At 11:50 AM 6/22/99 -0400, Henry Liu wrote: >of automobile configuration. Cars of course are air polluting. >Yet, the advantages of the highway/auto system are not insubstantial. It >serves effectively the spread-out existing urban patterns, albeit because the >pattern grew from it. >The car provides the driver with considerable freedom of movement and timing. >There is no need to wait for the next train which in off peak hours never >comes. The car is relatively more protective from urban crimes in empty >stations. It is imminently more comfortable than the best subway train. In >California, it is a common sight to see urban planners and economists who drive >their fancy cars to meetings to promote urban rail mass transit. >What is needed is a coordinate balance between peak hour concentration >transportation needs and non-peak freedom for each city according to its >historical conditions and special characteristics. >The cost efficiency issue is a red herring, at least on a national basis. Not so fast Henry! If there is a cost to an activity but nobody calculates it, does it still consitute a cost? You have been quite critical about Western mentality - yet your own writing displayes some of it worst characteristic - relativistic subjectivism. Your cost/benefit calculation takes into account only monetary costs (fees and subsidies) but ignores hidden costs. Suburban sprawl, which you mention as a disadvantage for "linear" rail transportation is a dirfect result autmobilie based transportation. Without individual autos sprawl would not be possible without substantially reducing mobility. Yet sprawl poses a tremendous social and political cost to a society - from the destruction of natural environment to social fragmentation and th eproblems it causes: anomia, crime and and th eloss of political control. Oh yes, suburbs wre cited by late 19th and 20th century social engineers and architects, such as Le Corbusier, as the "final solution" to the labor unrest problem. So the illusion of securty and comfort created by car is comprable to "protection" provided by gangsters - a protection from adverse results of their own existence. Somehow, in Europe people do need to lock themsleves in their car to "protect" themselves from "dangers" of public places - only in amerikkka. Anothe hidden cost is death toll. Car-based transportation is much more accident prone (by sheer law of probability) than rail-based transportation - but it is the people who pay the ultimate cost - it is them who die in accidents not the ratfucking urban planners. Add to it the animals killed on the roads - it would be very arrogant not to consider that factor. Finally the quality of life -it is very amerikkkan to consider isolation form other people car provide to be synonymous with freedom and comfort. I find it very depressing - i'd rather spend time in the company of people on a train. but hey, i was not born in this socially enginneered society (and proud of it) so i am not a big fan of privacy and security. FC - fuck cars (remember the unabomber) wojtek
