The Most Important Building Projects for the United States
Mass Transit
Bill McKibben in Deep Economy (153) cites James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency for this tidbit: "Between 1890 and 1920, American cities and towns built hundreds of local and interurban streetcar lines that together constituted a remarkable network. Save for two twenty-mile gaps in upstate New York, you could ride the trolley lines from Boston to Wisconsin without a break." People have to get over driving around in their own vehicles, and we need to look at the externalities ignored when costing road building, and learn to include the benefits to household budgets, air quality, sense of community, and land use that some with frequent, reasonably priced mass transit.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Baker on -
The challenge is to find a handful of projects where it makes the most sense and can make a difference. There was talk for a while about bullet trains between Dallas and Houston. Does that make sense? How do travelers move around when they arrive in "downtown" Dallas or Houston without a car? The trouble is that the auto economy (which not only replaced but also sabotaged much of the public transit infrastructure) has created sprawls in much of the country.
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Ross on -
Well, let those who want to live in sprawl worry about that. For those of us who have chosen density, build interurban mass transit to replace airplane travel, as in France and elsewhere. Once people arrive, cities like Portland have wonderful intraurban transit in place.
Stephen Baker said:The challenge is to find a handful of projects where it makes the most sense and can make a difference. There was talk for a while about bullet trains between Dallas and Houston. Does that make sense? How do travelers move around when they arrive in "downtown" Dallas or Houston without a car? The trouble is that the auto economy (which not only replaced but also sabotaged much of the public transit infrastructure) has created sprawls in much of the country.
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Permalink Reply by RBM on -
You would no doubt enjoy Alan Drake's site Light Rail Now
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Permalink Reply by RBM on
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You would no doubt enjoy Alan Drake's site Light Rail Now
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