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Politics : The Citizens Manifesto -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (118)	6/16/2005 6:07:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 492

Public transportation has to exist before it can be used. If the economic and tax situation is such that there is additional demand that it will grow. It does exist now, more people will start using it, and in response there will be more of it to use, which may encourage even more people to use it. It does take time for this to take effect but most sweeping changes do take time, and often attempts to rush them are counterproductive, you may get the change you want but face other problems, or you may not even get the effects you want. Raising the gas taxes to a high level would cause a great deal of pain. John's car tax wouldn't. Yes it would. Adding taxes that equal a large fraction of the cars costs is painful to the buyers and sellers of those cars. Now compare that with the traffic on the typical Interstate in the US. It is going to take a number of years to get people to switch to cars like that. In making such sweeping changes, the fact that it would take a number of years is not an important consideration for me. In addition, the roads would need to be upgraded, the suspensions on those cars can't take the potholes and poor road patches that are common on our streets... You don't have to use those same exact cars. Only lighter smaller cars with small engines. In any case I think a lot of those European cars could handle the roads as well as many American cars. Some improvements in the quality of our roads would probably be a good idea with or without any program to discourage gasoline use, but its not like all the European roads are perfect either, and its not as if the changes can't come to the cars instead of all the roads, if changes really are needed. Tim