mass transit (sic)

[Marco Anglesio]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, 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 think, James, you're putting the cart before the horse. 

In Toronto, where I live, a majority of the downtown workforce uses public
transit, but it works precisely because it was sufficiently well
capitalized to build subways and run frequent trains, as well as still
having a downtown streetcar service and a wide-ranging bus service in the
inner suburbs. Most of north america had decent public transit in the
pre-WWII era. Even cities as small as St. John, New Brunswick had
streetcars. 

Then came the depression and most streetcar systems disappeared,
bankrupted and bought out by GM in favour of bus-based transit. The
suburbanization of north america in the postwar era put the nail in the
coffin, but it's worth noting, James, that public transit systems were
gutted first and low-density suburbanization came second. 

Mass transit isn't an anodyne for all cities now; it's impossible to serve
low-density suburbs with sufficient frequency to be practical unless
systems are outright firehosed with money. Likewise, as people live
farther and farther from their workplaces (or other destinations), we also
run up against the convenience factor.

> 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.

One is a technically superior option to the other. Mass transit is not
clearly superior to automobiles (and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be
criticised for that), but in certain situations it can be, just as
automobiles can be superior in certain situations. 

Marco

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>                                    |          The further I get          <
>           Marco Anglesio           |     from the things I care about    <
>          mpa at the-wire.com          |            The less I care          <
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