Good point. They are now realizing that the way they have been counting
trips for analyzing transportation needs and uses is all wrong. Of course,
those who used the data to grind an axe are reluctant to admit it.

Trains for freight or passengers have an effect that buses and trucks do
not. The permanency causes the communities to develop around them. Thus,
the market drives efficient behavior. Strangely, the market drives
inefficient behavior when you get the freedom that comes with the road
system. By being so efficient, it allows us to make transportation and land
use decisions that are counter to many other desirable outcomes.

The mix of costs in time, labor, fuel, and real estate seem to work out
better in some ways if people move closer together around transportation
hubs.



"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

"Roger Halstead" wrote in message
...

Until the American drivers as a whole learn to conserve, through
scheduling, car pooling, driving smaller cars and developing a mind
set of "can do" instead of blaming some one or something else for
their woes we will remain stuck in a cycle of high to low and back
again prices as well as moving from feast to famine and back.


American drivers already do those things to the extent practically
possible.
Most people don't drive alone because they want to; it is because they
have
to. No bus or carpool runs from the office to the grocery store to the day
care to the bank to the post office, etc. No carpool carries your tools to
and from the construction site (which changes every day), or carries the
laundry, or drops your term paper off at the community college.

Probably the stupidest thing America ever did was to destroy the railroad
infrastructure. For some reason we decided that it was better to carry
freight in trucks rather than on rail cars. Freight is now treated as if
it
were human passengers, each with individual needs. Now transportation
planners think the solution is to treat humans as if they were inanimate
cargo. Neither of these ideas work, nor will they ever work.