🚀 go-pugleaf

schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan Schuck) writes:

> The building of bridges and roads and ferries have *nothing* to do
> with the free market. If they did there would be a toll on every road
> and on every bridge.
> 
> And as for "waste of resources", thats what you do every time you use
> a car instead of public transit. You waste gasoline and pollute the
> air and take up space in parking lots and on roads that could be 
> put to better use.
> 
> A better solution, and cheaper, would be to ban cars in the downtown
> area of Vancouver and force people to use buses, skytrain and commuter
> rail. That would be cheaper and cleaner and much less of a waste of
> resources.


There are all kinds of valid reasons for people to drive various kinds of 
vehicles, including cars instead of takiing public transit, and a ban on 
cars in the downtown area would be completely impractical.

How, for example are salesmen with samples, techicians with tools or 
parts, or people whose work shifts don't coincide with BC Transit's 
schedule going to get around? Walk? Transit meets some of the needs for 
people travelling into the city at morning, who work all day at one 
location, and then travel home again. It doesn't do much for many of the 
rest of us who find that it doesn't even run when we need it.

If you want to make transit attractive, it needs to go everywhere people 
need to go, when they want to go, provide safe transportation (including 
personal safety for the passengers), and do so at a price people are 
willing to pay.

Even when it does this, there will be many people whose transportation 
needs are better served by a private automobile - with the routing, 
timing, carrying capacity (for things like books, tools, groceries, etc) 
than the public transit system.

Making the most efficient use of our resources, especially transportation, 
is a complex subject, and simplistic notions, like banning all cars 
from a particular area, are not solutions.

What is needed instead is a lot of incremental improvements, each 
of which will only do a little to improve the situation, but together 
will make a real difference.

We might begin with having transit run all night so shift workers 
can use it. And make the buses go everywhere instead of just the 
most popular areas. And figure out how to make a bus from Surrey 
take a passenger to Langley in 20 minutes instead of two hours and 
three transfers later. And by setting up a system of HOV lanes that 
encourage the more efficient use of vehicles. 

Robert Smits Ladysmith B.C. emd@ham.almanac.bc.ca
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they 
want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken