It's great. I can zip down the road and really open her up without all you people getting in my way. I'm convinced: higher gas prices are good for me.

"ridership has jumped in the first months of 2005 — up between 3% and 12%"

So there are now, what, 100 more riders? It takes me an hour plus to drive to my current client's. The bus/train/bus ride is over two hours. I know because I took it once after a car breakdown. I think I was the only one on the bus who spoke English.

That higher gas prices will generate a significantly higher ridership of public transportation, especially outside dense urban areas, is wishful thinking. Just dining out once less time a month would cover about any gas price increase that is politically practicable.

oj-

Funny how markets work, if you let them.

Prices work.

Prices work.

Rick:

An excellent example of how public transport knits society better than private.

You bet. Nothing makes for social solidarity like 40 minutes on a bus, smelling other people's b.o. and hoping the gangbanger wannabes hassle somebody else.

Market driven prices.

joe:

Exactly. Meet a couple and you'll find they aren't so scary.

"Thanks to sky-high gas prices..." that max out at ~$2.50 for regular. As I said before, it's great to be an American and able to complain about such trivialities. Of course, it was pretty great a decade ago when I could buy gas for $0.75/gallon. But things today are still pretty gosh darn great.

tom:

Taxes are part of the market.

Tom, prices are prices. If $2.50 has so little impact, prices need to be higher, assuming the goal is to reduce sending $ to the oil cartels. The alternative would be to encourage or enforce conservation.

That said ... "Traffic is somewhat lighter on the heavily congested freeways and surface streets of Southern California." the recent freeway shootings may have something to do with lighter traffic too.

Scary, no; annoying and disgusting, yes; and I've met my share. I used to work for Greyhound, oj, I've cleaned spit, vomit, piss and trash off enough buses to last me a lifetime. This is one rat that's not volunteering to go back in the garbage can. Neither are you, for that matter, or you'd still be living in East Orange.

It's an upwardly mobile society. That gangbangers kid will date our daughters.

He will if he's got a car he can pick her up in.

Bus riders=Soccer fans--think about it.

Score easier if he takes her walking.

Get arrested easier too -- there's a reason why God invented the back seat.

Market driven prices transmit information regarding relative scarcity. Government set prices tend to transmit politically driven mis-information. If all prices serve the same purposes then I would recomend a substantial rise in gasoline taxes with controls on the prices charged at retail. Consumption could then be closely monitored and controlled through command pricing with all profits directed into government coffers so that other taxes could be reduced or eliminated. (sarcasm off)

Never been on the #7 to Shea?

No, but I have wiped the seat down for you afterwards.

Funny how OJ can lecture the rest of us on the glories of gangbangers and other urban scum, from his redoubt in Whitebread, New Hampshire.

Given land use and regional development patterns in the US since the late 1940s at least, it is virtually impossible to conceive of a viable public transport system. There is no direct train route, for example, between Bergen County and Newark, NJ. To go by bus from the Garden State Plaza, the main shopping area in Bergen County to the Willowbrook Plaza, the main shopping area in Bergen County, an auto distance of 13 miles, one must take the bus to the Port Authority in NYC and then out to Wayne, a travel time of over 2 hours, if you hit the connections right. Around the nation, certainly in places like Southern California and Dallas-Ft Worth, the incompatibility of commercial areas with public transport is even more blatant.

American society was designed with the car in mind and it will be impossible, without the expenditure of vast sums i.e. trillions of dollars, to change that.

Sounds like a plan Tom.

Thanks, genecis. Planning and engineering through the manipulation of prices, for the greater good, of course, are what it's all about.

Funny, I haven't noticed that decline in freeway traffic here in Houston, the energy capital of the world (where we're happy to keep ya'll buzzing along).

And no, more people aren't on buses. We had to cut bus service to pay for the boondoggle of a light rail tram that goes nowhere, and mainly hauls around homeless people and people we force onto it from inefficiently routed buses (to boost the tram ridership). Oh, and a few professional types who think buses are icky.

Wonderful, the mass transit society the Houtopians here are trying to create. Just wonderful. I invite ya'll to town to have a peek at it. But don't ask me for a ride. You can take the bus, if you can find a route to get where you want to go. :)

bart:

since the late '40s--we were fine until the Feds intervened in favor of cars. It was a mistake that it's now a good time to rectify.

Car's have no romance,

Ohhhhh. Is that why traffic has been lighter lately. I like it - let's make gas prices higher in that case.

Our gas prices are the highest in the country. But we don't care. We just voted to increase our county fuel tax.

If the argument in 'The Tipping Point' is right, there is no level of gas price that will curtail consumption -- if people value cars higher than, say, cauliflowers.

Which they do.

Harry:

What do they do with all the tax revenue? It's not like there's a freeze/thaw cycle, and it can't be for massive new highway projects.

Jim: they can still have a bunch of guys leaning on shovels at $25/hr.

Bart we have a viable public transportation system. Automobiles and highways.

Kevin -

I don't think most of the guys here are from Houston (or similarly spread-out towns) - when I first moved here I called the Metro hotline to get a bus schedule from my house to work - 2 hours and 45 minutes one way with 3 transfers. I can drive to work in 35 minutes.

Public transport isn't an option in towns where people value personal space - it just costs too much to run effectively.

F'n idiots is what they are.
We've all read the factual evidence that putting inflation of gas prices together with today's "gas-guzzlin'" SUV's getting better MPG's than our average 70's car, it actually costs less to drive today than 30 years ago.
Mike

Shelton-

Real estate taxes should be severely raised on all outlying sections of Houston and subsidized where mass transit is practical. Commercial and residential properties should all be clustered closer together and rent controls need to be established. You and your fellow Houstonians will have mass transport whether you like it or not! Breathing space for the wealthy! That's the plan. Don't complain. We knows what's good for you and your family.

Yes, but Harry, you don't believe in capitalist economics.

jim: Actually until passed by the Big Dig, Hawaii had the most expensive highway in US history in terms of $ per foot of road, in the H3.

Hawaii has an extremely high tax burden for residents. You'd think that given the tourism industry, they could soak the tourists and give the locals a break, but instead they give huge tax breaks to hotels and airlines and make the residents pay through the nose. What gives? Well, Hawaii is a one party state and always has been, so the politicians don't have to be responsive to the voters in the same way as they do most places. They are quite good at handing out the patronage to their pals and relatives, so that they have an incredibly sprawling bureacracy that has to be paid for somehow...

Probably so, but at least he understands them.

Tom -

But everyone in Texas is wealthy and we'll continue raising gas prices to keep that way.

I have no doubt that the residents of Houston proper would love to tax us suburbanites into the gutter - too bad the majority of "Houstonians" don't actually live in Houston proper and are thus out of the city council's (and mayor White's) greedy clutches. (That is unless we are unfortuante enough to have a breakdown on a highway within city limits.)

Orrin, obviously your brave fight against the demon automobile is doomed in the face of all these selfish hedonists. May I suggest you drop your noble, but quixotic, battle and turn your sights towards the real source of our decline--central heating?

I can buy water for $1.76 a thousand gallons from the county.

It's better and purer water than what you can get in a bottle, but people pay $2.79 for a 12-ounce bottle.

I'll believe in markets when I go to Safeway and they tell me they don't carry bottled water any more.

They aren't selling the water.

Peter:

They laughed at my great-great-grandfather, the blacksmith, too.

Shelton-

This may be a national issue. We don't need no stinkin' city council. The necessary and proper clause of the US constutuion gives us all the power we need to make Houston or anywhere else a mass transit friendly metropolitan zone. The automobile is a nationwide evil. It must be taxed out of existence. The pollution from NJ ends up in Fairfield Co., Ct. where I live. Something must be done.Obviously, this is a Federal responsibilty.

Mass transit is great for certain areas and if I lived in NYC or D.C. I probably wouldn't even own a car, but in a place like Omaha (which is really sprawled out, BTW -- add in Council Bluffs and you've got one behemoth of a metro area, at least sizewise), the only option is the bus, and you know what it's like waiting for the bus. I can hardly get anywhere on time with my own vehicle.

walk

I know what you mean, Harry, and that's not even the worst of it. For instance, I can find out pretty much anything I need to know about Hawaii for free, on the Internet. Yet there are newspapers there that charge over $330 for a year's subscription. Who are these grifters, anyway, and why haven't they been stopped?

Well, my newspaper doesn't publish corrections in its internet edition, so you have to buy the paper newspaper for that.

Most of our Mainland subscribers want it for the real estate ads. They're happy to pay.

OJ:

More power to you if you want to walk or ride the bus yourself, I just think I oughta be able to drive my POS '89 Toyota Corolla if I so choose.

Matt:

Yes, so long as you're willing to pay through the nose.

OJ:

Well obviously certain taxes are an effective prohibition and are designed as such. Starving college students can't afford $10-a-gallon gasoline.

Yes, they shouldn't be driving either.

OJ:

One more thing: Your detestation of the automobile is perfectly understandable considering your intriguing brand of traditional conservatism, but I'm surprised you think the hot, stinky, and impersonal atmosphere at terminals or aboard mass transit itself is an improvement.

Impersonal?

OJ:

Gotta get around somehow. No bus station near my apartment and the impractical nature of walking is obvious.

I'm curious why you think college students shouldn't drive.

OJ:

Absolutely. It's a soul-deadening experience. Kinda like the metric system.

OJ:

Absolutely. It's a soul-deadening experience. Kinda like the metric system.

OJ:

Actually, I should say "antipersonal." Some nut once pulled a knife on me in a Boston subway after I started a conversation.

When I said "one more thing," I was lying brazenly... ;-)

It's how I tell people to clam up.

College students shouldn't even have cars.

I like those pictures of trains in India with people falling off the roof.

OJ:

There's plenty of things you can say about pulling a knife on someone -- "a very effective conversation suppression technique" for starters -- but it's hardly civil. Even "impersonal" doesn't quite do it justice.

I get it -- college students shouldn't have cars -- but again: Why?

They aren't mature enough for one thing and don't need them for another. The vote and driving are privileges that should be conferred at 25.

I suppose nobody really "needs" a car in the sense you need food, but its absence makes things a whole lot harder, especially if you have a life or a job.

The maturity argument is worthwhile but you still meet people today who got married at age 18 or sometimes even younger. People can be mature at that age; we've just dragged out adolescence way too long.

We did fine without them when I was in school.

Ah, but you lived on campus, right?

In college, not Law School. Didn't have a car at either.

So what did you do? Take the bus?

I got along without a car for a while in college, but that was in a small town. I'm now in grad school and the university is about five miles away, and so is the nearest bus station that I am aware of. It's either a car or a horse-drawn carriage.

Five miles is a perfectly enjoyable walk.

Every day, back and forth? Did you have to do that in college?

Also, there aren't always sidewalks, which means walking on the side of the road against heavy traffic. I've already been hit by a car once in my life and I'm not eager to do it again.

Gotta go for a while...in my car... ;-)

I used to walk home from school in West Orange to our house in East Orange so I could pocket the bus fare my Mom gave me and use it for books.

That's very smart. But I'll bet it still wasn't a total of ten miles every day.

By the way, if my folks knew how much of the money they've given me over the years went to books...

Let's just keep this post pseudonymous, shall we?

5 miles:

http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.adp?go=1&do=nw&rmm=1&un=m&cl=EN&ct=NA&rsres=1&1ahXX=&1y=US&1a=129+Renshaw+Ave&1c=east+Orange&1s=NJ&1z=&2ahXX=&2y=US&2a=sunnyside+road&2c=west+orange+&2s=nj&2z=

I only walked home, but I was also only 12.