http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2005/2005-November/024774.html
The link gives vague handwaving to mass transit. That's already here, but the problem is the local bus to BART interface. In the past, there used to be an electric bus system in LA at least in the downtown area. (Ancient history when I was a kid.) It was quite and produced no smog. SF mini bought some of the buses and used them up here. I was shocked when I first came up here at 23 to see the electric cars from my kiddihood at 10, running up Market painted with the same creme and light green colors. Some are still here along with others from other cities as a living electric train system. In the old days there were several heavily used bus routes that used the same carriage and car outfitted with rubber tires. The top panograph swung side ways so the bus could change lanes and stop at regular curbs.
The stupidity of not expanding and developing this system over the decades was just astonishing. The issue was money and the bureaucratic infrastructure of making cities pay for their own mass transit without state or federal help and planning. And of course the other issue was the oil industry domination of transportation with the gasoline/diesel engines.
Here is a good wiki on the electric locomotive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive
This makes for a great infrastructure development system that would creat a relatively clean re-industrialization project. If you `nationalized' the rail and interstate electric grid.
In the conceptual planning use a modular system of multiple central trunk lines where the fast few stops feed branch lines of less fast more stop systems that branch again into population centers.
This model is based on the circulatory system of animals (us) where the main trunks are the large arteries that run along the torso and branch into smaller arteries out to the limbs, and finally into the local capillary systems with many branches.
You can see the skeleton of such a system by using google maps and spot the residual rail yards from Chicago to NYC, following the rust belt cities along the Great Lakes. The old coal and iron ore fields running approximately along the Ohio and Tenn river went north on rail to feed the network of steel industries from Pennslyvannia to Illionis where these met the industrial cities of manufacturing. Meanwhile agricultural production followed similar rail routes mostly ending in Chicago (a sort of giant pumbing heart) then shipping routes of the Great Lakes and or lead to the great feeder systems of the Mississippi. The rail systems were man-made circulatory systems that interfaced with the Mississippi and Great Lakes as a natural systems
Well, back to a vision of the good life. Let's say I wanted to take a pleasant trip back east to visit an old friend near Burlington VT, on the NY side of the lake Champlain. I take a single suitcase and a bag of food and liquor. The `food' would be similar to what I used to take on climbing trips and was hard to find. bread cheese, salami, and wine.
There is a bus stop at my corner and I take it to the Bart station which leads to the interstate rail hub out near Stacy and transfer.
The goal is to end up in or near Burlington. At a guess that's more than 3000 miles. Figure 5000, and figure some fast average speed of say 100m/hr. 50hrs, or two days and some change. So I could stay tipsy to toasted for two days, eat, talk, read, and enjoy.
We should be living in paradise boys and girls. The shit we're in is ridiculous.
CG