Darwin wrote:Terralthra wrote:
Again, this does not actually rebut my point. Yes, the current mass transit and sustainable transit system does not meet the desires of the car culture. That in no way changes that the car culture is unsustainable.
Expecting a sustainable system to provide similar transit times, costs, and traveling conditions as an obviously unsustainable system is unrealistic to the point of being silly.
Then what do you propose to do? Without a viable alternative to car-culture, you can't expect people to flock to a broken mass transit system. It has to be fixed before it can be viewed as a useful alternative to driving, and this can't happen without a lot of money. Of course they can't get the money without the ridership, so it's kind of self-defeating.
I didn't say it wasn't viable. I said it doesn't meet the
desires of the car culture. This goes back to my original point: No one wants to tell the entire population of the United States the simple truth that the car culture's expectations are completely out of line with any long-term sustainable system.
I have the feeling it's going to take a lot more pain before people start to accept that. We're still in the denial phase, where we pretend that if we all just switch to a car that gets ten more miles per gallon, everything will be alright. It won't. People are going to have to change the very fundamentals of the way they live.
Darwin wrote:
I love Seattle's mass transit, they got it to work there, and I wouldn't even consider taking a car into the metro area, it's that good. And we are getting so far off topic. Maybe this can be spun off into the other forum or something.
I figure that'll be dealt with the next time Ghost Rider happens along.
Darwin wrote:Terralthra wrote:
I fully expect light rail, both MUNI, BART, and SC VTA, to be extended significantly as pressures from rising oil prices increase.
I fully expect bay area drivers to keep paying higher gas prices and just bitch more, as each believes the roadway is their own god-given right, and everyone ELSE should take mass transit, which won't expand because California's economy is boned and nobody has the money to do it.
*shrug* We'll see.
General Schatten wrote:Well since you've yet to explain how twenty miles is unreasonable, yeah, I do, dipshit. You think I can find decent housing that close to my work? Newsflash dipshit, Elkins is full of drug-addled criminals, which means that at the moment I either have to put up with their shit or go fucking homeless, because the only housing where I'd feel comfortable would cost too fucking much. I don't see why expecting not to have to deal with violent drunks or meth-fiends and expecting for a public transportation system to accomodate for that is such a fucking problem.
Also, to pre-empt the inevitable screeching of the word 'move', people in West Virginia don't typically get paid enough to be able to afford moving. There's a good reason I'm attempting to join the Army, because outside of the Armed Forces I'm out of options when it comes to getting the fuck out of this redneck hellhole.
Well, I said twenty-five miles is way too far, I'm pretty sure it follows that twenty miles is still too far. Are there enough people living near you and working where you work to make a bus route or a light rail track any more energy-efficient than a car? IE, would you be the only person riding that bus/light rail? I'm not saying that there is no room for cars in the world at all, by any means. I'm saying that the cultural expectation that everyone needs a car, so it's ok to plan your life around having a car, so it's ok to plan our cities around everyone driving everywhere, is totally unsustainable.