jul22.005849.16417@s1.gov> <BruItw.9BD@quake.sylmar.ca.us> <1992Jul23.230804.1294@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 03:35:53 GMT
- Lines: 124
-
- In article <1992Jul23.230804.1294@ccu.umanitoba.ca> ens@ccu.umanitoba.ca writes:
- >In article <BruItw.9BD@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
- >>I guess that depends on how you define "long distance". I usually fly when
- >>I want to go a "long distance" (more than about a three or four hour drive).
- >On a private plane, no doubt.
-
- >>if you need a car on the other end? Hail a cab? What a mess. Simply driving
- >>to where you want to be is much more simple, direct, convenient, and
- >>comfortable.
-
- >You are projecting your rural/suburban situation on urbanites.
-
- On the contrary, I am an urbanite myself. I just have the power to see beyond
- the end of my nose and realize that government edicts have influences wider than
- the areas where they are intentionally targeted. A perfect example of this is
- that farmers in Kansas have to purchase air pollution reducing systems for
- their cars because the government wants to reduce air pollution in LA. How can
- your justify that kind of intrusion on the guy from Kansas? Such equipment adds
- hundreds of dollars to the cost of his car, butdoes not benefit him at all. I
- can see this despite the fact that I have never lived in Kansas, and live in the
- heart of Los Angeles (Hollywood to be exact).
-
- >Anyone commuting
- >into Paris would take twice as long driving as they would using the Metro.
-
- I would attribute that to the fact that the city grew around the train system.
- MY city did not grow that way, and it is just as ridiculous to ask me to
- ride a train around LA as it is to ask a parisian to drive down narrow streets
- places with inadequate parking. Given an even choice, it seems that people
- overwhelmingly prefer to drive than to ride trains. If thta wasn't the case
- why is it that people who have the money to choose either almost always choose
- to drive?
-
- >The
- >strike in 87 showed that the city can't function normally without public
- >transportation.
-
- Of course not, because they were already using trains, there was no need to
- improve the roads and build more parking spaces. That doesn't show that big
- cities cannot function normally without trains. It shows that once a city
- comes to rely on them, it cannot change to cars immediately. The fact that LA
- can function without trains (and it's a much bigger city than Paris) proves the
- opposite.
-
- >I happened to be visiting there and rode with a collegue to his
- >lab; it took 3 hrs compared to his usual 30 min commute.
-
- No wonder parisians always have such a bad attitude! ;-)
-
- Isn't the possibility of such strikes an argument against such forms of
- transportation? I have no desire to have some union telling me
- where I can and cannot travel.
-
- >And hailing a cab and giving your destination is surely simpler, and
- >at least as direct and convenient (no parking) as driving, especially
- >if the city is unfamiliar.
-
- I think cabs are great for visitors, I use them all the time when I am on
- business trips in other cities. I would hate to have to use them in my
- normal daily life. They would be horribly inconvenient. They also
- lack a certain kind of privacy that I would hate to give up. It is also
- hard to be spontaneous and just drive around exploring town when you are
- paying a stranger to take you. How would you just drive out to the country
- and look at the trees in a cab? Isn't that what all of the environmentalists
- seem ot think is the most important activity in the world?
-
- >>So what have I done beyond your nose? I am annoyed by the folks around LA
- >>who insist that I pay for a train system I hope I never have to use. Such
- >>people are overstepping my "nose boundary". If some people want to build
- >>a train and charge people to ride on it that's fine with me, but I don't want
- >>to have anything to do with such a waste of money, time, and resources.
-
- >In a densely populated area, everyone benefits from public
- >transportation.
-
- I certainly wouldn't use it unless I had no choice, and you could claim
- that everyone would benefit if everyone had to pay a certain class of people
- to stay home and not drive at all (the recipients would benefit financially
- while the folks who pay would "benefit" from less traffic, but that doesn't
- mean that it is a worthwhile trade-off. Besides, tho are you telling ME that
- the money I earned would benefit me the most if I spent it on YOUR little pet
- project? What if I think your project is a dumb idea and a waste of MY money?
- Should I have no say in the matter?
-
- >Witness Paris, London or NYC. Drivers would certainly
- >suffer in NYC if the subway shut down.
-
- Again, it's another argument AGAINST subways. In LA if the trains shut down
- (and there are a couple of lines) there's no significant impact at all.
-
- >Beyond the question of
- >congestion, electric trains produce less polution and everyone
- >benefits from that too.
-
- Do you think that your conclusion that something would be "better" for me
- give you any right to cram it down my throat? What about the costs?
- What about the inconvenience? What about MY rights? If having trains in LA
- would improve the air quality by 50% and I would have to stop driving my
- car in return, I would keep the car and the dirty air. Who are you to tell me
- I am wrong?
-
- >Similar justification (arguable, perhaps) is
- >used for diesel buses.
-
- Yeah, I hear that buses are "cleaner" all the time, but the ONLY air
- pollution problem I have directly smelled (as opposed to reading about
- as readings from instruments) is when I am blasted in the face with exhaust as
- those buses take off at a corner. I hate that!
-
- >I'm not familiar with LA but there are cities where public transportation
- >is not just safer and cleaner, but necessary, and for many purposes, simpler
- >faster, more convenient, and if you like reading, more comfortable.
-
- More convenient? Absolutely not. How can you shop for groceries and take
- home more than you can carry at once? How can you travel at odd hours of
- the night? (And do women dare travel at night where they have to be out
- of their car between destinations?) What if where you are going is far from
- a station? What if you live far from a station? I can think of nothing
- more inconvenient that is currently being imposed on the public by
- eco-busybodies than public transportation. (We already have "mass
- transportation"...mass transportation via individual automobiles as opposed
- to government-controlled train and bus systems.)
-
- --Brian
-