Public transit in America

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Why is public transporation in America considered some kind of HORRIBLE SIN ? Well maybe because by constructing wide open suburbs, people are atomized, are few and in between, are easier to control, can’t gang up and demand something. Because we have this illusion of being “free” while in reality we are free to ride our private cars and pay the muslims cash for our gas, and they pay us back with terror attacks and criticism and hate for the USA.

Why is it that when even someone starts talking about public transportation, the projects have to be hugely costly endeavors like trains, high speed rail, subways, why can’t they be simple buses ? What is wrong with cheap simple buses ? Because they cost too little and too few people can sponge off the money ?

Let’s see: there are about 5,000 urban centers in the USA, lets add about 500 buses to each, at a cost of about 500,000 dollars each. That is about 1.3 trillion dollars. That is about equal to 2 years worth of USA military expenditure or half the cost of health care for one year in the USA (the country is very sick and old hmmm…). Looked at another way we would be saving about 10 million barrels of oil a day, at 100 dollars, about a billion dollars a day. In three years the expense would be paid back with just the cost savings in gasoline.

I think 500 buses in alot of the urban centers, well designed, well figured out, using advanced software, scheduling routines and the internet would make public transportation a very easy solution for the PEAK OIL problem we got here in the USA. Many, many people would ride the buses, why not ?

But, hey why isn’t anyone thinking about it ? Why is it preferable to just spend money on abstract looney wars, on fake solutions like hybrid cars and gasoline from food (starving people across the globe in the meantime) ? Why are people so stupid ? Are they stupid or what ? I mean seriously, with all the think tanks, research and development, scientists, NASA, Bush, and all the others, MIT, CALTECH, Apple etc . ARE THEY STUPID OR WHAT ? MAY I ASK, ARE THEY ALL STUPID OR WHAT ?!??!??

BEWARE OF PEAK OIL
BEWARE OF PEAK OIL
BEWARE OF PEAK OIL

2

Oh and by the way, where are all the private corporations on this ? Where are all the entrepeneurs ? Why doesn’t anyone have any idea at all how to run a for profit public transit endeavor ? Is it really that hard ? Is it impossible ? Does gas have to get to cost 100 dollars a gallon to wake up ? Why don’t companies furnish their own buses to bring their workers back and home from their jobs ? Is it too hard or is it EVIL or does it have deep evil symbolic (socialistic?) meanings ?

3

It won’t change ever, either it is America with cars or it will no longer be America as we know it. Why ? For some quirk cultural reason I guess.

But even more incredible are many other countries of the world like China, India, Brazil and even EU where you have the WORSE OF BOTH WORLDS: HIGH DENSITY LIVING AND FULL OF CARS AND TRAFFIC AND NO PARKING!

The whole idea that China or India have to follow a perverted USA model of private car ownership is really absurd. They got no roads, no parking, high gas prices and still the cars keep on selling. There is no end to irrationality. Imagine just high class Luxury Buses bringing everyone around in those places, they would increase their real standard of living immensly.

But if the industry doesn’t build cars what else could they build ? there would not be enough work and activity to absorb such a large industry like the private automobile, they would all become unemployed.

4

As an independent business, public transportation pretty much always loses money. That’s fine because the point is to offer a low cost means of transporting people around the area. Having public transportation tends to raise property value, attract good business, and a variety of other factors beyond the red number at the end of the month. So when everything is factored in, they are a good investment for a city to make, even if they do cost money to maintain.

That’s generally how infrastructure works.

5

Oh I see, so 500 billion dollars a year of USA military expenditure is not “pretty much always a loss of money”, and 2 trillion dollars a year for health care in the USA is not “pretty much always a loss of money”.

Maybe we should get the priorities right, and loss of money for who ?

6

Both these endeavors create work for millions of people, without this money spent there would be no work for millions, they would have no place of work to go with the “public transportation”, get it ? So dump billions in health and insurance companies and weapons and military and you get millions of jobs. What their net result is, is irrelevant. Dump that money in buses and you get buses that no one will use anymore because there will be no place to go since there will be no job to go to.

7

The USA is becoming an increasingly classist society. What ever happened to the “level playing field” ? to “equal opportunity” ?

Without public transportation you are creating a forced inequality and disadvantaging those that still can’t afford a car and have to spend money to get to work. With public transit this inequality is no longer forced from outside conditions. At least you can get to work and then the results you get at work will depend on your efforts. The same can be said with “college education” and school districts. if you are not from a wealthy family and have to live in a bad school district or you don’t have enough money for a college education and have to borrow it, you are starting out disadvantaged, there is a forced inequality of opportunities from the outset.

The USA is probably the most unequal society and class conscious society in the west. It is increasingly based on betting on the right horse as in stocks and less on your efforts and “hard work”. It is seen as a bully who beats up other countries to steal their oil instead of doing the hard work of research at home to find a solution to its dependency on oil, instead of encouraging innovation and new markets and good “hard work” in public transportation and telecommuting. It denies the most basic American myths and values such as inventiveness, innovation, organization to create something for the “common good”. Equal opportunity and the common good are probably too communistic in America today, only inheritance of wealth is really appreciated, no one is working on creating a high class intelligent internet based public transit system, it requires hard work and innovation, something America has lost, now the USA can only base itself on beating up other countries with the excuse of “the war on terror” and steal their oil.

And this myth of private companies being better than government run companies is nonsense, only the way a company is managed really counts. It makes no difference if the money is public or private, if the managers are good and know how to give drives and incentives to their workers and create and develop new markets and products, the company should be successful. And capitalism today is mostly just like a centralized communist society, there are just a few mega monopolies that decide everything about where to produce, how to produce, what to produce, how people will be managed etc. This private versus government is a bunch of real bullshit.

8

Beware of the eccentric old man sitting across from you on the bus, he’ll get ya with his low status.

9

PEAK OIL is being ingnored. Does anyone have any idea on what we are talking about here ? Does anyone have a grip on the magnitude of the problem ? Take a look at a typical large truck on an American highway. Look at it climb a hill, now imagine making that truck do that same thing only with some wind fan on top of it (just by the wind blowing it), or with a solar panel on top of it. Do you think it could move ? Do you know how energy dense oil is ?

Multiply that truck by the millions going around worldwide. Those trucks bring us medicine and food and make the entire worldwide industrial production system operate. Now think of what it means that the oil that is running them is running out, like when you drink a glass of water and the water finishes.

So do you think the wind will move the trucks ? Do you think the solar panel would move it ? Try making a simple bike and powering it by the wind or solar panels. That is the point, if we don’t act now and fast we are doomed.

Look at a truck move the next time you think about PEAK OIL.

I really wonder why no one talks about hiking up the worldwide public transit system. It is incredible and astonishing how an intelligent tribe like the Western Civilization will go down the drain because this simple idea can’t get into people’s mind.

10

The USA is built on debt, when there is no one left to pay then maybe public transit will become reasonable. By then however I wonder what will be left, but maybe all those two car garages can become small homes for the homeless when everyone will have sold their cars…

11

I use busses, and I am American. I can afford a car but I have chosen not. It my general opinion, as a public transit user, it is because Americans are lazy and want convenience, not ignorance. It is class issue only to the extent that certain classes can not afford the convenience of automobiles. Laziness and immediate gratification will be the downfall through peak oil, not stubbornness.

12

I like my car. I pay close to $4 per gallon right now, it hurts abit but, I just go without a couple of other luxuries. I prefer my privacy in my car. I put a higher value on comfortable private transportation than i do better quality of food or even entertainment. I hate public buses, everytime I ever rode one the nasties most smelliest most drunkard type of derilict person managed to sit next to me. Bad memories, yech,. Now a train would not be so bad I have always enjoyed trains. I would even say that the Australians could be looked to for this.

We do not have to lay down tracks, we can just simply use a version of reticulated Road Trains for mass transit. This could have real possiblities.

13

Where I live the public transportation system is privately run. Contrary to what might be expected, the bus service is unbelievably wide, I can take a bus from out front the building I live in to almost any address in the entire country, no matter how remote. It is not super comfortable, it is sometimes hot and stuffy on the bus, and you may sometimes have to stand packed in. As well, the private system has it’s own disadvantages such as the drivers gunning it and jarring everyone around at every intersection and running lights dangerously to pick up the most possible passangers (I believe the bus drivers work under a system somewhat similar to that of taxi drivers.) Be that as it may, it might not actually be true that public transportation reduces the number or routes or the quality; in fact the exact opposite may be the truth; are there not stories of American auto companies buying of property with tram-lines just to rip them up?

14

Lets put this thing up on two feet. There are 300 million people in America, that is about 300 thousand trillion neurons interacting between themselves in the most bizzare and casual way, some following pseudo-rules, some following none, etc. Now this system is defined as “Capitalism” or the “Common Good”.

The definitions are what is wrong, the system can’t really be defined much beyond some general rules that sometimes kind of work. For example a basic trait of the “system” may be the concept of RISK: I bet money on the stock market and hope to get a return, if I get something I gain otherwise I lose. No problem. Now this idea of risk, of taking a chance of betting, permeates alot of the system, so for example I bet on a college education and this should return me a good job. I put in money and effort hoping to get a return. This may or may not work, no one knows, no one can control it, the abstract market controls it, but it is ever changing so your bet on a college degree that cost you money you probably borrowed can be a loss. You may never pull it off, or maybe you could land that great job. Who knows ? The same goes with working hard for a company in the hopes of getting a raise or getting “ahead”. This may or may not work, it is a bet, a poker game, like Las Vegas, the company could go out of business tomorrow after you spent two years working 12 hours a day and trying your best, you may be laid off. Or you may become a boss and get 100,000 dollars a year more.

So the idea of trying to analyze this system or any other is foolish, won’t bring further knowledge because past a certain point everything is and remains totally unknown. Other abstractions may be “the war on terror”. Now what on earth could that really mean ? there are another 100 thousand trillion neurons interacting between themselves in any possible way in Irak or is it Siria or Afghanistan or wait maybe it was Pakistan etc. It is such a vague concept it is incredible that no one asks Bush to explain it exactly.

So here you are, you did “all the right things”, you maybe went to college, got your degree in Engineering put in the effort and in the end you got laid off and can’t get back in the workplace. What went wrong ? Nothing, but the idea that there is some kind of abstract metaphysical system that will reward you because you followed the rules, like as if there were a god, like a religion that if you are a good boy you will be treated wll. No this is not the case, the system is based on chance, on bets, a poker game, ever changing conditions, quirk decisions made by millions of quirky people, there are no general rules or system just good luck and bad luck and sometimes some effort can get you somewhere.

Hey, etoin what country is it that you are in ? And then public transit can be designed and organized as good as a society wants it, you just need to want it. If you decide to make it a very high quality system with the best buses and schedules and internet schedules etc. it could be very comfortable and way better than private driving.

15

I live in a place where cars and gasoline are extensively taxed and public transport is good. Whoever really needs a car due to living outside the public transport routes are effected more than most but I’d say that overall, it’s for the better.

I know Americans will never get over driving but please prove me wrong? I know it’s convenient but it’s also very dangerous and very, very wasteful.

16

cars can also be status symbols…if you are ugly…get a flash car…why do people drive suv’s in the city…status dude

17

So you think PEAK OIL!!! is real?

I’d say that it’s a myth cooked up by the oil industry to justify ever increasing prices, lapped up by the leftist environmental crowd to justify their plans for ever decreasing quality of life.

I mean, we have no reliable means of estimating how much oil there is, or what technological advances might be made that cheapens the cost of extraction, so how we can make a guess as to the moment/period when oil productions hits its peak is utterly beyond me. Unless it’s a false scarcity being cooked up to justify increasing prices.

It does amuse me that the leftist environmental crowd is so willing to believe in peak oil, but decry the same source on the subject of global warming…

18

Like if everyone in the USA stayed home for 3 months, just sleeped, just didn’t do anything at all but relax and not take their car, the USA GDP would gain 100 billion dollars just in gasoline savings, which would be equivalent to a GDP growth of 1%. That is what they all should do and accept that in life there is absolutely nothing to do, we have nothing to do and there is no goal to achieve, this is the absolute truth, we should just accept a monolithic void and totally empty life with nothing at all as content. But anyways, by just sleeping all day long you get growth without doing anything at all. How it is measured today, when people go to work they are actually depleting wealth and not creating it, the growth as measured by GDP today is actually “destruction of wealth” and especially “destruction of future wealth”.

Of course GDP is a measure of economic transactions, of activities, of exchanges, it doesn’t matter what is exchanged. So if everyone was at home and exchanged symbols and money for symbols, then that would compensate money for fuel. If the frequency of exchanges increases, the GDP increases, hence more wealth. The truth is, economists don’t even know what GDP means, what it measures, what wealth means, what it is for who etc.

Economics is indeed a failed science or a very subtly biased science with many hidden agendas in it, to promote someones gain (probably the rich Capitalist social class).

19

Public transit in the USA could be done in so many efficient and comfortable ways, in so many different ways, even using your private car for some of the shorter routes, etc. There is a huge number of combinations at all cost levels possible, at all convenience levels possible, even still using your private car for a number of shorter easier routes etc. Light trains, buses etc. are all totally implementable, you just need the political will power to do it.

The real issue is COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY POLITICAL - ECONOMICAL. THERE ARE HUGE INTERESTS OF GROUPS OF PEOPLE, OIL COMPANIES, CAR COMPANIES, INSURANCE COMPANIES ETC. THAT WILL DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO BLOCK ANY POSSIBLE INNOVATION IN THIS FIELD AND ANY POSSIBLE USE OF PUBLIC TRANSIT. They will always undermine any effort, they will boycott it in all ways, they will brainwash people that public transit is evil.

The economic interests are just too huge, to abide to the puny “common good” idealism.