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Originally posted by Hox:

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Originally posted by A;ex:

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Result or cause, it does not matter. At this point, the two are completely intertwined. And if you reduce the use of cars, you're still going to need a significant amount of commercial zoning that's well-embedded in residential zones. However, that simply isn't possible.

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It is possible. Also there are other benefits from that.

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How will you do that when that land is owned? Claim eminent domain? That won't make people happy.

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In 1950's the problem was solved, why is it impossible now?

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Most of quality food is perishable, and refrigerators capacity is limited. If people could go to the store on their way home from work, they would.

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Convenience and availibility. People would rather drive once a week and get nonperishable goods that are slightly lower quality and save a great deal of time. Anyways, do you really think that the majority of people can afford this high-quality food daily? I honestly doubt that most people can afford steak for dinner every night. And if what most people who study the rich-poor divide are saying is true, then it'll only get worse.

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Another social/health problem solved -- this will make low-quality food harder to obtain, and will increase the consumption of high-quality one, driving the prices down. Was it long ago that farmers bitched about McDonald's lowering the demands to their products' grade, so they couldn't sell domestically produced beef?

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Then maybe suburbia has to change into something more habitable. It's not hard considering that there will be a place for more conveniently located stores -- the density of strip malls is slowly increasing anyway, making them more balanced will only improve things.

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More habitable? Such as what? Urban apartment buildings? Suburbia might be "boring" and expensive, but it is quite livable. If you think people are going to give up that sort of lifestyle for an idea as abstract as "economic independance" (especially when it isn't clear that oil is even the main reason for terrorist attacks on the US), then you need to take a look around at the world.

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Maybe it's just my taste, but thousands and thousands of ersatz houses around streets twisted like a lace, with nothing else between them does not count as livable in my book. Look at all other countries to get the idea of alternatives.

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People don't want to live in particularly population-dense areas. People need space. Which is why they move to areas, such as suburbia, where they actually _have_ space.

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People don't need space. If they needed it, no one would ever stick his nose into suburbia without feeling claustrophobic. Heck, I feel claustrophobic there, it's like standing inside of a kaleidoscope. People need something where they can walk without a high chance to be shot at or stabbed, and almost all "densely populated" areas in US were this way or another turned into horrible slums because it's easier to build huge number of houses in suburbs (and distribute the cost of problems that it causes among people) than to keep cities safe and clean (because if you won't you still have an income-producing slum at no maintenance cost). Sorry, not sustainable, not to mention extremely ugly.

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U-Haul and delivery service in every half-decent home improvement and materials stores exist already. And I don't see too many people driving around in the cities and suburbs in vehicles that are capable of transporting lumber.

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But still, you're relying on them having such a vehicle availible.

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Compare the use that such things get per thousand of population in the service area to people constantly driving.

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As for transporting raw materials, it depends on what you're building. If you're just transporting a few yards of pvc pipe, for example, you can simply strap it to a roof rack on your vehicle. Same if you're transporting only a dozen or so 2x4s or whatever. Yes, if you're building an extension on your house, you'll want a truck or something similar, but otherwise, a roof rack is fine.

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What percentage of small cars have roof racks installed? Or has traces of used to have it installed ever? I am all for cheap delivery service with small vans doing the same things better -- heck, that would even make a Webvan's business model profitable, woohoo!

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Government has no problems throwing amounts of money that can build such a system in every major city and surrounding area at various military things that end up providing no benefit whatsoever, or, at best, are good for keeping oil flowing for a little while. Again, highway system , at a scale comparable with this, was built pretty easily.

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Maglevs, subways, etc are expensive, especially if you have to figure ways to install them without completely disrupting a city and rebuilding from the group up.

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Not impossible. And there are a lot of examples of subways being built under busy cities without causing major problems. And certainly while suburbia is sprawling into new areas, it can accommodate few surface train lines and small shopping/business centers.

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As for your comment on other government programs, you act like the government exists solely to get us oil. It doesn't.

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Not only to get oil -- but spending on military is still extremely inefficient.

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Isn't it one of the reasons why government has any money at all -- that it can use them for large-scale long-term investment that no private company would? And this "long-term" is long-term only at the scale of transportation industry, it all can be done within a decade, what is not really a long term for any government planning.

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In a decade, most of us will be driving hybrid cars or alternative energy cars. Hybrid cars are already on the market and will probably be status quo in 5 years. By then, your plan is obsolete.

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By then they will be insufficient -- increasing sprawl, growing number of people, depleting resources of fossil fuels (especially domestic ones) and low eddiciency of batteries or hydrogen in 5-10 will bring the situation to where it is now.

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And what is wrong with that? The overall damage will be less than from completely paralyzed highways now. "Discrimination" or not, large pieces of infrastructure depend on certain services, so whoever handles them should better not piss off people who work there. New concept, isn't it?

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Putting that kind of power in any group's hands is dangerous.

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Then split them into pieces that do not have complete control over any area (but over a single interdependent system) and prevent them from forming a single union. Nothing is wrong with that, power can be balanced.

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I frankly don't trust them not to strike for absurd amounts of money simply because they can. I've seen the work of greedy unions before (we all have, really. Remember the baseball player strikes?)

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Something is seriously screwed up when baseball is an essential utility. And something is extremely screwed up when unions' power is not balanced at all -- either there is an all-powerful union, or there is nothing at all.

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You lose. People who live to the south from the city use cars because of a notoriously bad Caltrain line -- I used it, and had to buy a car after 30-60-minutes intervals and not a single train on time finally exceeded my patience. People who live across the bay mostly use a single subway line (BART) because whoever doesn't do that creates a giant mess right in front of the entrance to the bridge. A single bottleneck determines behavior of people who live in a large area to tht northeast from SF, and all that happens while BART is far from being well-planned or run efficiently, the layout of BART lines within the city is atrocious. After I have left SF, a BART line was extended to the south and reached the airport, however it continues further to the south. I guess, they expect that they will get at least a comparable number of people who will want to avoid bottlenecks at the 101/280 highways intersection to the people who want to avoid the bridge on 80.

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All you're proving is that if someone fucks up the designing of the transit system or if that system becomes outdated thanks to growth in areas that are not well-serviced, that part of the public transit system might as well not exist.

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There is no urban growth to the south of San Francisco, it's a peninsula, with a stable giant urban area surrounded by water and mountains. All growth is at the northwest, across the bay, and people who live there are ones that use BART.

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The more reasons not to piss them off. Certainly they can't be as bad as pissed off Arab terrorists.

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Which is worse, an entire city which can't function...or an embassy in Saudi Arabia getting carbombed. Face it, next time won't be on the same scale as the WTC attack.

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This is a very shaky assumption. I can imagine tens of possible ways to do something far more destructive in the same NYC, that a group of fanatical people can accomplish in the current situation.

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Either it'll be small foreign stuff that 99% of the US ignores or it'll be something so big that there won't be any Arabs left after the US gets retribution.

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This is just stupid -- "won't be any Arabs left".

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Either way, you're still assuming a direct cause-effect relationship between Arab terrorism and US oil dependancy. I guess we're conveniently ignoring the seething hate for Jews and anything related to Jews, the militant expansionism of the Muslim world, and the cultural acceptance of militant fundamentalism since they allied with Germany during WWII.

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Just ask them, what will happen if US will pull its military away from the Middle East and never return there again. And please, don't tell me that it stays there out of compassion to oppressed Arabs.

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You can have any backup plan you want. Even cars still waiting in a garage in every home. The point is, not to make the only system that works as inefficient as what we have now -- in emergency you can have whatever you want, from rikshas to personal helicopters for all I care.

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Make a truly efficient system that is a) less time consuming, b) more convenient, and c) resilient to breakdowns, delays, strikes, etc and I'd have no problem using it.

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The whole world uses it. Heck, even in NYC you can live without a car, and the latest "transportation-related" man-made disaster was with umm... airplanes.

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However, to think that people are going to completely rely on a public transportation system is insane, and to think that people are going to give up the present economic system and zoning system is just plain ignorant.

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Present economic system is breaking down, if not broken already, anyway -- something sustainable is needed now.

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Did I propose to ban the cars?

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No, but you sure seem intent on making car use much more difficult.

Only at the extent that when people will switch to other means of transportation, car owners will become a smaller part of population, decreasing demand for fuel and services, thus driving the prices a bit up. Hardly much more difficult, and a lot of low-income people will enjoy being free from fuel cost, car insurance, repairs, needing to have a garage...

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This is just a case of poor planning. If you look at, say, Moscow subway map in the outer part of the city, you will see that wherever a person lives and works, he uses a bus for a very minor part of the commute -- all buses' routes pass through subway stops, and subway lines, with their speed incomparably higher than buses, go across the city, all intersecting in multiple points, and with the circle line across all of them, circling the usually congested center of the city. A bus waddling around a twisted route with infrequent stops is something that I have first seen in US.

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And how do you propose getting a comprehensive subway system underneath a congested and very well developed city?

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By digging tunnels, of course. Modern technology allows to make tunnels at the depth below most of the existing infrastructure, without affecting anything on the surface.

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The whole point is to have things optimized in a way that there will be no additional delays. Wherever such a system will become efficient enough, people will switch to it, it's just for this to happen it must be done on a larger scale than what we see now. Wherever it will not work, people will still continue to use cars, it's just the goal should be to make it superior to cars. Again, I don't propose to ban cars, I propose to make something that will be more efficient than them, so cars will be an unnecessary luxury for most of people.

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Still, my point is that it will be very difficult to do this. You're better off developing alternative fuel than trying to develop an extensive public transportation system that will work most of the time for most of the people using it.

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I merely look at what other countries are doing. I am not against the idea of more efficient cars, it's just they can't solve the problem at the present scale, and especially at the scale that will develop within a decade.

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Huh? Those are unrelated problems, and again, everyone still has a choice to use a car, it's just there should be some balance between convenience and efficiency that people can choose. Right now it's either nothing, or unsustainable luxury for everyone, that ends up not so luxurious when everyone has to use it anyway.

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Not unrelated at all. As I've been trying to hammer home to you, most of our economy and social structure is based on commuting.

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Economy is flexible, and in any case the current recession and energy crisis will "flex" it more than public transit infrastructure ever could.

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If your intent is to reduce our oil dependency, then there should be an emphasis on fuel-efficient cars and/or alternative energy vehicles. If you instead direct those resources into public transportation, you'll find that you lose a lot of the benefits of people commuting.

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Same thing. If lower resulted number of cars will drive the prices of oil up, companies that rely on this should be more than happy to compensate it with higher salaries. Otherwise don't build only horrible slums around anything remotely industrial-looking in the first place.

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Why are there only slums near industrial zones? Because no one wants to live near a factory. You can build the most beautiful apartments, but if they're downwind of an asphault plant or a slaughterhouse, no one's going to want to live there. Same reason no one wants to live near a nuclear power plant, an oil refinery, etc.

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You talked about large amounts of high-qualified workforce, what is quite different from an asphalt plant, more like a semiconductors factory (oh wait, they are all in SE Asia now!). For your examples a high-capacity surface train line will be more than sufficient.

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I think, the "problem" in that case is the solution -- don't build giant things so people will save money yet waste "cheap" energy trying to get there in the first place. Externalizing the problem goes only that far.

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It's not entirely about money. It's also about convenience and time. And even if these things are what you'd call a problem, you can't disagree that a sudden collapse of these big industries and businesses wouldn't cause the economy to tank and result in a very high unemployment rate along with quite a lot of other unpleasantries.

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How can anything collapse "suddenly" when the cause of a collapse depends on an infrastructure that needs few years to grow before it will become a threat to those businesses? Or do you expect that every gas station or lube shop should exist forever?

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So is cocaine trade. Not everything has to be encouraged at someone's else expense. Mind you, I am not for banning things that work, but preserving the comfort of every piddly business model that relies on others' paying for it is no one's responsibility.

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A sudden collapse of these businesses would certainly work wonders for our unemployment rate, our economy, and everything else.

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Again, there can't be anything "sudden" about it, people that depend on it will have more than enough time to gradually switch to something else.

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Our "piddly business model" is based on transportation, not on oil. Transportation is not reliant on oil, it is reliant on any sort of energy source which will move a vehicle from point A to point B. I still don't see why alternative energy is a bad thing.

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The reason is that energy will remain being scarce -- now it's scarce because only certain fuels can be used in cars, then it will be scarce because the energy conversion process will become inefficient enough to consume existing and then-developed sources of energy. Energy _can_ become less scarce, but not within a decade, so at least for that time there should be a drop in the energy consumption, or we are where we have started.

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It doesn't. Actually it requires less infrastructure and achieves higher speeds. Don't judge things by buses alone.

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Let's say I live in a small town about an hour away from a big city. I commute to that city daily to work, then I go back to my town when work ends. How am I going t get to the city besides a bus? No one's going to build a branch of a subway system or other high-speed transit system out to every small peripheral town. So it's either a bus....or I have to drive. Quite a lot of people commute like this. So do you have a solution? Or are you just going to tell them "tough luck" and suggest they move?

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US is the only developed country that does not have a surface train system surrounding every major urban area, with lines passing through each peripheral city. Those systems are known to be extremely cheap and efficient.

In particular, it's absolutely ridiculous that Boulder is not connected to Denver downtown by a passenger train, there are all preconditions for that, and I hate driving over 36 few times a week when I have to, even though I usually do that at the off-peak time.

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It also may discourage pointless mergers of a companies that would be better off competing. When you have true economy of scale, it creates a stable commute pattern, too.

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And as I said previously, it will also discourage large corporations which need to be large in order to justify the R&D costs. Like biotech. And pharmaceuticals. And alternative energy.

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This is not what I have seen around Moscow, where all such facilities are located. Heck, there were even special express trains that served ones with ridiculously large numbers of people.

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The problem is, your proposal does not work within a timeframe that the "present social and economic structure" can remain in place -- cultural drift, demographic changes, etc. will distort and modify it anyway when your "compatible" solution will be viable. So I am just proposing to sacrifice things that will not survive anyway, and improve things that will matter within a decade, to keep the road cleae for things that will work in 20-30 years.

The fact that 20-30 years of progress in technology, if were squeezed into one year now, would solve the problem without making anyone change their habits, has only theoretical value, and dubious one at that.

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We have the technology. We have hybrid cars on the streets as we speak. It seems quite possible that hybrid vehicles will be status quo within 3 years.

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I can believe that. But they won't be enough, and that will require a hell of incentive for both car industry and buyers.

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If a decent investment was put into alternative energy, alternative energy vehicles could be status quo within 5.

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I can see nuclear energy being dominant source in 5 years, but not much beyond that. And I seriously doubt that if streets will be full of hydrogen-using or battery-powered cars, the growth of nuclear enegry production and distribution will keep up.

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You want to go for more stimulus? Put a tax on licensing cars with bad gas mileage.

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Those cars are already expensive, and it doesn't stop many people from buying them.

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However, it would be very, very difficult bordering on impossible to establish a functional public transportation system that could effectively replace private vehicles.

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Not as difficult as building highways was in 50's -- and then it contributed a lot to the economic growth.

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Originally posted by Alex:
There is no urban growth to the south of San Francisco, it's a peninsula, with a stable giant urban area surrounded by water and mountains. All growth is at the northwest, across the bay, and people who live there are ones that use BART.

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Correction -- northeast. Northwest, across the Golden Gate bridge, does not have anywhere comparable amount of population that commutes to SF.

Close the window.

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In 1950's the problem was solved, why is it impossible now?

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For the most part, you weren't tearing down buildings owned by multimillionaires. And it was much less litigation-happy. And there wasn't much of an alternative as far as transportation for those who got the eminent domain shaft. I honestly don't see a plan to stick a comprehensive rail or subway system in, say, NYC, would be met happily by those whose property was slated for replacement by a subway stop or a Maglev train.

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Another social/health problem solved -- this will make low-quality food harder to obtain, and will increase the consumption of high-quality one, driving the prices down. Was it long ago that farmers bitched about McDonald's lowering the demands to their products' grade, so they couldn't sell domestically produced beef?

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Like it or not, "lower quality food" is here to stay. Fast food is incredibly convenient, as are nonperishable foods. In a world where you have more and more to do in less and less time, convenience is a big factor.

McDonalds could serve human excrement on a bun (hell, they probably do) for $0.99 and people will buy it, because it takes two seconds to buy and you can eat it right then, right there. It's sad, but people don't give a fuck about quality anymore.

Additionally, there's a price where domestic farmers are no longer even breaking even with the crops they sell. I don't see that people struggling with a higher cost of living with the same wages (or lower wages, as the economy's going straight to hell) will still be able to afford this higher quality food which is only going to be more and more expensive as usable farmland is lost due to sprawl, desertification, the current drought, and god knows what else. All I'm seeing is high-quality food becoming more and more of a commodity.

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Maybe it's just my taste, but thousands and thousands of ersatz houses around streets twisted like a lace, with nothing else between them does not count as livable in my book. Look at all other countries to get the idea of alternatives.

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This really depends on the area of suburbia. However, I always see things like grass and trees and yard space and living space in suburbia, which, to me, do indeed make it more livable. I guess we need to define livable.

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People don't need space. If they needed it, no one would ever stick his nose into suburbia without feeling claustrophobic. Heck, I feel claustrophobic there, it's like standing inside of a kaleidoscope. People need something where they can walk without a high chance to be shot at or stabbed, and almost all "densely populated" areas in US were this way or another turned into horrible slums because it's easier to build huge number of houses in suburbs (and distribute the cost of problems that it causes among people) than to keep cities safe and clean (because if you won't you still have an income-producing slum at no maintenance cost). Sorry, not sustainable, not to mention extremely ugly.

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People don't need space to live? I see someone is looking forward to one of the coffins from the Sprawl stories, where there's barely enough room to hang yourself.

I've lived in cities, I've lived in suburbia, and I've lived in rural areas. I've always felt incredibly claustrophobic when living in population-dense areas. Why? Because you can't get away from people. You're going to hear, see, and have to deal with people no matter where you go. That doesn't appeal to a lot of people. Maybe everyone's just not as open-minded and accepting as you are. Or maybe it's human nature to have personal space and people feel really uncomfortable when they're packed so close that that's violated.

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Compare the use that such things get per thousand of population in the service area to people constantly driving.

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Point taken. There's still the paranoid "what if there's not one there" thing though.

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What percentage of small cars have roof racks installed? Or has traces of used to have it installed ever? I am all for cheap delivery service with small vans doing the same things better -- heck, that would even make a Webvan's business model profitable, woohoo!

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Point conceded.

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Not impossible. And there are a lot of examples of subways being built under busy cities without causing major problems. And certainly while suburbia is sprawling into new areas, it can accommodate few surface train lines and small shopping/business centers.

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Im' less concerned about the subway tunnels themselves as I'm concerned about where in hell you're going to put access to the subway stations. Especially in crowded areas where there isn't any open property.

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Not only to get oil -- but spending on military is still extremely inefficient.

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So's spending on welfare, unemployment, social security, and just about every other government program.

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By then they will be insufficient -- increasing sprawl, growing number of people, depleting resources of fossil fuels (especially domestic ones) and low eddiciency of batteries or hydrogen in 5-10 will bring the situation to where it is now.

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I know several petroleum geologists. Apparently, there are enough petroleum deposits to fuel us with the current growth with no alternative energy introduced for over 50 years. Even if you're skeptical of this number and reduce it by half, you've still got a good 25 years to go with the addition of no alternative energy. As wary as you are of alternative energy, I really don't think it's as much of a lost cause as you somehow think it is.

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Then split them into pieces that do not have complete control over any area (but over a single interdependent system) and prevent them from forming a single union. Nothing is wrong with that, power can be balanced.

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Explain to me how exactly that works, because it sounds incredibly inefficient and problematic. Sort of like some of the split-ups and deregulation of some of the east coast electricity providers.

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Something is seriously screwed up when baseball is an essential utility. And something is extremely screwed up when unions' power is not balanced at all -- either there is an all-powerful union, or there is nothing at all.

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Baseball is not an essential utility, but my point (that even the best paid unions will strike if they think it will get them a little extra in their paycheck) still stands.

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There is no urban growth to the south of San Francisco, it's a peninsula, with a stable giant urban area surrounded by water and mountains. All growth is at the northwest, across the bay, and people who live there are ones that use BART.

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What's your point? I said that a poorly designed or obsolete public transit system will be abandoned if it doesn't keep up with growth or is simply poorly designed. So you tell me that in this case the growth happens to be where the transit system is due to coincidence of geography, rather than anything to do with the transit system.

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This is a very shaky assumption. I can imagine tens of possible ways to do something far more destructive in the same NYC, that a group of fanatical people can accomplish in the current situation.

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You clearly did not read the rest of my statement.

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This is just stupid -- "won't be any Arabs left".

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If something on a larger scale than the WTC attacks occurs, it will most likely be a nuclear attack on a major city. Do you really think we wouldn't nuke any country we as much as suspcted of harboring those responsible? The US response after the WTC attacks was limited because the casualties were minimal...around 3,000 individuals. If the casualties were in the millions, the response would be quick, vicious, and unrestrained. If you think the US is being "Imperialist" right now, you'd be absolutely shocked by the US response to nuclear terrorism.

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Just ask them, what will happen if US will pull its military away from the Middle East and never return there again. And please, don't tell me that it stays there out of compassion to oppressed Arabs.

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Let's say we pull all US influence out of the Middle East (by all I mean all, no American corporations are likely to invest in the middle east if they're not making a profit). Do you really think the problem will go away? Not while we have medications that would allow them to fight off unpleasant diseases, technology to help them fight their water shortage, technology that would allow them to establish a decent agricultural base (such as what Israel has developed), etc. And notice that not all of this anger has to do with American involvement...America has nothing at all to do with Chechnya or Kashmir. NOTHING at all. They want us to get involved only where it's in their best interest.

Every group wants support for themselves and no involvement where involvement could prove to be a problem for them. Well, woop-de-doo.

This has nothing to do with the fact that are troops are there. This has everything to do with the fact that our money is NOT there and that are troops aren't where THEY want them.

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The whole world uses it. Heck, even in NYC you can live without a car, and the latest "transportation-related" man-made disaster was with umm... airplanes.

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Public Transit generally does work within a city. If you don't intend to go anywhere that's not a part of the city (or another city, if you fly), then public transit is fine. It is, however, absolutely useless if you don't live inside the city.

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Only at the extent that when people will switch to other means of transportation, car owners will become a smaller part of population, decreasing demand for fuel and services, thus driving the prices a bit up. Hardly much more difficult, and a lot of low-income people will enjoy being free from fuel cost, car insurance, repairs, needing to have a garage...

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People will switch only for things that it works better for. I don't think people will stop using/owning private vehicles. As for low-income people, only those living in a city will be "freed" from those costs, and once again, they probably didn't have a car in the first place.

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By digging tunnels, of course. Modern technology allows to make tunnels at the depth below most of the existing infrastructure, without affecting anything on the surface.

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You still need a way to get down to those tunnels. I still don't see eminent domain being pulled to make room for subway stops. There are also groundwater considerations, geologic considerations, and so forth.

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I merely look at what other countries are doing. I am not against the idea of more efficient cars, it's just they can't solve the problem at the present scale, and especially at the scale that will develop within a decade.

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You criticize alternative energy vehicles as not being well developed enough, but you want to invest money into a giant project that will really only help urban areas, which are already using fewer and fewer vehicles for other reasons. I'm asking for a workable solution for suburbia, sprawl, outlying towns, more rural areas, smaller cities, etc. The only thing you've said about those is that you don't like them and you think people should live in cities rather than in suburbia. You have not addressed the transportation issue there.

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Economy is flexible, and in any case the current recession and energy crisis will "flex" it more than public transit infrastructure ever could.

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The current recession will not last long; it will probbaly be gone a month after Bush leaves the White House. The current energy "crisis" is mainly due to current events and energy middlemen such as Enron. A greater reliance in the near future on nuclear power plants will quite likely stop this "energy crisis" in its tracks.

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You talked about large amounts of high-qualified workforce, what is quite different from an asphalt plant, more like a semiconductors factory (oh wait, they are all in SE Asia now!). For your examples a high-capacity surface train line will be more than sufficient.

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People who are working skilled jobs are going to be middle class or above. They're going to want to live where they want to live and work where they want to work. No one's going to move somewhere because it's right next to their workplace, especially with the current level of job security.

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How can anything collapse "suddenly" when the cause of a collapse depends on an infrastructure that needs few years to grow before it will become a threat to those businesses? Or do you expect that every gas station or lube shop should exist forever?

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You claim that we're going to run out of gas very soon and don't intend to work on any means of replacing its function in private vehicles. You ignore the fact that people who need to drive to work, etc will still drive because the infrastructure is not going to be comprehensive enough to be functional for this. If/when the oil reserves run out, a lot of people will be unable to easily travel where they were previously travelling over a rather short time. This will result in a lot of unemployment, and businesses going under as people look for jobs they can get to.

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Again, there can't be anything "sudden" about it, people that depend on it will have more than enough time to gradually switch to something else.

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You underestimate the wonderful tendency of human beings to procrastinate.

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The reason is that energy will remain being scarce -- now it's scarce because only certain fuels can be used in cars, then it will be scarce because the energy conversion process will become inefficient enough to consume existing and then-developed sources of energy. Energy _can_ become less scarce, but not within a decade, so at least for that time there should be a drop in the energy consumption, or we are where we have started.

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Or you work on high yield energy sources. Like the current project to work on a fusion reactor.

People have been heralding energy crises for decades. They always seem to ignore human innovation.

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US is the only developed country that does not have a surface train system surrounding every major urban area, with lines passing through each peripheral city. Those systems are known to be extremely cheap and efficient.

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Eminent domain, once again. People will not gladly give up their property if they think there's a viable alternative.

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In particular, it's absolutely ridiculous that Boulder is not connected to Denver downtown by a passenger train, there are all preconditions for that, and I hate driving over 36 few times a week when I have to, even though I usually do that at the off-peak time.

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There are all the preconditions. Except you should note that you wouldn't find a whole lot of support for it in Boulder. Either you'd be confiscating peoples' land (which they'd be unhappy about) or you'd be building it on public undeveloped land (which they'd be equally pissed about).

I also find it mildly amusing that you're speaking no ill of public transit, yet you drive to Boulder rather than take the bus. Because, you know, there are quite a few bus routes between Denver and Boulder. Hmm.

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This is not what I have seen around Moscow, where all such facilities are located. Heck, there were even special express trains that served ones with ridiculously large numbers of people.

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So people are going to support the government building branches of the public transit system for the sole use of big companies. I frankly don't buy that.

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I can believe that. But they won't be enough, and that will require a hell of incentive for both car industry and buyers.

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How about the lowered cost of fuel? How about better mileage?

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I can see nuclear energy being dominant source in 5 years, but not much beyond that. And I seriously doubt that if streets will be full of hydrogen-using or battery-powered cars, the growth of nuclear enegry production and distribution will keep up.

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Actually, thanks to the Yucca Mountain depository, I'd say nuclear energy production and distribution is going to increase. You know, now that they have somewhere to dump the spent fuel (I'm not a fan of the Yucca Mt. situation, but it definitely does have its pluses). There is also talk about developing fusion reactors, which would increase energy production by an immense amount. Also note that the more nuclear plants that are built, the fewer coal and oil power plants that will be around, which means that there will be more fossil fuels availible.

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Those cars are already expensive, and it doesn't stop many people from buying them.

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A $2000 a year "sin tax" on gas-guzzlers might make them think twice. Call it an environmental fee or whatever you want to call it.

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Not as difficult as building highways was in 50's -- and then it contributed a lot to the economic growth.

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Highways in the 50's helped economic growth because it gave people more freedom of where and when they could commute. More travelling = better economy. What you're proposing would rather make people more likely to stick around their own city and work where it's convenient rather than where they can get the best pay and do the best job. That's NOT god for economic growth in the least.

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Originally posted by Hox:

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In 1950's the problem was solved, why is it impossible now?

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For the most part, you weren't tearing down buildings owned by multimillionaires. And it was much less litigation-happy. And there wasn't much of an alternative as far as transportation for those who got the eminent domain shaft. I honestly don't see a plan to stick a comprehensive rail or subway system in, say, NYC, would be met happily by those whose property was slated for replacement by a subway stop or a Maglev train.

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But NYC already has a subway system, and people use it at full capacity already, some of them even don't use cars because of that. Retrofitting NY subway to accommodate more people would be probably a difficult project for other reasons, but land would be among the least troubles there. I can see a problem with that in densely populated areas with poor or spotty established infrastructure, like SF Bay Area (plus in SF there are some nasty geological problems), but those places are actually still trying to improve their public transit whatever way they can (ex: BART) -- it's just without a national program cities' and private efforts are barely sufficient to keep those things running, ex: Caltrain. In low-density areas like Denver, I guess, more effort and money were spent on widening of I-25 and suspiciously out-of-the-populated-areas Light Rail line than it would take for any set of cross-city trains, and especially a train to Boulder.

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Another social/health problem solved -- this will make low-quality food harder to obtain, and will increase the consumption of high-quality one, driving the prices down. Was it long ago that farmers bitched about McDonald's lowering the demands to their products' grade, so they couldn't sell domestically produced beef?

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Like it or not, "lower quality food" is here to stay. Fast food is incredibly convenient, as are nonperishable foods. In a world where you have more and more to do in less and less time, convenience is a big factor.

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Tell it to someone who did not work in downtown of any major city, where half-decent and fairly priced food is available within a walking distance or over 1-2 subway stops.

The real problems are:

1. People that return home from work (or anything else) are tied to their cars along the way, so they would rather take something at the drive-through, and eat in the car rather than walk into some decent place and eat there after getting off the train.

2. Some people are poor, and really don't have much of a choice.

First is yet another car-related problem, and
since poor people will have more spare money if they won't have to have a car, and spend money on better food.

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McDonalds could serve human excrement on a bun (hell, they probably do) for $0.99 and people will buy it, because it takes two seconds to buy and you can eat it right then, right there. It's sad, but people don't give a fuck about quality anymore.

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Society as a whole always pays for whatever is saved on bad food -- be it medicine, early loss of ability to work, or problems caused by people being pissed off because they are fat and ugly.

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Additionally, there's a price where domestic farmers are no longer even breaking even with the crops they sell. I don't see that people struggling with a higher cost of living with the same wages (or lower wages, as the economy's going straight to hell) will still be able to afford this higher quality food which is only going to be more and more expensive as usable farmland is lost due to sprawl, desertification, the current drought, and god knows what else.

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And those things are not in a large part a result of the current tendencies in economy that would be reduced if public transit became more widespread in the cities? Farming can be pretty efficient, and if large numbers of people will be ready to buy better food, prices will become saner, too. Heck, they will become saner even if nothing else changed, but junk food places went out of business, leaving a space on the market to fill.

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All I'm seeing is high-quality food becoming more and more of a commodity.

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Things don't become a commodity _to_ destroy businesses, they become a commodity _if_ businesses can easily produce them. What can be destroyed is a price gap, making things either "excrement on a bun" or something ridiculously overpriced. Good thing in my book.

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This really depends on the area of suburbia. However, I always see things like grass and trees and yard space and living space in suburbia, which, to me, do indeed make it more livable. I guess we need to define livable.

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Most of the recently-built suburbia is bland at the extent that gives me headache. But maybe it's chemical composition of their lawns.

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People don't need space to live? I see someone is looking forward to one of the coffins from the Sprawl stories, where there's barely enough room to hang yourself.

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There is the whole world of possibilities between that and the typical suburban house, that in what I have seen in "new" suburban areas, does not have any usable yard space anyway, my living room is larger than some of backyards people get in those places.
{QUOTE]
I've lived in cities, I've lived in suburbia, and I've lived in rural areas. I've always felt incredibly claustrophobic when living in population-dense areas. Why? Because you can't get away from people. You're going to hear, see, and have to deal with people no matter where you go. That doesn't appeal to a lot of people.
[/QUOTE]
I see no problem with living in an area where I see a human every time I walk out of the building. As long as that human is not pointing a gun at me, and does not smell like half of him is rotten.

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Maybe everyone's just not as open-minded and accepting as you are. Or maybe it's human nature to have personal space and people feel really uncomfortable when they're packed so close that that's violated.

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How soon people declare things "human nature" when they can't support the need for them.

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Im' less concerned about the subway tunnels themselves as I'm concerned about where in hell you're going to put access to the subway stations. Especially in crowded areas where there isn't any open property.

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Those things are small, and often built into building, underground passages under streers and other structures.

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Not only to get oil -- but spending on military is still extremely inefficient.

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So's spending on welfare, unemployment, social security, and just about every other government program.

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So having an _efficient_ government-sponsored program is even more justified.

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By then they will be insufficient -- increasing sprawl, growing number of people, depleting resources of fossil fuels (especially domestic ones) and low eddiciency of batteries or hydrogen in 5-10 will bring the situation to where it is now.

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I know several petroleum geologists. Apparently, there are enough petroleum deposits to fuel us with the current growth with no alternative energy introduced for over 50 years. Even if you're skeptical of this number and reduce it by half, you've still got a good 25 years to go with the addition of no alternative energy. As wary as you are of alternative energy, I really don't think it's as much of a lost cause as you somehow think it is.

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"Half" does not cut it when we are talking about unstable rates of exponential growth.

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Then split them into pieces that do not have complete control over any area (but over a single interdependent system) and prevent them from forming a single union. Nothing is wrong with that, power can be balanced.

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Explain to me how exactly that works, because it sounds incredibly inefficient and problematic.

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Simple -- do not allow a single union to control all means of public transportation in the area. We can't have a union that covers entire US industry, so there can be some limits placed by laws that leave unions reasonable power against workers' abuse and unfair wages yet do not make everyone permanent hostages of it. Laws can be written, and I don't think, many people will object.

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Sort of like some of the split-ups and deregulation of some of the east coast electricity providers.

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Electricity providers' problems are not with unions but with a combination of regulated and deregulated prices, and poor infrastructure. When you have deregulated/auction wholesale energy prices, regulated consumer prices, and all you have is a pipe between producers and consumers, you will have some cash flow problems even if a single electrician maintains it perfectly in his spare time.

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Something is seriously screwed up when baseball is an essential utility. And something is extremely screwed up when unions' power is not balanced at all -- either there is an all-powerful union, or there is nothing at all.

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Baseball is not an essential utility, but my point (that even the best paid unions will strike if they think it will get them a little extra in their paycheck) still stands.

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That's what you get from monopolies.

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There is no urban growth to the south of San Francisco, it's a peninsula, with a stable giant urban area surrounded by water and mountains. All growth is at the northwest, across the bay, and people who live there are ones that use BART.

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What's your point? I said that a poorly designed or obsolete public transit system will be abandoned if it doesn't keep up with growth or is simply poorly designed.

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It isn't "obsolete", and there was no recent growth in population, it's just plain plain bad, always was bad, and only because local government and amtrak can't sponsor something better. Nationalwide program can.

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So you tell me that in this case the growth happens to be where the transit system is due to coincidence of geography, rather than anything to do with the transit system.

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No, I mean that old areas with stable population but poor public transit use cars, and new-growth areas with increasing demand for transportation seem to prefer public transit. People choose what works better, and if it's public transit, it's public transit -- even less than perfect BART.

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This is a very shaky assumption. I can imagine tens of possible ways to do something far more destructive in the same NYC, that a group of fanatical people can accomplish in the current situation.

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You clearly did not read the rest of my statement.

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Huh?

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This is just stupid -- "won't be any Arabs left".

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If something on a larger scale than the WTC attacks occurs, it will most likely be a nuclear attack on a major city. Do you really think we wouldn't nuke any country we as much as suspcted of harboring those responsible? The US response after the WTC attacks was limited because the casualties were minimal...around 3,000 individuals. If the casualties were in the millions, the response would be quick, vicious, and unrestrained. If you think the US is being "Imperialist" right now, you'd be absolutely shocked by the US response to nuclear terrorism.

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Who will first run out of ability to cause massive harm to the other side, US with a crater in the place of NY (goodbye dollar), or the whole Middle East plus various terrorist/guerrilla groups?

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Just ask them, what will happen if US will pull its military away from the Middle East and never return there again. And please, don't tell me that it stays there out of compassion to oppressed Arabs.

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Let's say we pull all US influence out of the Middle East (by all I mean all, no American corporations are likely to invest in the middle east if they're not making a profit). Do you really think the problem will go away?

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Yes.

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Not while we have medications that would allow them to fight off unpleasant diseases, technology to help them fight their water shortage, technology that would allow them to establish a decent agricultural base (such as what Israel has developed), etc.

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US has no such things. It has _patents_ on them, that in theory should be only enforceable within US, but various "trade agreements" de-facto make them valid abroad. Without a possibility of trade or military retributions for "breach" of patents Middle East will have those "technologies" the next day after the last soldier departs. Knowledge is already everywhere.

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And notice that not all of this anger has to do with American involvement...America has nothing at all to do with Chechnya or Kashmir. NOTHING at all. They want us to get involved only where it's in their best interest.

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Chechnya and Kashmir do not want US to get involved. Not to mention that not being nations, their "wants" mean big fat zero in international politics.

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Every group wants support for themselves and no involvement where involvement could prove to be a problem for them. Well, woop-de-doo.

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Sucks to be a group with no local support or political power, that has to rely on bringing foreign players on their side.

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This has nothing to do with the fact that are troops are there. This has everything to do with the fact that our money is NOT there and that are troops aren't where THEY want them.

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Those are different groups, and most of them are hated by large numbers of local populations more than saddam. One of them, Saudi government, is actually cited by Osama Bin Laden as his reason for hatred toward US. Strange things happen in foreign lands, don't they?

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Public Transit generally does work within a city. If you don't intend to go anywhere that's not a part of the city (or another city, if you fly), then public transit is fine. It is, however, absolutely useless if you don't live inside the city.

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What if suburbs became more city-like? Where does the "city" ends anyway, in a place like Denver?

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Only at the extent that when people will switch to other means of transportation, car owners will become a smaller part of population, decreasing demand for fuel and services, thus driving the prices a bit up. Hardly much more difficult, and a lot of low-income people will enjoy being free from fuel cost, car insurance, repairs, needing to have a garage...

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People will switch only for things that it works better for. I don't think people will stop using/owning private vehicles. As for low-income people, only those living in a city will be "freed" from those costs, and once again, they probably didn't have a car in the first place.

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Right now if you have a job you have to have a car unless you are extremely lucky and live near work. Most of "poor people" that have to eat at mcdonalds, cause various social problems, etc. still have a car.

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By digging tunnels, of course. Modern technology allows to make tunnels at the depth below most of the existing infrastructure, without affecting anything on the surface.

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You still need a way to get down to those tunnels. I still don't see eminent domain being pulled to make room for subway stops. There are also groundwater considerations, geologic considerations, and so forth.

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If the decision is made to have a deep tunnel, the needs for on the ground facilities is very low, and flexibility of decitions where to put the tunnel is increased. Only if people consider building tunnel near the surface to save costs, they have to think much about what is around, and how to keep the area usable for people.

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I merely look at what other countries are doing. I am not against the idea of more efficient cars, it's just they can't solve the problem at the present scale, and especially at the scale that will develop within a decade.

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You criticize alternative energy vehicles as not being well developed enough, but you want to invest money into a giant project that will really only help urban areas, which are already using fewer and fewer vehicles for other reasons. I'm asking for a workable solution for suburbia, sprawl, outlying towns, more rural areas, smaller cities, etc. The only thing you've said about those is that you don't like them and you think people should live in cities rather than in suburbia. You have not addressed the transportation issue there.

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Huh? There are a lot of ways to use public transit in medium-density areas, only rural areas have to rely on cars. And even there a railway system can help a lot.

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Economy is flexible, and in any case the current recession and energy crisis will "flex" it more than public transit infrastructure ever could.

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The current recession will not last long; it will probbaly be gone a month after Bush leaves the White House.

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Only to blow one more bubble (biotech probably) and plunge deeper, if nothing else will be done. I am uncertain if there should be a period of growth after the current recession and a final collapse of dollar, I thought that there should be when this started, but I am not certain now. I believe, this can be saved by having a sustainable model within the country, but with people clearly addicted to excesses anf peculiarities that cause more and more damage to the economy, I have no idea if that will happen.

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The current energy "crisis" is mainly due to current events and energy middlemen such as Enron. A greater reliance in the near future on nuclear power plants will quite likely stop this "energy crisis" in its tracks.

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Again, not if energy consumption will suddenly rise because of inefficiency of alternative fuel.

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You talked about large amounts of high-qualified workforce, what is quite different from an asphalt plant, more like a semiconductors factory (oh wait, they are all in SE Asia now!). For your examples a high-capacity surface train line will be more than sufficient.

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People who are working skilled jobs are going to be middle class or above. They're going to want to live where they want to live and work where they want to work. No one's going to move somewhere because it's right next to their workplace, especially with the current level of job security.

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Again, trains solve that problem. In Russia one could live comfortably in Moscow and work at JINR in Dubna, taking a very nice train every day.

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How can anything collapse "suddenly" when the cause of a collapse depends on an infrastructure that needs few years to grow before it will become a threat to those businesses? Or do you expect that every gas station or lube shop should exist forever?

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You claim that we're going to run out of gas very soon and don't intend to work on any means of replacing its function in private vehicles.

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_I_ don't intend personally to work on either, I don't have much to contribute in either of those areas. I just see that solution will be incomplete if all people will do is developing alternative fuel vehicles and nuclear power plants.

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You ignore the fact that people who need to drive to work, etc will still drive because the infrastructure is not going to be comprehensive enough to be functional for this. If/when the oil reserves run out, a lot of people will be unable to easily travel where they were previously travelling over a rather short time. This will result in a lot of unemployment, and businesses going under as people look for jobs they can get to.

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And if there will not be enough electricity for this, it will still happen.

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Again, there can't be anything "sudden" about it, people that depend on it will have more than enough time to gradually switch to something else.

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You underestimate the wonderful tendency of human beings to procrastinate.

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Tendency to bang one's head at the wall is curable. And not only by the removal of the wall.

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Or you work on high yield energy sources. Like the current project to work on a fusion reactor.

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Usable fusion energy was "10-20 years away" for 30 if not 40 years already. Eventually it will happen, but it will be insane to rely on such a thing happening at any particular time.

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People have been heralding energy crises for decades. They always seem to ignore human innovation.

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They always expected an energy crisis in mid 21th century, and its projected date were getting earlier and earlier with time. I guess, when the dates will meet, there will be... Holy shit, an energy crisis! we didn't expect that!

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US is the only developed country that does not have a surface train system surrounding every major urban area, with lines passing through each peripheral city. Those systems are known to be extremely cheap and efficient.

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Eminent domain, once again. People will not gladly give up their property if they think there's a viable alternative.

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FR should just issue more dollars. It will anyway.

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In particular, it's absolutely ridiculous that Boulder is not connected to Denver downtown by a passenger train, there are all preconditions for that, and I hate driving over 36 few times a week when I have to, even though I usually do that at the off-peak time.

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There are all the preconditions. Except you should note that you wouldn't find a whole lot of support for it in Boulder. Either you'd be confiscating peoples' land (which they'd be unhappy about) or you'd be building it on public undeveloped land (which they'd be equally pissed about).

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There is a lot of land around 36 that no one cares about either way. Heck, there are remaining cargo train lines all over that place, one can just build better tracks over them.

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I also find it mildly amusing that you're speaking no ill of public transit, yet you drive to Boulder rather than take the bus. Because, you know, there are quite a few bus routes between Denver and Boulder. Hmm.

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Infrastructure problem -- to get to the only bus station I have to either drive (and no place to park), or use badly run local buses. Same thing in Boulder.

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This is not what I have seen around Moscow, where all such facilities are located. Heck, there were even special express trains that served ones with ridiculously large numbers of people.

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So people are going to support the government building branches of the public transit system for the sole use of big companies. I frankly don't buy that.

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Special express trains, not special tracks.

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I can believe that. But they won't be enough, and that will require a hell of incentive for both car industry and buyers.

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How about the lowered cost of fuel? How about better mileage?

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How about fixed insurance cost that overshadows both?

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Actually, thanks to the Yucca Mountain depository, I'd say nuclear energy production and distribution is going to increase. You know, now that they have somewhere to dump the spent fuel (I'm not a fan of the Yucca Mt. situation, but it definitely does have its pluses). There is also talk about developing fusion reactors, which would increase energy production by an immense amount. Also note that the more nuclear plants that are built, the fewer coal and oil power plants that will be around, which means that there will be more fossil fuels availible.

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I don't think, the nuclear waste was the factor that limited the growth of nuclear power plants now.

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Those cars are already expensive, and it doesn't stop many people from buying them.

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A $2000 a year "sin tax" on gas-guzzlers might make them think twice. Call it an environmental fee or whatever you want to call it.

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_THAT_ will be truly unpopular. And probably will be somehow bypassed, too -- people will, say, register SUVs as trucks.

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Not as difficult as building highways was in 50's -- and then it contributed a lot to the economic growth.

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Highways in the 50's helped economic growth because it gave people more freedom of where and when they could commute. More travelling = better economy.

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"More travelling" != "more cars". If public transit was built in 50's instead of that, people would get the same benefits, but I guess, car industry was quite powerful in its lobbying efforts then.

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What you're proposing would rather make people more likely to stick around their own city and work where it's convenient rather than where they can get the best pay and do the best job. That's NOT god for economic growth in the least.

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I disagree. First, where commuting is necessary, public transit works at least as good. Second, a lot of people can do their work at home -- being a programmer I certainly could, but the company probably thought, they will benefit from making sure that I am not playing Quake for most of the time.

I have re-read the message, and found some horrendously writen sentences -- sorry for that, I was in a hurry. The points that I have tried to express there, I hope, are still clear.