In a message dated 6/13/01 2:32:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ryoung@NAVCOMTECH.COM writes:
> I respectfully disagree on both counts. I live near LA (nearer Long Beach,
> actually), and from what I see, people have embraced decent mass transit
> quite well. In fact, there was an article in the LA paper a year or so ago,
> about how Metrolink (our new 'light rail' system) needed more money because
> the ridership was so much higher than projected ! (Subsidy funds are fixed,
> not per-rider.)
>
> And, if we had mass transit like what I rode in the Netherlands, I think
> many, if not most, commuters would use it. Local electric trams, with lines
> and stops spaced so you never have to walk more than a few blocks (probably
> closer than the nearest parking space !) in urban and suburban areas, plus
> high speed trains for longer distance travel. For almost any common origin
> and destination, you can get there faster by mass transit than by driving a
> car ! No parking hassles, no tickets to worry about, no fuel to buy ... and
> my wife talked for years afterwards about how safe and clean they were.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't see any practical way to duplicate the Dutch system
> here.
I lived for a while in DC, where the Metro trains were efficient, cheap, safe
and crowded every morning and every evening. But the roads, even those that
were HOV-only, were still jammed with cars. No one system will meet
everyone's needs, and the infrastructure is hella-expensive, but the sooner
we go there, the better.
Chris Eck
59 Bugeye
59 TR3A
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