From: mulvihil@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Lawrence Mulvihill)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: BUSH: The "Energy President" (I)
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:48:46 GMT
Reply-To: mulvihil@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Lawrence Mulvihill)
Organization: Carderock Division, NSWC, Bethesda, MD

In alt.activism, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>In article <24444@oasys.dt.navy.mil> mulvihil@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Lawrence Mulvi
>hill) writes:
>>
>>right-of-way must also be purchased for the highway.  Think about
>>how much the average person spends on gas, tires, oil, maintenance,
>>initial purchase, insurance, and parking.  Just in terms of aesthics,
>>it seems ridicules that a 150 pound person should drag 3000 pounds
>>of metal to work and back, everyday.
>
>  But clearly the choice of "urban" above slants the results.

True.

>  The advantage of highways is greatest in areas of lower pop-
>  ulation density; indeed it's unclear that in a typical suburb
>  with 1.5 acre zoning that public transit is any kind of a viable
>  option for commuting within the suburb or to adjacent ones.

How about in the suburban sprawl surrounding the imperial city
(D.C)?  The density is under 1.5 acres. I-66, I-270, I-95, I-495
are not fun.  This is clearly a suburban area with a transportation
problem.  The amount of land covered by concrete and asphalt is
phenomenal.  I doubt that adding more roads will help, since the
beltway was obsolete when it was completed.

D.C.'s metro system is heavily used.  Unfortunately it goes in and
out of the city.  The development patterns spawned by the ring road
and the corridors created by the major interstates are not mirrored
by the Metrorail system.  Had this been done we would have even
more riders.

How about NYC?  If everyone who used the Long Island
Railroad and the New Jersey railroads to get to NYC,
we could redefine commuting hell.

>
>  Anyway, the above costs of a car must still be borne by anyone
>  who ever expects to leave the urban environment on a regular basis.

What happened to buses?  What happened to trains?  Why can't
people rent automobiles or trucks when they "need" them?

>  That is if I lived in Boston or New York (if I ever choose to do
>  either of these please kill me and put me out of my misery) I
>  would still need to invest in a car to go beyond these areas with
>  any reasonable convenience.

A convenience to you is very inconvenient to the child whose
standard of living will be lower because of bad health due
to your exhaust, because of a bad economy due to the importation of oil,
because a father is dead in some desert trying to win cheap oil!


>  What this really illustrates is that urban setting force people
>  into unacceptable choices.  

Sounds like the whimpering of a milktoast to me.  No offense
intended.  But it does sound really silly.

)In the past there was no way to have the
>  "critical mass" of people needed to generate ideas, commerce, and
>  industry except in urban settings.  Today modern technology makes
>  cities an anachronism, and cities are rapidly degenerating into
>  hell-holes of

blathering deleted

Oil is going to get more expensive.  Can the US afford to live
as a suburban sprawl?  We can't afford to live like this.
If the developing world follows our example in land use
we will all be in serious soup.