[peeb]

The American car culture is running out of gas | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/18/2008

"Across the nation, the price of gasoline is sending more and more Americans to public transit.
This ridership surge points up three things: (1) These millions of new riders can do it. Most of them always could have. They just didn't. (2): We're not at the end of car culture yet . . . that's a few generations off . . . but (3) it's clear, in not-quite-hindsight, that the U.S. car culture does not work."

Well, looks like the tipping point is closer than we thought.

[art_director]

It's about time.

The gas prices do take a bite out of the pocket but, in the end, it will prove to be a good thing on several fronts.

[spacefreak]

When left to the markets, it's amazing what types of corrections and adaptations the market responds with.

[ghporter]

Unfortunately, not all urban areas have "effective", let alone worthwhile or convenient mass transit. Case in point: San Antonio, Texas. Around here, the bus service is often like a thinly veiled token rather than the means that thousands use daily to get back and forth to work, school and shopping. Many areas of town have spotty to no direct service. I can "schedule" a bus pickup within a mile of my house, but there's no regular stop that close. Pretty much useless for people without a car.

When I was using the bus, I'd drive a couple of miles to a transit center (a bus hub) and take the bus to school and back. THAT was really convenient and easy to use, but with our weather, having to walk that far would have been a major problem.

So yes, there should be a shift toward more mass transit, but it will start with more use of whatever is there right now (whether it's functional or not) and THEN drive better mass transit being developed.

[zunipus]

During the 20th Century the oil companies held sway over the US auto manufacturers, effectively stomping out any way for progressive gas mileage technology to make it into US made cars. They are still attempting to hold the gas guzzler culture in place through lobbying and supporting the activist judges (falsely called 'conservative judges') promoted by the pro-corporate wing of the Republicans.

In turn the auto industry has, in the process of licking Big Oil's boots, had a continued sway over the decline if not outright removal of mass transit alternatives to the 'car culture,' as best seen in Los Angeles, CA where mass transit is next to worthless and is certainly ineffective. Meanwhile, California has passed laws to improve emission standards and are being met with Big Auto resistance via their sway over the Federal government.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, the current cost of petroleum products, including gasoline, is as much as 4X higher than the USA. They made the adjustment to expensive oil decades ago. We in the USA have been extremely privileged all that time being the #1 consumer of oil products in the world.

Now we are in an escalating period of US citizen gouging by Big Oil in a campaign to raise corporate gain while accelerating the decline of the US economy. The end result is going to be the marginalization of the USA within the global economy and governance. This goes hand in hand with the long term goal of the conservative wing of the Republicans to bankrupt the federal government, forcing the funding of the military while gutting social services to nonexistence. But again the inadvertent effect is the marginalization of the USA. Over 40% of our catastrophic national debt is owed to other countries. The worst of the countries holding our debt is China, who have worked furiously to undermine the USA since they were given 'Most Favored Nation Status' circa 1998 under the Clinton Cult. (Witness the 'Red Hacker Army' who have been cracking, botting and robbing from US federal net servers for over a decade).

Add to that our dependence upon oil from Venezuela and the Middle East, both areas of the world that despise us and limit internal access to our agricultural and manufactured goods.

Conclusion: Big Oil is creating Little America all for the sake of corporate profit.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Unfortunately, not all urban areas have "effective", let alone worthwhile or convenient mass transit. Case in point: San Antonio, Texas. Around here, the bus service is often like a thinly veiled token rather than the means that thousands use daily to get back and forth to work, school and shopping. Many areas of town have spotty to no direct service. I can "schedule" a bus pickup within a mile of my house, but there's no regular stop that close. Pretty much useless for people without a car.

When I was using the bus, I'd drive a couple of miles to a transit center (a bus hub) and take the bus to school and back. THAT was really convenient and easy to use, but with our weather, having to walk that far would have been a major problem.

So yes, there should be a shift toward more mass transit, but it will start with more use of whatever is there right now (whether it's functional or not) and THEN drive better mass transit being developed.

We were just in San Antonio for Memorial Day. What a beautiful city.

I was shocked at the lack of decent public transit.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by zunipus 

During the 20th Century the oil companies held sway over the US auto manufacturers, effectively stomping out any way for progressive gas mileage technology to make it into US made cars. They are still attempting to hold the gas guzzler culture in place through lobbying and supporting the activist judges (falsely called 'conservative judges') promoted by the pro-corporate wing of the Republicans.

In turn the auto industry has, in the process of licking Big Oil's boots, had a continued sway over the decline if not outright removal of mass transit alternatives to the 'car culture,' as best seen in Los Angeles, CA where mass transit is next to worthless and is certainly ineffective. Meanwhile, California has passed laws to improve emission standards and are being met with Big Auto resistance via their sway over the Federal government.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, the current cost of petroleum products, including gasoline, is as much as 4X higher than the USA. They made the adjustment to expensive oil decades ago. We in the USA have been extremely privileged all that time being the #1 consumer of oil products in the world.

Now we are in an escalating period of US citizen gouging by Big Oil in a campaign to raise corporate gain while accelerating the decline of the US economy. The end result is going to be the marginalization of the USA within the global economy and governance. This goes hand in hand with the long term goal of the conservative wing of the Republicans to bankrupt the federal government, forcing the funding of the military while gutting social services to nonexistence. But again the inadvertent effect is the marginalization of the USA. Over 40% of our catastrophic national debt is owed to other countries. The worst of the countries holding our debt is China, who have worked furiously to undermine the USA since they were given 'Most Favored Nation Status' circa 1998 under the Clinton Cult. (Witness the 'Red Hacker Army' who have been cracking, botting and robbing from US federal net servers for over a decade).

Add to that our dependence upon oil from Venezuela and the Middle East, both areas of the world that despise us and limit internal access to our agricultural and manufactured goods.

Conclusion: Big Oil is creating Little America all for the sake of corporate profit.

You make several good points. Your description of Los Angeles car culture and mass transit was not even close to being harsh enough. That city is pathetic on the issues of mass transit and cars.

Your post left out one other energy / fuel shell game that's hurting the American consumer: corn-based ethanol. It's good for ag companies, it's good for farmers and it's bad for consumers for two primary reasons:

1. It's not an efficient means of producing fuel despite what Washington tells us -- especially our Congressional detail from MN. In a nutshell, it takes more than a gallon of fuel to create a gallon of corn-based ethanol. IOW, it's a backward technology.

2. As Americans have now seen, corn-based ethanol has driven up the cost of corn and products produced from corn.

If Americans set down their triple, non-fat, iced, soy, caramel lattes and started paying attention we'd be in a different boat. But I doubt that will happen. Things will need to get much worse in this country before people will take notice.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by art_director 

We were just in San Antonio for Memorial Day. What a beautiful city.

I was shocked at the lack of decent public transit.

Yeah, it sucks. What makes it worse is that it's hellish to get around downtown, and there are SO many things to see and do there. If it weren't for there being a municipal parking garage really near the Riverwalk AND a freeway exit, I wouldn't go there at all. Now if there were a decent bus route that went from, oh, the fastest growing part of town to Rivercenter Mall (which is ON the Riverwalk), I might actually go there more often and even spend money at the overpriced tourist trap of Rivercenter Mall.

The traffic issue is one I hadn't addressed above, but it's really important. Being an old city, downtown San Antonio has a conglomeration of narrow, one-way streets that intersect at odd angles, causing a lot of really difficult traffic situations. I35 actually goes around BOTH SIDES of downtown—how logical and straightforward is that? So without good mass transit and straightforward routes, it's not uncommon for a lot of traffic to get screwed up because it's hard to figure out where you are and how to get where you're going.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

...it's not uncommon for a lot of traffic to get screwed up because it's hard to figure out where you are and how to get where you're going.

Learned that one the hard way.

I fell in love with San Antonio. The heat drives me crazy but ever so beautiful. Now there are two cities in TX I'll visit -- SA and Austin. Both great places.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by art_director 

Learned that one the hard way.

I fell in love with San Antonio. The heat drives me crazy but ever so beautiful. Now there are two cities in TX I'll visit -- SA and Austin. Both great places.

And both have really hosed up traffic. Austin's "Capital Metro" bus service works pretty well and lacks the social inequity of San Antonio's "Via" service, but the traffic is still stupidly horrendous. When I lived in Austin 25 years ago, it was a nightmare and it still is, though the scary parts are different.

And this IS on topic: because our roads don't have a chance of keeping pace with the way we use them (especially in Texas right now, but elsewhere too), we waste tons of gas every day just sitting in traffic. Better roads, that are better routed and better maintained, would save a whole lot of fuel every day, not to mention minutes wasted by emergency vehicles trying to get through stop and go traffic.

[peeb]

More public transit, fewer cars. 'better roads' is not a solution.