[Sosfbay-discuss] going car free
Andrea Dorey
andid at cagreens.org
Sun Mar 25 11:39:22 PDT 2007
No, no, no, Rob. You didn't give the wrong impression at all. And I
agree with your solutions. But I think they need to be added to what
we are doing now even if BART has some design problems. It's what we
bought into and we're stuck temporarily to a certain degree.
The UK has had a marvelous solution to their outmoded parts of the
Underground rail system when they mated the main London-based line to
such outreach lines as the Circle Line, etc. It enabled people to
get around in London, old and new, and the outlying areas several
miles away, such as Kew Gardens, etc. A boon to tourists.
The transportation system has been carefully thought out, including
providing a *world-renown* symbolic map for the Underground that has
no relation to real space and location, but enables everyone
(including tourists) to quickly figure out how to get to anywhere
they need to go on the system. A feat in itself.
They also have linked the basic rail ticket to the Underground,
busses, double-deckers, ferries, and trolleys so that one can step
from one form of travel to another without extra fares and without
waits that last much more than five minutes. You can bet that
everyone wants to use the Underground instead of fighting downtown
London traffic with a personal auto!
Another stroke of genius is the cheap day pass for tourists that
excludes "drive time" periods so that Londoners can get to work and
not have to fight tourists for seats and breathing room on the
transpo system. Clever, eh? No wonder the natives don't mind tourists!
BTW, Canada inherited that idea of transpo as a citizen service, and
when I was sent there by my company during my third world symposium
for the DIA (Drug Information Association), I jettisoned my *company-
paid car* to ride the underground. Cheaper, faster, more pleasant by
far! It was cheaper, even for me as a non-taxpaying alien because
Canada, like the UK and many Euro countries, has a socialized
democracy that believes that many things are in service to the public
(citizen or not) and should be free or priced cheaply enough than
anyone can afford it.
The US almost had a similar socialized democracy after WWII, but we
quickly trashed most of that pro-citizen support network and
privatized it, so it fails often due to the vagaries of the economy.
About all that is left of it is Social Security, Medicare, and a few
ragtags of the public health care system.
[Tian, I would love to have you share the premise put out by my TV
colleague, Nick Szabo, who gave a talk at your techie group last week
on the Finnish model! Nick is a thoughtful social philosopher and an
ex-mayor of Cupertino, with vast experience in compassionate
corporate management.]
We in the US shock many people in the rest of the world in our
ability to tear down and throw away anything we get tired of or deem
as "old" and useless. We don't think about how to adapt it, update
it, incorporate it. We're extremely wasteful, IMHO.
OK, 'nuff said.
Andrea
On Mar 22, 2007, at 12:48 PM, Rob Means wrote:
> Andrea,
>
> Perhaps I gave the wrong impression. I favor public/clean/efficient
> transportation options. I'm aggrieved that the chosen modes (BART and
> LRT) cost so much and produce such poor results. We can do much
> better.
> VTA, as an organization and a process, tends to ignore modern transit
> options. And jitneys. And CNG buses. And the synergies of a campaign
> promoting electric bikes, trikes and scooters. And (while I'm
> ranting)
> VTA should give us back bike lanes and the right to walk on the
> expressways that they took away.
>
> Clearly, cleaning the air is important to public health. Based on
> results, however, the big bucks we're spending on LRT are not helping
> clean the air because even more cars are coming to dirty it. To
> paraphrase something I read this morning, it's not that we're not
> doing
> something; it's that we're not doing nearly enough. In the 90's
> was the
> time to think incrementally. Now, the crises are so looming that big
> changes are required - and quickly.
>
> Rob Means, Electro Ride Bikes and Scooters
> 408-262-8975 rob.means at electric-bikes.com
> 1421 Yellowstone Ave., Milpitas, CA 95035-6913
> Discover cycling that's Easy, Safe, Fast - and FUN!
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> ---
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrea Dorey [mailto:andid at cagreens.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:36 PM
> To: Rob Means
> Cc: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] going car free
>
> Rob,
> I think that public transportation is just that, public AND a public
> service. I think the less we charge and the more we support with
> taxes, the better. We can clear a lot of cars off the road,
> including the Outreach cars that deliver seniors here and there, and
> get people hooked on letting someone else do the driving so they can
> knit, read, talk, etc. We can clear the air faster; slow down the
> destruction of the fertile valley floor (what's left of it), the
> farms (what's left of those), valued old buildings; ease our horrific
> traffic congestion; slow down damage to roads and highways; require
> fewer patrolmen; use up fewer hours of fire truck time; involve fewer
> people in accidents and ER repairs; and begin to empty parking lots.
> All of which will have a salutory effect on health for kids and
> seniors; in particular, asthma rates and other immune problems due to
> PMs/pollution.
>
> We forget the horrible price we all pay for petrol-based
> transportation-and in real dollars.
> Andrea
>
>
> On Mar 20, 2007, at 9:25 AM, Rob Means wrote:
>
>> After 6 years of pointing out the benefits of Personal Rapid Transit
>> (PRT) to the VTA Board and staff, I'm very cynical about them doing
>> anything outside their box. They use 19th century technology
>> (LRT) to
>> solve 21st century transportation problems created by the automobile
>> because the federal government doles out money for it.
>> That may make some financial sense, but when you throw in the
>> operating
>> costs, low ridership and near zero impact on car congestion, it looks
>> like a boondoggle. We could get a bigger bang for our buck by giving
>> out thousands of electric bikes and scooters.
>>
>> Check the following link for an alternative to the (overly) expensive
>> BART extension. For about one-tenth the price, we can serve about
>> half
>> the demand (which goes between the Fremont BART station and the Great
>> Mall LRT station) and provide better service all along the route.
>> http://www.electric-bikes.com/ciscofield.htm
>>
>> As for getting VTA bus service "up to snuff", how do you propose
>> paying
>> for it? Right now, the farebox only covers 20% of the operating
>> costs.
>> Restoring recently-cut services requires money that the VTA claims
>> not
>> to have.
>>
>> Rob Means, Electro Ride Bikes and Scooters
>> 408-262-8975 rob.means at electric-bikes.com
>> 1421 Yellowstone Ave., Milpitas, CA 95035-6913
>> Discover cycling that's Easy, Safe, Fast - and FUN!
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>
>> --
>
>
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