mass transit (sic)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Jun 6 07:41:24 PDT 2002


At 07:48 PM 6/5/2002 +0100, James Heartfield wrote:


>Michael Perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu>
>
>"If you starve public enterprises, whether mass transit or public
>education, fewer people will be attracted to it except by necessity."
>
>You don't think perhaps that the reason mass transit (sic) is not
>garnering funds is because it just isn't mass, its minority transit?
>
>I suppose by the same lights you could say that gas-lighting was 'starved
>of funds' or that valves were starved of funds by transistors.

I can understand someone making that statement in the UK, whose public transit system is a national disgrace. Ditto for the US. But not for the continental Europe, whose rail based system is both technologically and economically superior to anything that happened in the auto industry. To pursue your analogy - the rail based transportation underwent a technological progress from a steam-powered engine to sophisticated electric powered high speed trains. The automobile, OTOH, is still powered by that clunky and dirty internal combustion engine with which it was equipped when it was invented in the 19th century. The most progress took place mainly in the whistle area (undoing its emissions).

As I indicated in my earlier reply to your original post, the report you cited contains data that supports Michael's conclusion - public transit is much higher in those area where it is also well developed (NYC, DC, Chicago) - as opposed to the rest of this vast wasteland where it means buses sitting in the traffic with the rest of the auto-mass.

wojtek



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