Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in :

Because the US isn't a large number of people going to a small number
of places, it is small numbers of people going to a huge number of
places.

I think this is true everywhere.

There are no major hub sites.

The highway system is a giant web with an enourmous number of branches
and more than just freeways.

As a matter of fact, both the wife and I could take public
transportation to work. The only problem is the trip would be about 4
hours each way.

Maybe the transport system in your area has room for improvement.

Yep, we need more lanes on the freeways.

To work, public transportation has to go everywhere the public wants
to go, which means it has to stop a lot.

You can have fast routes (rail, underground, accelerated tram) with few
inbetween stops for the long distances, and slow routes (bus, ordinary
tram) for short ones.

Point totally and absolutely missed.

There are NO long distance routes with a large number of people
going from point A to point B.

There are thousands upon thousands of points with small numbers of
people (or goods) going between any given two and it is two dimensional,
not a one dimensional line.

Los Angeles does have light rail along the few high traffic corridors
where it makes some sort of sense.

For most of California, and most of the country, such a system makes
no sense.

For distances like 60 miles as you said, you want heavy rail of course.
Light rail makes sense within a city.

60 miles isn't concidered a long distance here.

Just because something works in one place does not mean it will work
in another.

I'm not convinced that is the difference. There are lots of ways a
public transport system can be laid out and meet demands of different
settlement structures. But there is a cultural bias towards preferences
of automobiles over rail (which is true here as well, just not as
pronounced), and AFAICT an unawareness of what public transport can do
because many Americans haven't ever seen an efficient system.

This is the problem with all the one-size-fits-all thinking by
people that are going to solve all the worlds problems if only
their pet scheme were implemented.

I could give you the "one size fits all" back, but let's not sink to
that level. The original discussion was about the necessity to get away
from oil because one day it'll be too expensive to run transport, and
we were discussing alternatives. Don't you think the basic assumption
is true, i.e. one day in the (hopefully distant) future oil will become
so expensive that the majority of people won't be able to afford to run
cars? If we agree on that, then it's a good idea to look for
alternatives as soon as possible, because the end will come inevitably,
and if we're not prepared for it we'll have major problems, perhaps
even an economic breakdown. Alternative car propulsion technologies are
one way, but many people seem to think they're not viable economically
and/or technically. Public transport with a heavy focus on rail is a
more realistic option. And now everyone screams "It won't ever work
here". Hmm.

Public transport with a heavy focus on rail is totally unrealistic,
at least in an area like southern California.

Public transportation works in the New York area, many parts of
the east coast, and in small areas of the west coast.

It doesn't in the majority of the country other than local, urban
buses.

But that is not so out of necessity, but because of conscious (or maybe
not so conscious) decisions not to invest in it.

No, it is because it doesn't work in spread out areas.

New York made conscious decisions to invest in transport and to keep it
running. Other places haven't. My experience of the US is very limited,
but I've been to Honolulu out of all places. I was told by the locals
that their public transport system is considered good compared to other
American places. I used it and I thought it was abysmal. It could
easily be improved to a much better service level. They have only
buses, nothing else. For a city that size that's already shameful. And
the buses run only every 30 mins at best (IIRC). And there's no
information at the bus stops, neither about time tables nor about the
network. If you want to navigate it, you need to get your information
beforehand from other sources.

Public transport works in New York because you have lots of people
going to the same small number of places.

Heavy rail works to get bulk cargo between major hubs. It doesn't
work to get all the stuff that needs to be transported everywhere.

Same thing

Nonsense.

Have you the slightest clue how many "places" to get things to there
are in a place like southern California?

Solar power works pretty well in Arizona, not for crap in North
Dakota.

Tidal power generation doesn't work in Colorado, though it might
in Alaska.


We agree there are technological and economical factors against most
forms of "green" energy. I never argued for those. I'm looking for
replacements which allow us to run existing machines, but at the same
time look for more economical uses where they can be avoided.

Regards

--
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http://www.wschwanke.de/ usenet_20031215 (AT) wschwanke (DOT) de

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