Advancing their own interests, and those of their constituents, so that they can stay in power. It's an inside-looking-out process.
Re: It's all relative
driven
4/3/2012 11:19:38 AM
As long as I'm not standing outside waiting for a bus, I would much rather be trapped on public transportation than stuck in traffic in a car.
At least there's the worst case scenerio on a bus. You get off. You walk. You take a train or a subway or something. If you are stuck in traffic in a car, you literally can't move. and it drives me crazy.
>how free do you feel when you're waiting for a train or a bus that's late or just >doesn't show up?
As free as I felt when I was trapped in my car at the entrance of the Holland Tunnel waiting for 45 minutes just to get IN it.
Re: It's all relative
Broadway
4/2/2012 9:42:00 PM
Scott, how free do you feel when you're waiting for a train or a bus that's late or just doesn't show up? Or when the subway you're on stops in the middle of the tunnel and doesn't move inexplicably for uncontrollable lengths of time. I love the concept of public transportation when I am driving to work. When I actually have to take public transportation to work, I beg for a quiet, quick end.
Re: Trains, and fuel
driven
4/2/2012 1:58:46 PM
yes I agree, and it's funny. Why does a crazy conspiracy actually seem to make things seem "better" or more understandable?
For some reason, it always makes life seem more orderly to believe everything is the result of a conspiracy rather than just randomness.
Growing up in LA, I had always heard the same stories about conspiracies to undermine public transportation in the City of the Angels. I just researched it (as in read a Wikipedia article on the subject) and there appears to be some basis in fact. According to that article, it was General Motors (and by extension, its suppliers such as tire companies) that conspired to replace street car lines with busses. Sounds pretty plausible to me...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Los Angeles may be somewhat unique among large cities however in the challenges that have bedeviled public transportation as it developed.
1) Because of the mountains that ring the LA basin and separate it from the San Fernando Valley (which in turn is ringed by other mountains), connecting various parts of the city is not as easy as laying track in a more level place.
2) The business base in LA has never been concentrated. For years the downtown was about as sleepy as could be. So, there was never a sense of getting off the public transportation line and walking a few blocks to work. More like a few MILES, and cabs are virtually non-existent.
3) If ever there was a place where the psychology of car culture aligned with the need for one, it's LA. Cars, especially the fabulous candy-colored specimens they had when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, were a defining part of the LA mindset. The only possible incentive to curb car culture came from...
4) Smog. The dialogue surrounding the need for public transportation in LA has always been dictated by smog mitigation, not really fuel costs. That is how environmentalism is measured and quantified...much more than energy savings. I think that in previous decades there was always enough local oil to make gas prices a non-starter as far as worries.
There is no doubt that the "American Graffiti" culture is engrained into the American Pysche. However inpractical or uneconomical it is, it is part of a romantic vision of the car culture.
What about the famous story that the tire companies shut down early plans for a Los Angeles public transit system. Is that just urban myth or was there a lot of truth to it?
to me it's the opposite, the more public transportation there is the more free you are because you don't have to depend on gasoline, car insurance, and be imprisoned by traffic.
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