Trains
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I guess this is not exactly political but imma add it here anyway because of the stimuls package.
I love trains. Trains are awesome. Why are we not investing more in trains? I know that many of our roads need to be maintained and bridges need to be fixed and inspected. But why do we need to spend more money in building more roads when we are trying to go green. Perhaps so we can continue to buy cars?
The public transportation here is pathetic. In Harrisburg there is a CAT bus system, but if you want to get anywhere you have to catch the bus on its horrible schedule, and it doesn't really get you anywhere you need to go. I've taken it a few times in the past month and I haven't been on a bus with more then 4 people..including me./sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />. I would love if Amtrak would let you take your bike on the train...
There was actually funding in Central PA for building a local train system, to improve transportation....but guess what, they took the money and put it in roads i believe.
yey -
As a daily public transportation user, I also wish states (particularly PA) would invest more in their public transit. The biggest thing holding people back from using public transit is lack of consistent service -- if you could be guaranteed a bus would stop every fifteen minutes, it would be far more appealing then if you thought you had to be at the bus stop at an exact time or risk being an hour or more late for work.
However, our real problem is with urban sprawl. Maintaining a road (which requires resurfacing every few years) is far cheaper than maintaining a rail line (which requires constant monitoring, cleaning, and maintenance across its entire length throughout its entire lifetime), and the cost of vehicle maintenance remains in the hands of the consumer instead of also being tacked onto the state's bill). This is far less of a problem in places like Britain and Japan because they are far more dense.
When you leave suburbia and head into the places that don't suck a dick -- your New York or your San Francisco -- the opinion of public transit vs automotive transportation changes dramatically. 75% of New York residents don't own cars. I don't know any statistics on San Francisco's population, but I can unequivocally say that their transit system (both regional and local) is fucking amazing. Their trolly and metro system is awesome for getting you around the city, and their BART system is extremely successful and easily accessible because their suburbs are also extremely dense.
Harrisburg and Lancaster are not dense, and their suburbs barely live up to even the "suburb" categorization, so our transit systems (whether train or bus) aren't very accessible. -
QUOTE (KarmaPolice @ Feb 21 2009, 02:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I guess this is not exactly political but imma add it here anyway because of the stimuls package.
I love trains. Trains are awesome. Why are we not investing more in trains? I know that many of our roads need to be maintained and bridges need to be fixed and inspected. But why do we need to spend more money in building more roads when we are trying to go green. Perhaps so we can continue to buy cars?
You might be interested in this from last July:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301 -
Train tracks are owned and maintained by the railways that use them. Roads are owned by townships. To give money to a township and have them fix up their roads (at least when we're talking places like suburbia) is much easier than trying to find a good way to finance the maintenance of railroads. Who gets the money? (railways) How do we track where the money goes (we've had issues with the other private organizations we handed cash to)
We'd all like to see trains running 24/7 all over the country, but America is really big.
/Europe and America would get along better if Americans realized that 100 years isn't that long and Europeans realized that 100 miles isn't that far./
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