After reading several epistles equating automobiles with the ravages of Hell, I feel I must respond. You see, I like cars, and I think they are kind of useful, and dare I say it, beneficial to society. Perhaps I'll be skewered in this forum for my heresy, but someone has to say this.
The main benefit of cars is they provide freedom to the average individual. Isn't it great to just get up in the morning, decide you want to go somewhere, and just get into the car and go? Well, my boss may not like it, so I have to consign this freedom to the weekend. Well, my wife might have things to say about that, so... Well, maybe I'm not quite as free as all that, but it's not my car's fault! It lets me go where I want to, when I want to. As far as I'm concerned, that's not a trivial addition to my life. And it adds greatly to the freedom and sophistication of everyone who has a car. It's easy for government to add regulations to mass transit. Look how airline transportation is being wrecked by the over-zealous regulation due to one attack. It could easily happen to our local bus transportation next. Let me see them try to check ID's and stop everyone in an automobile. Perhaps it can be done, but it would be much harder. The easy and unregulated automobile transportation has made travel much easier for the average person, which has greatly added to the sophistication of people in this country. How many people never traveled 50 miles beyond their birthplace in their entire lives 100 years ago? That is now pretty rare. The car is dangerous. I agree with that sentiment completely. We allow almost anyone on the road, driving heavy equipment at very fast speeds. Freedom is dangerous. I think a good analogy is the internet. So many people in the World now have access to ideas that they never could have conceived of 20 years ago. All the crazy ideas are dangerous for some people. Some people will turn into terrorists - either because they are so disgusted at the freedom on-line, or because the ideas on-line gave them dangerous ideas. The internet will/has spawned all sorts of deviants. Freedom is dangerous, but it makes life worth living. From my perspective, car haters are freedom haters. Many car haters are bicycle lovers. That is kind of ironic, because a bicycle also gives freedom. I love bicycles too; it can be exhilarating to go anywhere I want, using just my own muscle power. It is also dangerous, although mostly to the rider. People riding down pavement at 10 to 20 miles per hour with nothing but their skin and thin clothes to protect their bodies. But cars provide much more freedom, because of the range and speed of a car. The car is a tremendous boon to our economic well being. I can switch jobs easily, getting a job pretty much anywhere in the Twin Cities from my residence in Minneapolis. One of the reasons for the continuing economic boom of America these last 20 years (the current recession is apparently a pretty shallow one which we will soon come out of) is the flexibility of our workforce. The industrial base in the Southwest metro can continue to grow, without waiting for a transportation authority to get with the program and add rails or bus lines to the new jobs. Recently, the Northwest metro industrial base is increasing rapidly. People can just drive there. Of course traffic gets worse and worse, but it's taken 20 years of serious neglect of our roads to make traffic as bad as it is currently. With freedom, people can figure out ways to get to work despite the best efforts of the Legislature to stop them. Cars cause a lot of pollution. That is very true, and we should try to mitigate this as much as possible. However, the idea that the car has ruined the health of the cities is ridiculous. 100 years ago cities were much less healthy than today. Horse manure, industrial pollutants, and few regulations on dumping made cities a public health menace long before cars came along. Nowadays poor people live in substandard housing, maybe lose their heat, and go to bad schools. Compare that to the 19th century, when poor people constantly died from diseases caused by poor public health in the cities. And it wasn't reported, because it wasn't news. It happened all the time. Industrialization has allowed us to clean up much of the health problems. Economic well being includes better health, as well as more fun and more freedom. And cars are an important part of that industrialization. And our smog isn't any worse than it was in the 19th century. One more thing the anti-car people bring up is the so-called subsidy for cars. I have heard few numbers of spending vs receipts, though I don't have any numbers for this either. I definitely agree that cars should pay their own way. If the current gas prices are not paying for all the road building and maintenance, then the gas tax should be increased. In fact, gas prices should be well above the actual costs of the road, because cars do add a lot to air pollution. It makes perfect policy sense to add a cost to people that dirty up our air. All in all, I think gas taxes should be increased dramatically, at least to the level they pay in Europe. The freedom of a car is wonderful, but people should pay the full public price for their benefits. By now I'm sure our beloved List Manager is jumping up and down and yelling "Minneapolis! Where is Minneapolis?!" I'm sorry David, for sounding so philosophical and so non-local, but this really is about Minneapolis. I felt I had to include my long discourse to explain why we need to accept cars in the city. There have been several rants against cars when talking about the parking lot for the Library, which needed replies. Also, I think we should talk a bit more about the general anti-car attitude in Minneapolis. It seems that Minneapolis people are always the ones to say that we need more traffic, whenever someone brings up the problem of our grid-locked rush hour. I don't understand this, because almost everyone in Minneapolis has a car too. They must all get stuck in traffic too, just like I do. The general point of view in Mpls seems to be that if we don't build any highways for decades, eventually people will stop driving and take the bus, support rail, etc. Mostly it has forced people on to the side streets. I work in Minnetonka. I haven't taken the highway to work for many years, because it is much faster to go on 50th St. 50th will become grid-locked before long, so many of us on that road will find another road to fill up. Another effect is people try to avoid the rush hour by shifting hours early or late. But now that has resulted in rush hour lasting from 6 AM to 10 AM, and 3 PM to 7 PM. Another lane or two would be nice. Mark V Anderson Bancroft Ward 8 _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
