The average is higher than 16MPG.
Irrelevant as that is what the IRS assumes.
I would say more that what the IRS assumes is irrelevant if your talking about reality. Not irrelevant if your talking about tax figures, but you can't use an IRS assumption as a strong argument for real, non-tax related events, esp. over a direct description of reality.
That request to double mainline track was a single loan whose principal was equal to just 20% of one year of highway construction budget nationwide. In other words, the highway system spends every year on construction, 5 times the cost to double all of the mainline track nationwide.
And again that doesn't include all the costs for doubling the line, and more importantly doubling the main lines would provide transportation to only a small fraction of the places that the new road construction each year would allow people to access.
"Even living in one of the worst metro areas for traffic, it still would normally take longer to get to most places by mass transit, and that would be true even if the budget for mass transit greatly increased."
Not true. It takes 2.8 hours to go from Kenosha, WI to downtown Chicago, IL by car during rush morning (its long past a rush hour). By Metra from downtown Kenosha, it takes 40 minutes including many local stops along the way. That lets out at Ogilvie Transportation Center. From there its less than 5 minutes to most downtown locations by bus. Quite a few use mass transit than drive because of the aggravation and traffic jams. And the number is rising. So mass transit is faster than going by car.
Not many people commute 2.8 hours. Examples of such long commutes aren't fictional, but they aren't very relevant to the typical commuter.
I gave my personal example (where a car is much faster) and implied that typically transportation by car was typically faster. The particular example of Kenosha to Chicago hardly is enough to even say "not true" about the wider implication, and is totally irrelevant to my specific direct assertion.
"I doubt it. In any case 10% of long distance highway use is probably less than 1% of total miles driven."
You forget trucking which does more long distance than 1%. IIRC the definition for local is within 5 miles, intracity at 20 miles, regional at 100 miles and long distance greater than that.
Even with trucking I doubt long distance is greater than 10% of the total of all miles driven. Since you where talking about 10% of long distance highway use, that probably means less than 1% of total miles driven.
Most of the current freeways go along old trolley routes.
I'm not sure whether your just talking about Milwaukee or all cities. If your freeways covering most cities, then the assertion that most of them go along old trolley routes is just false. If your talking about Milwaukee only, well then it might be true, but I have some doubt, esp. if you mean most of the miles of the freeway system, not just some part of most of the freeways.
So your contention that light or heavy rail couldn't go into the suburbs is wrong.
I never made any such contention. Both light and heavy rail do go in to the suburbs. What they can't do is cover all the various suburb to suburb commutes. |
