In a message dated 9/16/2004 9:17:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
The blame is 100% squarely on the shoulders of the car owners. You want a transportation system that relies on atmosphere destroying, anachronistic gasoline powered vehicles? You got it. It is YOUR fault. Yes YOU. Every one of you University City ninnies who make lame excuses for having to maintain personal vehicles that clog our streets, kill children and pollute my air. I hope your car rolls over and you choke on the fumes.
For once I have to agree COMPLETELY with Ross.
Government (at all levels) routinely ignores Public Transportation because it has no constituency. Period. You don't find Opra giving out Transpasses or tokens to her audience now do you?
There are no lobbyists for the manufacturers of the rails anymore (can you say Bethlehem Steel); nor for the manufacturers of the cars. (They are all made either in Europe, Japan or Korea because NOBODY in the US buys enough of them, often enough.) About the only lobbyist still around is GE for the Engines, but they make so few of them, even GE doesn't lobby for NEW systems, but only for replacements.
But LOTS of folks lobby for new highways and reduced regulations on vehicles powered by hydro-carbons. The "Highway Lobby" dwarfs even the "Defense Lobby" in size and influence. It is probably second only to the NRA in spending and influence.
It doesn't matter how we got to this state. The reality today is -- that is reality -- nobody gives a damm.
There is a 10% chance that if the price of crude oil reaches or exceeds $50 per barrel, that the automobile industry will do something about oil consumption. But that won't help Public Transportation.
Ignored in all of the hew and cry over the price per barrel of oil is the fact that something like 60% of America's use of hydrocarbons is now for "automotive" use. In the past 10-20 years use of Hydrocarbons by Industry (including power generation) has dropped dramatically. Mostly because of dramatic efficiency improvements in their use forced on them by EPA and other similar legislation. ONLY the consumer oriented "automobile" has constantly, successfully lobbied to exempt themselves from such efficiencies.
Right now, the big battle is over the EPA testing itself -- the EPA has discovered that their much quoted "miles-per-gallon" testing generates numbers that are not even vaguely close to reality. The EPA used to finesse this with the line, "Your milage may vary." Now the EPA has tried to get the various manufacturers of hybrid vehicles to lower the numbers they quote from the EPA. The manufacturer's reply -- "Why should we lie. We are using the numbers the EPA generates. If the EPA doesn't like those numbers, FIX the tests the EPA use and give out accurate data."
As far as the SEPTA fiasco is concerned. They have exactly the same problem -- they have no constituency... except people who have to work from 9 to 5 and can't, or choose not to, afford the Automobile. And those people are so anti-Bush that ANYTHING that Rendell or Street does is fine with them.
For years now, SEPTA has complained that they lack a "stable funding base." They are expected to "pay their way" from the fare box, just as Amtrack is. But ignored in that argument is the fact that the Automobile cannot even vaguely begin to pay its own way -- it gets EVERYTHING for free... roads, traffic reports, even parking. It is all subsidized by "the taxpayer." Oh, they like to contend that the "gasoline taxes" completely pay for the roads... but if that were true, then the roads would be in much better shape. But that is another "off-budget" Federal tax and feeding trough.
Public Transportation in this country is in the state it is in for one simple reason -- the "Public" does not give a damm. It's not even an issue the Democrats care about.
The greatest coup in American History was when Henry Ford and friends convinced America that anyone who is killed by a 6000 pound club is not murdered, but died, "by accident." Just look at today's Inquirer -- 3 pages of people killed in Iraq... but not one word or one page of pictures of those killed by a motor vehicle. In 2000, according to Penndot, "510 people died in alcohol-related crashes." According to the NHSTA, in 2002 Pennsylvania killed 1,614 people on the highways of the Commonwealth; 42,815 were killed nationwide. And those "accidents" cost the Commonwealth $8.170 billion in that one year alone ($230.568 billion nationwide).
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/STSI/State_Info.cfm? Year=2002&State=PA&Accessible=0
But do those numbers ever get publicized by the Media or do the victims get their pictures published in the papers?
No.
Because nobody in the "Public" gives a damm, they were just "accidents" -- and it won't sell papers.
T.T.F.N. William H. Magill [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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