Do bicycles and cars mix?

On 11 Aug 2003 23:06:42 -0700, (Tanya Quinn) wrote:

Dave Head wrote in message
Hi Tanya,

I used to bike, but have several problems with it now.

That's unfortunate, its a fun way to get around.

Hi Tanya,

I've found it to be fun recreation, but hate to rely on it for basic transport.
Its just too slow, and I _don't_ enjoy the exercise under the condition of
having to be somewhere at a certain time.

I hated it when I was a kid, and only did it because it was faster and easier
than walking. But ever since I was big enough to consider it, I _always_
wanted to drive to get somewhere. Now that I can, I'm gonna!

One is biking _around here._ I'd have to load up the bike and take it
someplace safe. Starting out from the house, with the way these roads are, is
too dangerous for me. The roads have lots of curves and sharp crests. A few
months ago, a guy in my office came over one of these crests and plowed into
traffic stopped for a school bus. A bike wouldn't have a chance around here.

There are two problems, one - some places roads are really badly
designed. If you are in a remote area you might not have an alternate
route. Two is a perception problem. Many people perceive bicycling in
traffic to be a lot more dangerous than it actually is.


I perceive that being out on the highway at all, on a bike or in a car, carries
some chance of getting hit. Its just that in a car, I have a much better
chance of surviving the hit. I don't include crashing my car in this, because
I have a much lower than average chance of doing that. Its because I'm single,
and rarely drive with anyone else in the car, therefore having no distraction
of talking to someone.

Also, I've developed a situation where my hands go numb when gripping anything
continuously. It happens when gripping the heart monitor contacts on the step
machine, too, but I can continue with that while leaving go of those contacts,
but you can't ride a bike and let go of the handlebars, at least not
continuously or safely. I think I'm not going to be doing much biking any
more.

Another unfortunate. You might however test-ride a recumbent bicycle.
As you don't have to support your body weight on your hands you might
find it easier on your hands. Gel-padded gloves might also help.

Those bikes are expensive, and I don't enjoy it all that much anyway.

I've developed a real liking for the idea of the personal rapid transit system.
If built up in the air, on "stilts", it wouldn't take up any significant real
estate, and would be a "no waiting" solution that people would enjoy riding.

Wonder why cities are trying to get rid of their elevated expressways?
Things on "stilts" are expensive to keep up in the air Not only
that but they are an eyesore to the rest of the city, block out light
etc.

You always see those "highways in the sky" when they make futuristic movies.
I think its getting to be time to start with that - It would be a way to take a
road thru a "neighborhood" without destroying the neighborhood. Build these
rails really high - 50 - 100 feet like the overpasses at a lot of highway
interchanges. The distance would help lessen the noise. And since rails don't
have to be near as wide as highways, the visual impact isn't as much.

I expect that it is too expensive, tho. You're probably right there.

With transit usually being in the position of bleeding money, I think it has to
win 100% of the time, so that people will ride it enough so the fares can be
reasonable and the system still make money. I think that just about the only

If the idea is to offer "public" transit then the system's goal needs
to be to break even not to make money.

What if the idea were to be commercial, and make money? Then we wouldn't have
to wait on the city to do it - businessmen would do it. Things might get built
faster that way.

A personal favorite idea of mine is to go the extra mile and make personal
rapid transit big enough so you can drive your car onto a railcar, and have the
railcar run at much higher speed than would be safe to drive in a car. Then,

If its big enough that you can drive your car onto it, what the heck
is the point of it?

The point is getting people to ride it at all. People _hate_ losing the
conveniece of their cars. Transit promotors should give up trying to get
people out of their cars, 'cuz in this country, it mostly isn't going to
happen. But those people would ride this, since it offers the privacy they
like plus the flexibility to not have to take it everywhere that it doesn't go
anyway.

Other than being faster?

Faster (than a car on the road) is extremely significant. Plus, you can do all
those transit things people love like reading newspapers, listening to the
radio at _your_ volume level, playing Quake on the laptop, etc.

And fast travel has its
disadvantages to business. Retail stores for instance thrive on
traffic passing by - at a speed you can both see them and stop for
them. This may be riding a streetcar, a bicycle, walking by, or
driving along (at not too outrageous a speed).

Transit won't go everywhere for a really long time. Stores are just going to
have to congregate around the transit terminals like the mini-malls that happen
at some train terminals in DC. You can build terminals several miles apart
like this, without it being an imposition on the rider since he doesn't have to
jump a (slow) bus, or walk a long distance to get where he's going.


when arriving, you could drive the rest of the way whever you're going. A
system like that would not need to be built "all at once". Just the 1st 2
terminals could be completed, and then system would then be open for travel
between them. The farther its built, the more useful it becomes. The fares
from the operating part could be used to help finance the further development
of the system. Plus, cars could then be made to "run on electricity," as the
system would use it to move the railcars.

If you already are necessitating the car, this is more expensive than
cars + highways, who is going to pay for this?

People who like to get places quickly without sitting it traffic. Should be
most everybody that breathes.

You are perhaps using a
different fuel - electricity vs. gas but you are using much more
energy to move the same distance.

You use less energy. What happens when you get on this transit system is that
your railcar moves to a point that probably touches the one in front. You get
instant NASCAR-style drafting, with the railcar in front breaking the wind for
all the remaining railcars in the "train". The railcars behind the 1st one may
be traveling 150 mph on 20 horsepower, at least on the level. If not on the
level, the ones going up are going to be using a lot of power, but the ones
coming down can generate some due to dynamic braking that uses the railcar
motors as generators, and the gravity as the source of power.


Yes, its a common failing that bus systems are set up to go downtown, no matter
if you want to go 2 miles tangent to the circle centered on downtown. Also a
common failing is not enough buses so you have to wait too long.

For a variety of bus routes and a frequent schedule you need a large
mass of people using the bus, and enough people wanting to travel in a
particular direction at a given point of time. Low density suburban
design does not support this.

You just described why transit, in general, fails the public and is not
anywhere close to the car in popularity.

Where buildings are designed around the automobile and providing a lot
of parking, it is going to not be so convenient to take transit, as it
will be a long walk to most points from a rapid transit station. Its
hard to change the design of a city

If the transit system was built to move your car rapidly, without congestion
while doing it...

I see a noisy blurry city that isn't fun to walk around in at all. If
the main cause of congestion is too many cars this won't solve
congestion.

The main cause of congestion is cars on roads going to places and getting in
each other's way. Putting them on rails designed to never cause them to stop
until they get where they're going would solve that. Of course, with these
stations built maybe 3 miles away from each other in the city, there would be
some in-city driving up to maybe 1 1/2 miles, but this would be all local
driving by drivers that intend to terminate in the immediate vicinity, not 5
miles up the road. There's a lot less "terminating" cars than "passing thru"
cars. Getting rid of the passers-thru would see the congestion go way down.

Unfortunately, even our high speed trains aren't even twice as fast as a car.
Maybe 1.5X, and they are really rare, too. Regular trains in some areas of the
country, mainly the plains in the west and midwest, do about 80 mph. That's
still real close to my car when I'm driving that area, and my car doesn't stop
as often, at least until I have to get a motel G.

Technology is available for trains that move much faster. High speed
bullet trains in Japan can travel 200 mph. Try doing that in your car
and see what happens in an accident

Same thing that would happen to the train riders at 200 mph! But that's
another advantage of putting cars on rails. Not only does it get them off the
highway, easing congestion there, but it greatly lessens the chance of having
an accident.

If transit is going to make money, I think it is necessary that it beat cars
even when the cars have optimal conditions for travel. I think the PRT scheme
is the only thing that has a chance of doing that. Car-carrying PRT would be
the ideal situation, I think.

How can car-carrying PRT beat cars, when it is a car still?

Well, you know what I mean. Car-carrying PRT beats cars on ordinary roads.

And it
takes up far too much space and is far too expensive. Interesting idea
though.

Have you considered all the costs, tho? It may _not_ be more expensive. For
instance, an automobile sitting on a railcar is not turning its odometer. You
could maybe keep the same car for 15 - 20 years if you didn't put on all that
mileage to wear it out. I'd probably still have my '93 Jeep and '92 Mitsubishi
Eclipse if they hadn't both started to consume huge quantities of money just to
keep them running. The drive trains were having all the bearings needing
replaced, and you can't walk into a service garage around here without it
costing at least $600, or at least that's the way it seems. I'm just getting a
60,000 mile service today, and that is $500 - $550. Its really just a
glorified tune-up. Then there's the brakes that need done, and a noise coming
from somewhere in the drivetrain - maybe a u-joint in a half-shaft. This is
gonna be expensive. But if I hadn't put on 65,000 miles in just the last 2
years, it might not be costing this much for maybe another 3 years. That's a
savings.

Plus, cars on rails are not cars on highways. Therefore, the cars are not
wearing out the highways, and its not necessary to build more highways.

Plus, what's the cost of all those auto accidents? There would be far fewer
auto accidents if there were far fewer autos on highways.

And, if a rail system could get you to work 60 miles away in 25 minutes, would
you pay for that vs. the 1 hour, under ideal conditions, that it would
otherwise take? Most people would. People could live farther from work, where
the real estate is cheaper, and save money that way.

Plus, you could run your transport system on something besides petroleum, or at
least foreign petroleum if the environmentalists ever let us explore for new
gas sources. Of course there's nuclear and coal solar and wind, too. I read
about a system using coal that sequesters the CO2 in some chemical carbonate,
so no greenhouse gas pollution, and _we_ have _lots_ of coal. What's the price
of dependency in international sources for our energy?

It may not be more expensive when everything is considered. It might even be
cheaper depending on what $$$ you place on people getting killed. Last week,
due to highway construction congestion, a local college student was the last
car stuck in traffic on Interstate 95 just North of Fredericksburg, Va. A
truck plowed into her little car, ran it over, plowed into a tow truck in front
of her with a car in tow and one on a flatbed, pushed that into another truck
owned by the same towing company, and of course killed the college student.
That wouldn't be happening on a rail system.

I think people are too highly paranoid about safety in general.

When you read about the criminal activity in the paper every day, its rather
hard to ignore.

Do you read about car accident fatalities in the newspaper too?
There's far more of those than there are random serial killers killing
pedestrians on the street

Yep. They happen mostly to people that aren't paying attention, and to people
that don't have the foggiest idea of what to do when things go wrong. Neither
of those are me.

People lock up the brakes and plow into stopped cars all the time. I release
the brakes and steer around them. I've done it maybe once a year for my
driving career. That is why anti-lock brakes are mostly not an advantage to
me. They say you can steer around obstacles with them, but I can do that
anyway. The difference is that I know to leave up on the brakes a little so
the wheels will turn.

and get the ice and snow off the vehicle.

Car comes out of the garage, where the previous ice and snow has already melted
all over the floor... G

But what about at your destination? Are their garages at all the
places you want to go to?

No, but it rarely snows so much its a great problem. And besides, all that
snow melts off onto the floor of my garage, anyway! G


Ya just have to satisfy what people want, and the spoiled ones, which are about
99% of the population, want cars. They want to do be able to do all the things
they can't do on transit - listen to the radio (you can't get AM or FM in the
subway tunnels, and Led Zeppelin just ain't the same on headphones), eat,
drink, and even sing. They want privacy.

I've seen people singing on transit g But yes cars provide a bubble
to isolate the user from the rest of the world. Whether you think
thats a pro or con depends on your perspective.

A serious "pro" for me. Remember Colin Furgeson, the Long Island Railway
shooter? Try hitting someone in a car on rails that are carrying them at 150
mph? Try hitting them even at even 60 mph. I don't need the opportunity to
"meet people" like this.

Transit lets you do
more things - eat, drink,

That will get you handcuffs in DC. Last year, a cop arrested and handcuffed
(!) a 12 year old girl who had some McDonalds french fries on a DC Metro train.

read the newspaper,

OK.

knit,

OK.

whatever you want

Nope. I want to play the radio and listen to the news, or I want to listen to
Santana and Boston, and I _don't_ want to be fooling around with headphones to
do it. I can do that in my car.

while you are in journey. Some people think its okay to multitask
while driving (breastfeeding, reading, playing musical instruments)
but they are accidents waiting to happen.You could multitask as a
passenger in a car - and certainly if people are carpooling to work
this is an improvement over single-occupancy vehicles, but generally
the ride is not as smooth as a subway or other fixed-rail vehicle for
reading. Perhaps there are ways of integrating the car comforts better
into transit to make it more attractive.

Yes, there are. Have the transit system carry the car close ( 3 miles) to
where the driver wants to go anyway.

That would probably work, although being 20 miles out in the country, I'd still
have to put the bike on the roof of the car for a while... G Would need some
way to lock up the bike, tho, and there aren't bike racks most places around
here.

Yes - well country living does prevent challenges to transportation.
Unless you are a really keen biker living remotely usually
necessitates driving places.

But once you get to the city you can park and walk or park and ride
transit or park and bike too. Once a critical number of bicyclists
appear in a given place its easier to get the city or businesses to
install bike racks or ring/posts. There's ring/posts most everywhere I
go but when I happen to venture out into the land of only the
automobile (suburbia) I have to be more creative at locking the bike.

Trees.

Parking meters, street signs, railings, trees (iffy someone could cut
the tree and you lose bike and a tree),

Big trees! G Ones in my front yard are about 3 feet in diameter. Of course,
I'm out in the country.

Dave Head

and anything else that looks
relatively immobile work. Some places that have the space don't
actually mind if you bring the bike inside.



Tanya

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:24:24 +0200, Dr Engelbert Buxbaum
wrote:

Dave Head wrote:

24 miles of biking per day? I
don't think so. Not only would I kill someone to avoid that sort of
imposition, it would also waste about 2 hours per day, not including the
necessary shower after each ride. I get to work and home in about 22 minutes
with the car.

And it would take about a good hour to go by bike. Not that much
difference,

That's a huge difference. 2 hrs per day vs 44 minutes. If I can work
overtime, that's equivalent to maybe an extra $980 / month in my pocket, even
at straight time. If I'm not transporting myself, I could be making some
money. Since it's work-related time anyway, I think I should be able to make
some money at it.

I worked 64 hrs last week. That was done as "comp time", so's I can take off
fishing next month and not hammer my vacation account so badly. But I couldn't
have done that with a bike. Not only am I not crazy enough to ride at night
around here, but I wouldn't have had the extra energy required.

even if you don't count the time safed on sports club
visits.

Offset by the time required for the shower.

Plus, on the roads around here with the blind corners and sharp hill crests,
biker would get killed. I see _nobody_ biking these roads. No one is that
stupid.

That is probably in your imagination (I used to live in hilly places),
but even if the danger were real, the solution would be to build safer
roads, not to avoids bikes.

I keep telling the road bunch here that straightening and flattening these
roads is what dynamite is for... but they say its too expensive.

For other journeys, it may be bus, train, ship or plane.

Fatal flaw on all these: They run on a schedule. That means you have to wait
for them to get to where you are in order to ride them. Efficiency of travel
would go down, as would our overall productivity. Recreational travel would
probably be nearly completely discouraged.

You do not have to wait (long) but plan your journey with the time table
in mind.

I like the luxury of not having to plan trips, which I can do in my car. I
decide I want to go to Dairy Queen for a cone, I go to Dairy Queen for a cone.
No schedule.

Where I am living now, we have a train connection to the next
city, that goes every half hour. I don't wait half an hour, I go to the
train a few minutes before departure. Just needs a little more thinking
and planning than your average car journey.

Don't want to do the thinking and planning. Got enough other stuff to think
about and plan for.

Last taxi I took was from the airport in Indianapolis to home, across town.
$50. I am not that rich! Fortunately, it was for work, and they paid for it.

But you happily pay $ 400 a month (the approximate costs for
depreciation, road tax, MOT-testing, insurance and the like for a small
car) to own a car, plus the costs to run it?

I ain't happy about paying for it, just a lot happier than I would be if I had
to keep a schedule, and share space with other people while traveling. I want
to be by myself when I travel. I want complete control of the temperature, and
want to be able to play the radio on the news station or a rock station, at the
volume I choose, and nobody else having any right to say anything about it.
I'm not patronizing anything that doesn't deliver what I want.

The problem is not travel per se, but the missuse of an inappropriate
mode of transportation.

That logic has always astonished me. It happens right now as every year:
People sitting in 200 km standing traffic to go on holiday, thats ok.

I don't do that. I take the less congested roads when that happens.

Last week, coming back from a road rally I ran in western Pennsylvania, I was
approaching the I-81 interchange on I-70. Traffic stops. I get off and use
US-68 to get to I-81, not a lot of time lost there. Then I travel about 20
miles and _it_ stops too. I get off, use back roads, hop down 2 more
interchanges, and I'm back on, beyond the accident. I think I might have lost
about 1/2 hour, but I sure didn't sit in traffic much.

But to use a train? Never, they could have to wait for 10 min at the
station.

And share space with other people on the train, and be courteous, and not get
to set the temperature or play the radio or do much but sit there. Maybe I
want to read the paper, maybe I don't. Once the paper is read, I'm still
sitting there, missing whatever is on the news and definitely not getting to
play my favorite tunes (don't even think about headphones - it ain't happenin'
- I don't like 'em...)

The (non-)workings of the human mind are truly fascinating.

Yep.

Dave Head

Keith F. Lynch wrote in message
...
wrote:
Tranasit makes it harder for people to get to work.

If this were true, nobody would ride it to work.
--

Sure you would. Anything highly subsidized will get some takers.

Tanya Quinn wrote in message
om...
wrote in message news:Z5QZa.6597
And the bus consumes for fuel too. They have to return empty, run
off-hour service, and as a result average about 7 persons. Cars save
fuel.

While buses in some places may run inefficiently, in other denser
places they have as much traffic going in one direction as in the
other (especially when you have multi-purpose zoning where there are
both businesses and residents in any one location so rush hour isn't
just taking people from one section to another) Off-hour service is
usually reduced in the schedule as well. Where did you pull the
magical number 7 out of?

There are standare sources on all of this. Transit buses also tear up
the highways, by the way. From Tue Jul 8
12:21:09 1997
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Author: Gibby-Reed. Dawson-Rebecca. Sebaaly-Peter.
Title: Local urban transit bus impact on pavements.
Source: Journal-of-Transportation-Engineering. May-June, 1996.
v122(n3). p215(3).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT American Society of Civil Engineers 1996
Abstract: Bus transit systems provide a valuable service to many
residents living within urban areas. Like other vehicles,
buses
depend on paved streets and roads for a smooth ride. The
pavement wear due to truck traffic has been monitored
and researched for many years. The effects of urban transit
buses on pavements owned and maintained by local governments
are examined from the following three perspectives: (1)
Pavement design; (2) pavement condition data
analysis; and (3) visual observations. Each of the three
perspectives suggests that significant pavement damage
is caused by transit bus traffic. Another analysis
probed pavements' damage if buses had a third axle. There are
a
number of significant conclusions offered which include the
following: (1) Fully loaded transit buses exceed the
California
legal axle limit; (2) the construction cost to accommodate
transit buses is approximately 5% for arterials and 58% for
collectors; (3) the addition of a third axle will reduce the
pavement damage by approximately three times; and (4)
another approach to reduce pavement damage would be to
use lighter-weight materials in the manufacturing of transit
buses.

Keith F. Lynch wrote in message
...
wrote:
Planners refuse to plan using current technology. Rather, they want
to move backwards into the 19th century using fixed rail transit
systems.

Or into the 18th century with fixed highways. Just because an idea is
old doesn't mean it is bad.

Rail is massively expensive and went away due to excessive costs.
Trolleys were especially hard to keep going.

In article ,
Tanya Quinn wrote:
John David Galt wrote in message ...

This is largely deliberate on the part of planning bureaucrats who hate
the car, and therefore is not to be blamed on drivers.

No its a function of how much space a typical vehicle occupies. While
granted you can build more roads, usually in a city space has already
been allocated to different uses. What are you going to do, raze a
neighbourhood to make more roads, that will soon become more congested
too as people see that driving is now easier, and drive more often?

I don't accept the induced traffic hypothesis.

Not comparable for several reasons. Transit doesn't go everywhere,
doesn't run all the time, and cannot be trusted for either safety or
reliability compared to one's own car.

If you look at the accident rates for buses, subways and the like as
opposed to cars I think you'll find that the death rate of transit
occupants is much lower than that of car occupants. How is transit
less safe?

I believe he refers to muggings and other actions by criminals who see
transit systems the way predators see watering holes.

As far as reliability goes, that's why I was making the
argument that for transit to be more reliable it needs to have right
of way over single occupancy traffic.

Which is code for "make driving more difficult and maybe more people
will take transit".

You have it backwards. For most people, the car is a necessity because
the job can't be reached (sufficiently easily and reliably) without it.
Thus the fixed cost goes under necessities, and the relevant comparison
for the rider is the incremental cost of driving vs. the bus ticket.
(The relevant comparison for public policy is the same except that the
tax subsidy to the transit system has to be counted in its cost.)

In large urban areas with sufficient density either transit provides a
way to reach the job for the vast majority of people, or it is
economically and practically feasible to do so, but perhaps the
political will is not there.

There is only one place in the US with sufficient density.

then they should bear the costs of doing so. As driving is currently a
highly subsidized activity then they are not paying the full costs.

You claim driving is "highly subsidized", and claim transit is a good
alternative? ROTFL. Transit, which in Philadelphia covers 0% of its
capital expenses and less than 50% of its operating expenses from
user fees. We can argue the subsidy of driving all day, but there's
zero doubt that transit is even MORE subsidized.

What the majority of people want with their automobiles is increased
mobility. If planning means that someone can live in the neighbourhood
they want, take a quick train to work, walk to their gym, walk to the
bakery, etc. then they have high mobility without the necessity of the
automobile.

Which it generally does not. At best, it means someone can live in
the neighborhood the planner wants (which will be a dense and crowded
place), take a crowded or infrequent (or both) train to work after a
long walk or bus ride, walk to the gym the planner wants, walk to the
nearby bakery (when the one across town is better), etc, etc.

They may still choose to own an automobile for driving to
their cottage or other locations, but they do not have to use their
car all the time because they have true freedom of mobility.

Once you have the car, it makes sense to use it. Even with the
extreme subsidy transit has, the cost of a transit trip is generally
higher than the marginal cost of an auto trip, except in extremely
dense areas.
--
Matthew T. Russotto
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." But extreme restriction of liberty in pursuit of
a modicum of security is a very expensive vice.

George,

No. You are wrong. 1/3 of my house, and every house on every street on which
I've lived has a garage supposedly dedicated to cars (bigger houses simply
have bigger garages nearly in the same proportion in most neighborhoods,
though there are some areas where the size of the house greatly exceeds this
basic rule).

While other stuff often fills said garage, the cars are parked along the
streets, effectively using a significant part of the roadway as well.

Now I know you have no interest in my opinion and I have ceased to enjoy
laughing at your silly and highly selective presentation of "facts" as you
see them. Go away. Far away. Stop cross posting to rec.bicycles.soc. You are
not going to change the mind of anyone about the role of bicycles in society
and and we aren't going to change yours.

Rick


wrote in message
link.net...

Tanya Quinn wrote in message
om...
John David Galt wrote in message
...
Irrelevant. In a free society, people justifiably demand the
freedom
to go
exactly where they want, exactly *when* they want.

Well I'd like to exactly where I want and when I want too, but I
don't
think that the car is the way to do it. By car, I can *leave* when I
want to go *where* I want, but I don't necessarily get there *when*
I
want. At many times of day and many places automobile traffic is too
congested to get people where they want to go when they want.

This is largely deliberate on the part of planning bureaucrats who
hate
the car, and therefore is not to be blamed on drivers.

No its a function of how much space a typical vehicle occupies.

Space? A well-planned suburb has less space devoted to the car than a
nicely planned city.

In article ,
Tanya Quinn wrote:

I've seen people singing on transit g But yes cars provide a bubble
to isolate the user from the rest of the world. Whether you think
thats a pro or con depends on your perspective. Transit lets you do
more things - eat, drink, read the newspaper, knit, whatever you want
while you are in journey.

More transit bait-and-switch. Eat and drink? Not permitted in
Philadelphia or Washington D.C. transit (enforced with fines and jail
time in DC). Read the newspaper? There isn't room to open it, so
either you don't read it or you irritate the other riders. Knit?
With all the jouncing and acceleration and deceneration?

On the other hand, in a car one can eat (certain things, anyway) and
drink and smoke, and the only problem you get is a smelly car.

reading. Perhaps there are ways of integrating the car comforts better
into transit to make it more attractive.

There are, but you'd be building the Cadillac of transit systems --
and the current Yugos, Hyundais, and Escorts are already enormously
expensive.

But once you get to the city you can park and walk or park and ride
transit or park and bike too.

Why? Once you get to the city, you're going to have to pay to park
anyway, so you may as well continue to your destination.
--
Matthew T. Russotto
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." But extreme restriction of liberty in pursuit of
a modicum of security is a very expensive vice.

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 19:41:19 -0800, Marc wrote:

"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:

And passengers can read or work, rather than
giving their full attention to driving.

I can't do either on a train or bus. I've tried.

Everyone is different, of course.

I do a lot of reading while on the bus or the subway. In fact, I go through a couple of
books a week just from casual use of the system (at present, I am off of work on a
disability caused by my work environment countering treatment).

The public library -- another tax-subsidized public service -- gets a lot of use from me.

================================================== ===============================
Kymberleigh Richards
President, Southern California Transit Advocates http://socata.lerctr.org
Member, Metro San Fernando Valley Sector Governance Council
Associate Member, California Transit Association
Webmaster, San Fernando Valley Transit Insider http://www.transit-insider.org
================================================== ===============================

On 11 Aug 2003 21:08:57 -0400, "Keith F. Lynch"
wrote:

So why did Virginia raise sales taxes by 12% a few years ago? They

I wonder how they figured it to be 12%?

Homewood school district tried to more than triple taxes a few years
ago. They claimed it was only a 3% raise. They neglected to tell you
that was on top of the already 1.5% tax rate, and the new total would
be 4.5%. Voters weren't that stupid.
-

Sig for the benefit of Jaybird and other similar cops...

Cops are the cause of everyone's problems.
My actions do not give them the right to break the law.
Their illegal actions are the result of their idiocy.
Their life is not my fault.
If you can't handle being a cop, find a real job.