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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (124088)	9/18/2000 5:25:00 PM
From: pgerassi	Respond to of 1571896

Dear Ted: In Milwaukee, which generally has good public transit (at least within the county), I as a bus rider, when I was going to college, hated the 15 minute waits for a bus to show up. The waits can be as long as an hour late at night. Now this might mean little to someone in sunny Arizona or California, but here in a typical Wisconsin winter, it gets really cold and you feel like you are freezing your posterior off. To someone who has never, ever, stuck waiting at a bus stop going to school, when it is -20F in a sheltered place (wind chills easily exceed -60F some days), this would be thought to be fatal weather (I know one Californite that though the world was freezing up their first day here. It was 23F (-5C) and then one of our hardier souls walks by wearing a pair of shorts (he had very hairy legs) and totally put the LA person in shock). I think mass transit has to fix a few things. Either come by more often or use immediate routing (route of bus changes as needed. Stoplight timing to be more centralized or peer to peer to allow vehicles traveling at the speed limit to hit all lights when they are green on major throughfares. Removal of stoplights where no longer necessary and replacement with stop signs one way and yields on the more important routes. Better speed limit settings to ensure that the routing above is easier. Curbs on development to enforce more clustering (although Chicago is having this happen wrt its rapid transit service (the stops are becoming magnets for office and residential developments (mostly high density))). Time spreading out of business hours to reduce peak congestion periods (this affects bus ridership as well (more people can be served by fewer buses)). Schedule truck traffic to off hours (say 10PM to 6AM). And last but, one of the best, promote telecommuting and / or a four day work week (4 days of 10 hours each)(the third day off spread around to even the daily loads). Net based shopping plus door to door delivery of the items purchased, can reduce the short quick gas wasting trips around. By using all of these strategies (although some also help cars or promote car pooling), about half of the gasoline used can be saved. It is that a whole lot of people will get their favorite thing gored by this method (just not the same ones) and that will be enough to kill it. Pete

To: tejek who wrote (124088)	9/18/2000 5:48:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571896

OT That's what people chose to do, given a choice. What individual people prefer is not always what's best for society in general. Routinely imposing a vision of what is best of society in general over individual choice (beyond what is nessiary to maintain public order and protect peoples lives and rights) leads us closer to totalitarian government. ....more and more middle and an upper class people turn to mass transit as an alternative so long as it gets them there faster and is pleasant. If people actually want to use public transportation then fine, (If they are driving they are most likely using public roads anyway there are few major private roads), as long as the incentive is the quality convience or other advantages of public transportation rather then punitive taxation against cars and such. In a recent post I posted that I might support increased gas taxes (if other taxes where lowered) but I probably would not. I do not support the general idea of using taxes to manipulate behavior. I would prefer broad based simple and low taxes on either income or spending (sales taxes). I don't like the government introducing tons of incentives to do one thing and punishments for doing something else into the tax code. Tim