🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20797@rpp386.lonestar.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>I'd like to believe that public transportation is a worthwhile area to
>pump tax dollars into.  But as we saw when the Capital Metro buses were
>completely free, people don't want to ride the bus even if you give it
>away.

This is simply not true. Capital Metro actually >increased< its 
ridership as a result of (and not just during) the freebie year. Sure the 
buses have a bit of an image problem (like American cars, actually) but that's
would be corrected by more people using them.

>Mass transit is an excellent idea, but only if you can get people to do
>it.  It seems that it would be more productive to fix the vehicles that
>they are using, rather than wish people'd use somethng else.

People would use it given an incentive to do so. Public transport >was< 
popular until it was killed off by GM (yes! that great patriotic auto 
manufacturer) in the early decades of this  century to pave the way for "mass"
private transport. Having destroyed a good dense public transport network 
(including trains) its very hard to put it back together again. Right now 
Capital Metro buses just dont run to enough points
around Austin and dont nearly often enough (#1 N Lamar excepted). Why pay 50c
to wait up to half an hour and then get dropped off somewhere not quite close
enough to where you want to go when you can easily jump into your car and get
there in much less time? I think that buses today will find it very hard to 
compete with cars for generally "getting about town". Where I think they would
be invaluable is for commuting. The highways are clogged every morning and 
evening with commuters all heading in roughly the same direction. A 
park-&-ride scheme enlarged to take commuters to all the major employers 
around town would significantly ease highway congestion as well as reducing 
commute times, reducing car maintenance costs and cutting down on pollution.

--s