>Heartfield, the accidental satirist, wrote,
>
>>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.
>
>- snip -
>
>>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.
Also <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/DrivingMadness.html> (links to sources in original):
>The U.S. consumes about twice as much of the
>principal transportation fuels (gasoline and the
>so-called middle distillates, which include
>diesel and jet fuel) per capita as Western
>Europe. More of us drive, and when we drive we
>travel longer distances in less fuel-efficient
>cars. The contrasts are pretty striking, as a
>glance at the nearby chart of vehicle miles
>traveled per capita (that is, total miles
>traveled by cars and trucks divided by the
>population) shows.
>
>For more detail, we can turn to a recent study
>by Genevieve Giuliano and Dhiraj Narayan of USC
>comparing the driving habits of Americans and
>the British. Just 3% of U.S. households have no
>car, compared with 23% in Britain; 16% of U.S.
>households have more vehicles than drivers,
>compared with 3% of British households.
>Americans average four car trips a day, twice as
>many as Brits, and travel seventeen miles a day,
>almost three times as much as the U.K.'s average
>of six. The average American travels almost
>twice as fast, too. Almost 90% of American
>voyages are by private vehicle, compared with
>58% in Britain. Exact stats are unavailable, but
>it looks like Americans are almost twice as
>likely to drive solo. British travelers are more
>than five times as likely to take a bus, three
>times as likely to take a train, and almost five
>times as likely to walk or ride a bike than
>Americans.