"Governor Swill" <governor.swill@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:q760q3l9oed3dbiu5kuvde15asr1ij1uel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "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?
Do you work in the auto industry? There are billions of dollars to scare
people and lobby against it. Take a trip to england and see how easy it is
to get around without having to find parking and a hotel where you can
park
your car, the cabs are cheaper also.
Bush cut funding for solar energy R&D, General Motors lost funding for
research for the EV1 cars from congress when Bush went into office they
were
crushed and went into the scrap heap, the ONLY alternate energy he
sup****ted
was corn/ethnoyl.
>
>> 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.
And now the interstate highway "system" is old and in need of billions
upon
billons of dollars of repairs, like that bridge in Milwaukee that
collapsed.
>
> 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.
"That's because Dallas is a composite made up of small individual cities"
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
In the Houston area where I live they installed a commuter train one line
(light rail) that runs from out of the city through the medical center
into
down town and it has 7 ~ 12 thousand riders a day. When this "light rail"
was voted on three times the people trying to stop it came up with
rider****p
figures of 100 to 200 at BEST! now they are talking about connecting all
the
colleges in the country and downtown to the courts area and a line to both
air****ts. We currently enjoy and Metro handicapped lift system that will
take you door to door home to doctor's office for a small fee, free if
your
on SS disability which let's the ambulances attend to real emergencies. We
have here what's called "park and ride' lots where you drive your car and
park it or are dropped off and ride a bus into the city, cost $10.00 about
a
week , free for senior citizens my son who works for the county health
care
system get his pass at half price a year long bus pass is $365.00 and you
can ride all day as much as you want and many companies have paid for half
the fair for their riders and adjusted schedules so the employees can
effectively use the system. Houston is "Energy Capital" in more ways than
one when the rest of the nation was paying 1.25 for gas we were still at
99
cents a gallon, they are working on a 18 lane freeway on the west side of
the city and a grand parkway around the county, rail, freeway, pipelines
etc. We now have a "toll"way system the same people who said no one would
pay to drive on it when there's the freeway, well it paid for it's self
two
years ahead of time and now they're adding on and the lanes are in better
condition than the "freeway" and less traffic and no speeding tickets,
it's
private land.
MB
Houston Metro link http://www.ridemetro.org/Fare_Information/newfare.asp
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