🚀 go-pugleaf

 adrian@ntmtv.UUCP 
   (Adrian Brandt) sez:

 > I agree.  The private auto is not "mass transit".  Up around where I
 > live (SF Bay Area's Santa Clara County; aka Silicon Valley), the
 > average vehicle occupancy has *dropped* below 1.1 people!  If Mr. Close
 > wants to argue that the auto is mass transit, then I'd like to know
 > what he thinks isn't mass transit.  Buses, trains, light rail, and
 > ferry boats can and often do carry anywhere from 40 to 800 people each.
 > If anything, the automobile commuter is the antithesis of mass
 > transit!  Sheesh. 

   What isn't mass transit is the bus system here in Orange 
County. There are a couple of routes that get packed buses, but 
most run buses capable of hauling 50 people with never more than 
five on board!  This is understandable since the OCTD never 
allows a bus to just run straight down a street.  I live on a 
major street here and work on the same major street about three 
miles away. With a car it usually takes me ten minutes to get 
there with a total cost (in fuel) of about $0.30. There is a bus 
which stops right in front of my apartment and also right in 
front of my work, but it takes a scenic tour of neighbouring 
cities while getting there. Total time: 1:15 hours. Total cost: 
$1.00 each way. I can bicycle in <25 minutes and walk it in 45! I 
think the OCTD is doing all they can to bury public mass transit 
down here. They do things like run buses one direction only in 
the morning and against traffic flow patterns, putting bus stops 
every intersection so that even the buses that do take straight 
routes take forever to get anywhere (straight down Harbor from 
Costa Mesa to Fullerton: Car: 45 minutes, Bus: 2.5 hours!). I 
wish that they would replace most of their buses with vans, since 
the average van can hold the average ridership of the buses here. 
They could even buy VW diesel vans so they don't have to give up 
fouling the air.
   Most routes here in OC have buses running once an hour and I 
have found that most of the time, what with waiting for the bus 
to come and with how long it takes to get anywhere, it's quicker 
to walk. Or at least will run about the same time. The ONLY 
exception to this was the Harbor route that takes 2.5 hours. It 
probably would have taken me four hours to walk it, but then it's 
one of the few routes in the county that doesn't deviate from the 
one road. 
   There was a good plan to build a monorail system right down 
the middle of most big streets here, but it was dismissed as 
being too practical.
   Now they are busy playing with the painted lines on the 
freeways, which prompted me to sell my '70 Ford XL convertible 
(240 six with FMX auto, 20 mpg for a boat). They narrowed the 
lines on the 55 here so much that at one point that I was running 
over the dots separating the lanes with BOTH sets of tires!
   OC needs to be bulldozed, give the land back to the farmers, 
and build something like Pablo Solari's mammoth city/building for 
us all to live in.
   
    

... Larry.Mc.Donald, N6ZMB, Fullerton, California!  <cough, cough>
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.10

--- Maximus 2.00