Let's both lower the volume here, OK? Sorry for calling you Mr. Babbitt--that wasn't nice--but you guys seem so reflexively dismissive of new ideas here. I agree with Charles Krauthammer on the tax issue:
Message 13236483
You tax-haters ought to be storming capitol hill, demanding the Repubs and Dems both stop shelling out your tax dollars to build ever more highways and widen and widen on and on existing ones with no end in sight....more roads lead to more cars which lead to more roads in a vicious cycle...the demand curve is elastic to the supply--build more roads, more cars will fill it till you then widen them again....this is the ABC's of transportation engineering, any transport engineer will tell you.
I am talking about developing a far-sighted, democratically supported, national tranportation policy that would encourage the development of a train and mass-transit system that in itself would have far-reaching beneficial social and environmental effects, and, through economic incentives, wean ourselves gradually, over several decades, off our excessive dependence on the automobile, a dependence whose real hidden costs we are only dimly aware of.
I recommend to you two books:
Asphalt Nation by Jane Holtz Kay and Around the Cragged Hill by George Kennan, the very distinguished (and very conservative) diplomat and historian, especially his chapter on our two national addictions: the auto and the TV. It will open your eyes. |
