[SDCBC] Fwd: UT Mid City Transit Article Saturday - What does pla nning for growth depend upon?

[Gale Chan]

I'm glad that there are folks who continue to advocate for improving mass transit, reducing use of foreign oil, etc.  It's nice to know there are at least SOME people out there whose life goal isn't to drive a lifted truck. 

To specifically answer your question "Then exactly what does it depend upon?", the answer is "parking".  It depends on when parking for all the vehicles becomes an issue.  That's really what drove the development of BART way back when.  When parking  becomes a problem you have achieved what seems necessary for mass transit to gain the edge over driving:  enough volume of potential users, and their willingness to switch from driving to using mass transit.

I don't know the cost of a parking place in NY but in Tokyo it's like $500/mo.  When parking costs here start getting like that we'll see some improvements to mass transit!

-- Gale

 


Frank  Paiano <wondernerd at juno.com> wrote: > ...depends on [the] belief that planning for growth requires much
> expansion of the mass transit system, probably rail based. It 
> doesn't.

Then exactly what does it depend upon?  Keeping our sick addiction to foreign oil at $whatever-price-the-market-will-bear?  Engaging in the greatest CHEM-101 experiment in recorded history by pumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year to see how long it will take to raise the temperature of the oceans by 1 degree Celius?

I'm with Mr. A!  We must bite the bullet some day!  Raise gas prices to $8 per gallon and fund the largest expansion in mass transit in the world.  (It can't cost more than the current Iraq war, that's for sure.)  Make it "inconvenient" for motorists to use their cars in the cavalier manner we use them today.  We are 4% of the world's population and we use 25% of the world's resources.  

"Unsustainable trends can not continue."  -- Steve Watson

Off of Soapbox -- Awaiting counter-invectives.

Respectfully submitted,

Frank Paiano
Ocean Beach



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