🚀 go-pugleaf

Several posters have questioned my assertion that, "...the freeway system
better fit that definition [of a 'mass-transit' system] than any other
system around."  Note, I said the freeway *system*.  I wouldn't claim that
individual automobiles are a mass-transit system.  Neither are individual
rail cars, buses, etc.  If the vehicle isn't part of a system, its just a
mass conveyance, not a mass-transit system.

Others continue to assert that non-freeway mass-transit systems, like the
LA metro which is the purported subject of this thread, can carry far
more people per unit of various things (like vehicles, land area per
vehicle, energy per passenger) than can private cars on freeways.  Sure
they can; I've never argued otherwise.  But freeways can carry far more
people per unit of other things, things which some of us regard as more
important.  Like (not an exhaustive list),

*   Cost per person-mile, all quantifiable costs considered.  The LA metro
    will be heavily subsidized; the fare won't cover even half the direct
    costs of operation.  On the other hand, taxes on motor vehicles,
    including gasoline and registration, bring in more than is spent on
    road maintenance and smog control.  The metro constitutes an income
    transfer program.  But some of you probably think that's a good thing.

*   Mobility.  Driving, I can visit several stores on the way home.  Riding
    the metro, I would need to restrict myself to stores near the stations
    or drive my car after I got home.  Driving, I can go from place to
    place by a reasonably direct route, visiting many places in a short
    time.  Riding the metro, I'd have to first ride from each place to a
    central transfer station, then ride another train to each destination.
    If my destinations were even near a station.

In fact, if the metro were such a good idea, people would be eager to pay
whatever it cost to ride it.  They aren't.  Even if fares were eliminated
completely, the numbers of riders wouldn't be sufficient to significantly
reduce the need for freeways.

				----

mludwig@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Michael Scott Ludwig) wrote,
" I've heard that easy freeway access helps sell more homes/apartments.  Thus
" if we had these extra freeways, more residences on land near them would have
" been sold, resulting in more people living in and driving around the L.A.
" area.  Although I admit that I don't know how much of an effect this has, so
" I don't know if it would double the population or if it would be a
" relatively small increase.

Freeway access raises the value of property which has it.  Relative to other
property which doesn't.  It certainly shifts population around.  I've never
seen any evidence that the overall net effect is to increase population.

				----

Los Angeles, and Southern California in general, represents the flowering
of the American dream.  That's why it has been a magnet to so many for so
long.  That dream has been to escape the pressures of the masses and to
live an independent life.  Of course, the dream never has been fully
realized for most of us.  But we take the pieces we can get.

LA has been obviously different from older cities.  That's what has made it
attractive.  If we succeed in transforming the culture so that people want
to be jammed together into efficient rail corridors, LA will cease to be LA.
And the dream will move somewhere else.

Of course, some will answer that we *must* transform the culture, because
Malthusian pressures will otherwise strangle us.  What has set apart the
Western US is our resistance to doing that which the "elite" tells us we
*must* do.  We not only don't have to do what they tell us, we can find a
way to do what we want to do.  I think the creative spirit which has brought
us this far can still be with us.  I look forward to its revival and the
renewal of the American dream.

 Dave Close - Compata - Stockton, California - +1 209 467 8255 ("209-install")
  dave@compata.attmail.com | compata@mcimail.com | dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu