>But as you know
>from Manhattan, a decent public transit system that gets you where you
>want to go as quickly as an automobile is as attractive a technology
>as an automobile.
Yup, but it only works when people live close together, and Americans seem to want to live further & further apart.
>Actually some of the train systems I favor look more like dicklike
>than cars do.I suppose painting them some shade of flesh color would
>be too obvious; but possibly a good marketer could do something with
>the fact that they are bigger than automobiles/SUVS and can keep
>thrusting tirelessly forward longer.
Ah, but trains are collective dicks, and what lots of people want is a personal dick. As the Jungian market researcher G. Clothair Rapaille put it, Americans want vehicles that are like tanks on the outside and living rooms on the inside. Or, as a CNN interviewer put it the other day, there are a lot of low-income people in bus stations, and people have a problem with that.
Doug