>On British statistics, around 85 per cent of all journeys are by car. Around ten per cent by train.
>For the train network to reduce car journeys by one seventh, it would have to double in capacity.
>To halve car journeys, it would have to multiply five times.
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>Public transit is not socialism, whether it is the London Underground or the train to Auschwitz.
Surely you're not saying the final solution would have been more humane had only Der Führer driven the prisoners to camps in Volkswagens?
On "British statistics", Mr. Heartfield must have in mind those notorious "single occupant trains" when he calculates the necessary expansion of the train network. Actually, the more extensive and timely the public transit system becomes, the higher would be its utilization of capacity -- increasing returns to scale produce relatively large increases in ridership for modest improvements in the network. Unlike Mr. Heartfield, I actually have written technical reports on transit expansion and so I at least know enough not to confuse capacity with ridership and not to equate journeys by car with journeys by rail. If transit operated at the same ridership to capacity ratio that automobiles operate at, there would be no money left for anything else. But, you see, that's just the problem with the car -- it is by design underutilized.
The Sandwichman