"M.Butzin" <mfbutzin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> used a stick in the sand to babble
>
>I saw $50.00 a carton cigs today at the grocery store
I pay $27 at the gas station.
> and gas here is almost $3.00 a gal
Here too.
> and they are selling Ford F250 and F350 pickup trucks like
>nobody's business (gas guzzlers),
Buddy of mine just bought a V-8 Ram pickup for his wife.
> I don't think that Americans will change
>their driving habits until gas reaches $10.00 a gallon and then we might
>experience another "revolution".
I agree.
> Here no one drives the speed limit except
>school busses, 80/85 MPH no problem!
My cruise sits at 84 on the way to work, 65 on the way home.
> Our government still holds back on new
>energy technology, solar, nuclear, hydrogen & mass transit.
I don't buy that. I will stipulate that government and industry in
the US aren't doing enough in those directions but I don't think
they're holding back. Americans don't like mass transit. Why build
it before the public demands it?
> We should look
>to how Europe built it's mass transit and in every large city in America
>build them. One person one car doesn't work any more.
Flawed line of thought. Europe from the start taxed cars. License
fees were based on weight and horsepower. In Georgia, your car taxes
are based primarily on the age of your vehicle. New cars pay higher
taxes than old ones. Not so in Europe. They also taxed motor fuel at
very high rates which kept it expensive and then put that money into
mass transit systems that people used because the alternatives cost
too much. The old streets and roads of the continent were too small
to take a lot of traffic. Europe's trans****tation systems are the
result of over a century of investment.
American culture is very different. It's base is personal liberty and
that includes freedom of movement. The continent was settled by
people who were moving and spreading about. This is not to say that
investment in mass transit shouldn't increase and by quite a lot, but
this is a big country with large, vacant areas that simply can't
sup****t it.
An example is the Dallas Ft Worth metroplex. Public trans****tation
there is a joke. There must be busses because I've seen bus stops and
there are no commuter trains. But there are highways. They're
everywhere. 6 and 8 lanes running in every direction and unlike in
many cities, those freeways aren't just interstates. As gas goes up,
and it will, cities with limited trans****tation options are going to
find themselves at a disadvantage.
Swill
|
