Michael, I'm returning our discussion back to the listserv, as it seems we were about finished with it anyway (tomorrow is voting day!) and the general comments might be of interest to others. Thanks for the exchange of opinion.
I just have two points to make.. One, I have never said we shouldn't have other viable alternatives to auto travel to go along with the drive-less annual rebates. I think investing in quality transit for the suburbs is a fine viable alternative. However, the ones who make use of it should pay for it, not those of us paying high taxes here in the city already. Secondly, what makes you so sure all those big wide highways like the Verona Rd./HWY 151 area aren't going to still be here even if we do offer rail transit? They will be of course. Putting a alternative systems like rail will just be more taking of land for transportation purposes. That's why I think going for just more and cleaner buses is better than rail. They are also more flexible in getting to places. And if we can get more people to use them rather than drive, the congestion should go down on the existing highways as well, because one bus can replace 60 or so SOVs going back and forth from Sprawlsville to downtown Madison or the university. And by getting by without rail transit, there will be less blockages for bicyclists, pedestrians and cars and buses that do still use the roads. We'd also still have the South West Corridor bicycle path, too, because we won't have to give it back up for rail transportation.. What is comes down to is this: people need to live closer to where they do things every day, so that they can use nonfossil fuel energy sources (like food for example), for most of their daily living. That's the way things were before the automobile (except for the farmers and ranchers I suppose). But it order to go back to that, we have to stop subsidizing automobile travel, in a big way. It has to become in people's best interest to not rely on auto travel so much, financial and otherwise. Either making driving prohibitively expensive by raising gas taxes to where they should be, in combination with paying people who find ways to get by without driving so much, would be just the ticket. Perhaps we can ask the new mayor to give this matter some serious consideration. The alternative is more traffic, more pollution, more congestion, wider highways, and increasing greenhouse gas emissions from Dane County. Michael Neuman http://danenet.danenet.org/bcp/trans/neuman_vmt.html http://danenet.wicip.org/bcp/neuman_gw.pdf "The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." - Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day founder ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
