Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : Global Warming -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (11)	1/11/2007 7:33:13 PM
From: russet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 185

Government tend to react to the people who demand more blacktop where they drive. Most of us hate driving on gravel or dirt, and can't stand sitting behind the guy ahead of us that wants to do the speed limit so we demand lots of double and triple lanes and passing lanes. Everyone wants a big home in the country, but wants the job with the big paycheque too, which is usually in the city. The problem with inner and inter city rapid transit is you need high population densities to make it work in a planning and economic sense. Even Canada's biggest cities tend to fall short in density. How many cities in the world with populations around a million or so have subways? How many cities in Canada even have a million people? Reducing downtown business taxes means you have to raise taxes for the homeowner,...and then you don't get re elected. Long haul trucking is used by businesses that use it over rail because they discover it's cheaper to use trucks. This invariably brings us back to the population density thing. When you deal with logistics and economics you may find that the Big Box Mall concept is relatively cheap transportation cost wise,... especially if you as a consumer want the cheapest price. Also truck drivers hate delivering a load to 60 different customers spread out all over a downtown,...try getting into some of these narrow streets and back alleys with a big semi sometime, and then try to find where the shipping idiots put the damned packages each customer needs and you'll understand why. Similarly, it can be difficult and a little expensive to provide every downtown business with a railway :-[) Maybe we need to ask Scotty to come and show us how to beam our stuff around :-) A electric car would be a nice way to get to the mall too. Maybe if those governments you talked about passed laws demanding all city transport be by electric cars or you pay a big toll, things would be different?