🚀 go-pugleaf

Danny Low (dlow@ppg01.sc.hp.com) wrote:
: Bonita Kale (bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:
: : I would also support a petition for a 5 year moratorium on building or
: : widening roads.  Maintenance work only for 5 years, and work on a viable
: : public transport network of some  sort, instead of paving the nation.
: 
: I have lived in communities that tried to do this. The only result
: was more congestions resulting in massive rush projects when it
: became evident that stopping growth was like ordering the tide
: to turn back. In the San Francisco bay area, the average is 10%
: mass transit use. In SF where you are no more than 2 blocks from
: a bus stop and they run every 15 minutes during the day, only
: 1/3 of the trips are done using mass transit. The reality is
: you can build the best mass transit there is and most people
: still will not use it. Mass transit is no panacea. It is
: A solution but it is clearly not THE solution. Cars
: are unavoidable. When I lived in SF about half the time it
: was faster to travel by car in a city that is about as
: car hostile as any in the country and with as good a
: mass transit system as any in the country. It is clear
: from my experience that no single solution will do more
: than solve only a part of the problem.

I've lived in San Francisco (Albeit briefly) and Los Angeles and,
granted, the public tranit system in S.F. is far superior to L.A. and
many other U.S. cities (try Columbus, Ohio without a car) but that
doesn't mean it's good.  

When I lived in London I never had a car and never thought I needed one.
And i was living in the East End which at the time was not well connected
to the tube system.  During the rush hour it was always quicker to use
the tube (Subway) and even the rest of the time, because you didn't
have to deal with navigation if going somewhere for the first time,
or with parking, using the tube was always very easy and driving would
have just seemed a hassle.  Cycling was always good for an adrenaline
rush in the morning, too, but that's another story.

Count me in for doubling gas prices in California.

	Miriam