There’s always exceptions.
Have you ever been to the US?
As Americans keep saying over and over and over and over (including in this thread) the US does not have expansive public transportation (buses and trains), and most cannot walk to work or stores.
I drive 30 miles to work. There is no bus stop or train stop within 5 or 6 miles of work. Move closer? The average home price surrounding my office is probably $3-$4Million dollars.
So tell me, how to change my lifestyle? Should I live in a tent in my work’s parking lot?
Let’s go easy on the moralizing. Some of us make choices. Some have choices thrust upon them.
I’m thinking particularly of a poor rural family I know. Young couple, two kids. They had been renting a mobile home, and the husband paid the bills by working construction jobs. Between the cost of gas and the slowdown in construction, they’ve had to move out of the trailer and into her parents’ home. But the husband still has to make long drives to find work. If gas were to go to $10, even putting food on the table and shoes on his kids’ feet would become a real problem.
Yet this man has to work, and roofing is what he knows. He has to drive.
I’m not quite as ready as some in this thread to ridicule this spoiled American and condemn his lifestyle.
Been there. The absence of public transport in the US is definitely in part a political decision. It is conceivable that the US makes a move towards more comprehensive public transport systems, and it is also conceivable that Americans change their attitude about walking or biking to places that are not at all that far away. What with the environment and global warming, and also rampant obesity, I think the US would benefit.
Where in the US did you visit?
I agree that better public transport would be a great thing - but currently we don’t have one. So its not a choice right now.
I think many people are willing to walk or bike places. But the vast majority do not live close enough to make that sensible, or would require walkign or biking on major highways. That is often not a choice, but the way suburban America is built - we may all agree that it isn’t the best way to build things, but it doesn’t change the reality that is already like that.
Are there any major national or local non-road transport infrastructure projects underway now?
If not, it’ll never be a choice, will it?
No, the reason for the absence of public transportation in the US is because the US is a big fucking place. It amazes that here we are in 2008 and a huge portion of the rest of the world has no idea just how big the US is.
Don’t you agree that there are significant parts of the US that could support decent public transportation, but don’t have it, or don’t have it to a sufficient extent?
That’s certainly the case for Canada, for example, where the Quebec-Windsor corridor is dense enough to support a TGV line that could replace a great deal of the air traffic between our largest cities.
What about cities that are underserved by urban rail transit?
Significant parts? No, not really.
Decent public transportation only works in places that have high densities of people and places that people want to go it all the time. That really only works in a few cities (New York, Chicago, Boston) and all of them already have good public transportation systems.
But if you tried to add public transportation to anywhere in Upstate New York (both Buffalo and Rochester have over a million people in their metro areas, so they’re not “small”), it would flop completely.
What do you mean “flop”?
Do you mean “not be used” or do you mean “not be profitable”?
No, the major reason for the lack of public transport in the US is lack of political will.
Public transport is never self-supporting - it always involves subsidies to a greater or lesser extent. Additionally, public transport is usually run as a regional endeavour and that requires a great deal of cooperation between local governments. As someone who has spent their entire career in state and local government in addressing land use planning issues (including public transport and how that plays into the design and success of communities), I can tell you that the area to be served is largely a non-issue except to the extent that large areas of vacant land make it even more expensive to provide the service.
Mass transit is almost never profitable (at least in the US). It always involves subsidies to keep it operational.
matt_mcl, I don’t see anyone in this thread saying that US public transportation can’t be improved.
But there’s no rational public transportation scheme I’ve ever heard of that would be helping someone like the roofer in spoke-'s example, either.
No matter the benefits to public transportation, I believe that there will always be communities and professions where the utility of such will marginal.
As for the universal utility of rail - I’m not so sure. Rochester used to have a subway system, and many of the rights of way are still available. The Broad Street tunnel still exists, and is a continuing public nuisance. Plans to use it for a light rail, or other uses (including as part of a mini-canal) keep coming up.
But with the population in the area still in flux, and suffering a continual population drain, buses make more sense - they are easier to adjust, and react to changing business situations. Just for example, there’s no longer any reason to ensure that a rail line has to serve Kodak Park. It’s still a large facility, but by itself it no longer has a large enough workforce, AIUI, to justify a dedicated rail line.
Is the non-profitability one of the reasons used to avoid investing public money in it?
I keep hearing this argument, but nobody can tell me what they are doing that is so nefarious. Please enlighten…
Can you suggest something Congress could be doing to lower the price of gasoline?
True, but what about the subsidies for automobile travel? The road use tax on gasoline doesn’t come close to covering the cost of highway construction and maintenance. On top of that we’re currently spending around 200 million US dollars per day in Iraq as a result of foreign policy decisions made to protect our oil supply. The trillion dollar cost of the war could have bought a lot of mass transit.
Without actually advocating it, I suspect that opening up more of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration may have a beneficial long-term effect. There are legitimate reasons to oppose such a plan, but I don’t think it’s meritless to say that considering such a possibility is a good idea. It may even be sufficient to have OPEC adjusting production levels in an effort to forestall that exploration. ISTM that OPEC has done that before, in response to US political talk about exploiting our untapped reserves.
I don’t know that it would work, now - with China and India bidding to drive up the price of oil, the game may be sufficiently changed in the eyes of the OPEC nations that they wouldn’t repeat that behavior.
FTM, wasn’t the late 80’s oil bust in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico precipitated, in part, because OPEC artificially lowered the price of crude to price those producers below profitability?
ISTR that there was even some talk about Government subsidies to keep domestic production high, to allow the US to have a bit more control over world oil prices - esp. since re-opening some of those wells would prove problematic once production was halted. (Something about techniques used to force production on what would otherwise have been lower-grade oil deposits. Alas that exhausts even the rumors I remember on the topic.) The idea of such subsidies were shot down as pretty unpopular, because it would benefit the Big Oil companies.
I live nearly 5 miles from the nearest store, and 12 miles from college. Most trips to get stuff down are 20 miles atleast.
Public transit is nonexistant. Half the year the roads are too icy to bike.
Please explain how I should avoid driving or shut your judgmental ignorant mouth up.
PS: moving isn’t an option unless you know where I can money too when no one is hiring around here.
Why doesn’t everybody take ONE day a week-and refuse to drive on that day? Lowering our demand is one way to keep the price down. how about it: spend saturday at home!