Re: Cars make more economic sense than transit: fact

["ant" <dont-look@evil.spam>]

Iskandar Baharuddin wrote in message <379D8950.37C3DD99@highway1.com.au>...
>Forg wrote:
>>
>> Mark Gibson wrote:
>> ...
>> > Mass transit is generally a major scam perpetrated upon innocent
taxpayers.
>> > The fact that it rarely pays for itself and the fact that most people
>> > rarely, if ever, use it strongly support my point.
>> >
>> > If all mass transit disappeared tomorrow, society might be
inconvenienced
>> > for a few weeks, but life would go on.  If private road-based motor
vehicular
>> > traffic disappeared tomorrow, society would be well on its way to
oblivion
>> > within a week.  Face facts.  We don't need mass transit to get by.
Those
>> > few places that do are overcrowded and would benefit more by reducing
their
>> > population density.
>> ...
>>
>> Mate, you're living in a dream world. The entire financial structure of
>> the world would collapse; all the major financial centres are in major
>> cities that could not operate without public transport. Even Sydney is
>> not big on a global scale, and single-day train strikes make the place
>> grind to a halt; and that's just one form of public transport. I haven't
>> seen any figures for daily use, but for the peak hour there are 5 or so
>> lines, with 1000 people per train every 3-5 minutes; let's say 15000 per
>> line in that hour, or 75000 extra cars you would put on the road during
>> that single hour. There is NO WAY that wouldn't turn the
>> already-polluted city into a big smog-blanket, let alone the fact that
>> doubling the width of the roads wouldn't help (which you couldn't do
>> overnight one night, anyway).
>
>Not if the government allowed pay-to-use car pools. There are
>quite a few people who would be prepared to invest in vans or
>minibuses to ferry paying passengers in and out, 7 to 20 at a
>time, at a price to be negotiated.
>
>However, at present this would be an economic crime.
>

yes it is called operating a public conveyance without proper licensing and
insurance for public liability. change the law to allow that and you destroy
the taxi, bus and hire car industrys and put public lives at risk due to
improperly trained drivers operating what is basically a unregulated taxi
service in cars that are not subject to the same regular safety inspections
normal taxis are.



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ant