And so communities are going to set up perfect public transportation systems that completely span the far-flung regions where people work, live, & shop, and we will all joyfully shed our cars in favor of the wonderfully practical & efficient systems of buses/light rail/etc. that suit all our personal needs just as well!

Nah.

What will happen is that more and more businesses will allow more and more of their employees to avoid all the commuting headaches by working from home as much as possible, causing the atomization of society to accelerate profoundly.

Nothing new here. Twenty years ago I used to commute by car from Southern NH to Waltham Ma. To avoid traffic I'd leave home at 5AM for the Waltham YMCA to workout and shower before work and then leave the office about 6PM to miss the traffic home. Only did this for six years, thank heavens. Wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Videoconferencing is your friend.

b,

Which is why FasTracks, Denver's transit agency tax increase passed in 2004, will not build anywhere near the level of lightrail/commuter rail they say they will build. Telecommuting is becoming quite the option here in Denver, so much that the congestion level here has actually DROPPED despite adding negligible freeway lane miles and despite adding population at greater than national average.

On at least one corridor proposed by RTD for Commuter Rail, the commute time would actually increase over that of the current express bus service.

"If congestion isn't eased, planners predict, it will hurt South Florida's ability to attract companies and jeopardize future economic development."

And that relative lack of congestion is SO helping Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo with good jobs arriving by the trainload every hour of every day!

Does anyone swallow this rotgut whole anymore?

Funny about that trip from Southern NH to Mass to work. I lived in Weare, NH just west of Manchester and worked in the Sullivan Square area of Charlestown. I did the trip for 10 years in rush hour and except for the ski weekend traffic on Fridays it took me 1 hr 5 minutes door to door. That means I left home at 7:30 AM and arrived at work at 8:35 AM. I did this from 1984- 1994. The trip was just over 60 miles. On ski weekends I took Rt28 through Derry and then the back roads to Weare and that took me 1 hr and 20 minutes.

Now I live in Queens and it took me more time to get to work on Wall Street. A friend living in Canarsie took 2 hours to get to work at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and that was on public transit.

South Florida is not the poster child to use for this argument. There is a narrow strip in which to build roads (i.e., I-95 and the Turnpike) between the beach and the swamp. Plus, any beach-side cross streets (going to A1A) have to deal with the IntraCoastal Waterway.

Sure, it is getting worse (I travel there about once a year), but it is a growth problem made worse by geography. Other growing metro areas (that I am familiar with), such as Phoenix, Charlotte, Nashville, Raleigh, and even Orlando don't seem to have the same gridlock problems as South Florida. And while Atlanta can be bad at rush hour, there are usually alternatives available. There are very few in Dade County.

"''We always have to defend the traffic situation,'' Stiles said, adding his firm suggests alternative routes into downtown to prospective tenants. Yet Stiles couldn't recall any tenants who blamed traffic as the chief reason for not leasing space in his buildings."

GOOD! Keep pressing these folks whose only answer is to get another penny of sales taxes out of the public. BTW, doesn't Miami-Dade operate some elevated train called MetroRail? Or is that for the Overtown/LibertyCity/LittleHavana rabble to use?

If you think of a lot of the places that use some form of direct subsidy to attract businesses, one thing you cannot say of them is that they have major traffic problems.

Jim, I wish you had kept that those problems in So. Florida, unfortunately, they're creeping up our way in the corridor between Daytona and St. Augustine.

The problem isn't cars, it's the tango between developers and local officials including the Army Corps of Engineers for whom I had a lot of respect prior to having dealings with them over saving a designated Florida waterway. Surprise -- we lost.

Using the yardstick of maximizing profits, tens of thousands of housing units are being built in every available space. Public transpiration isn't an issue and wouldn't improve traffic in our situation.

"Restore"? Surely you realize that rail never had the capacity to copy with So Florida's current transportation needs, so it's not a matter of restoring something.

Here's an 1893 map of the passenger and freight rail service for the Pennsylvania Railroad and connecting rail lines in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest states (run away from the link or go see a movie if you don't have broadband). It's a lot more convienent to a lot more areas than current rail service, but its still not door-to-door for the majority of people, which was its downfall when the car came along.

We have plenty of light rail, subways, busses, and commuter rail here in Chicago.

And horrific traffic jams.

John:

99% of the troops called up in America were able to report to their training bases via rail in WWII.

OJ:

And they had, what - 48 to 72 hours to report? Try taking a train in most cities to make any kind of work schedule today, and you'd be fired PDQ.

Mass transport is very good if you live on the line(s). Commuting to a central location from the suburbs is fine. But even in Atlanta, which has excellent mass transportation along certain corridors, trying to go from Marietta to Duluth (10:00 to 2:00 on the map) is out of bounds on the train. And to visit all his banks, Mr. South Florida banker is not going to be able to use it.

rat:

I was never late for work taking the bus, train, or walking in the city.

The NY metro area is one of about three places where you can say that with a straight face. And I'm guessing Boston and San Francisco are the others, but I'm sure somebody will jump in and rebuke me.

I know Philly (SEPTA) is way too unreliable. The problem is not getting from point A on a suburban (or urban) corridor to downtown. That is easy, and even desirable in many cities (to avoid the nasty highway rush hours). The problem is making the cross-pollination from train to bus to get from point A on corridor 1 to point B on corridor 3. In NY, it's possible, and I have flown into Newark and used the appropriate rail connections enough to consider myself a 'commuter' (with the plane ride being just the first step).

But it isn't happening anywhere else. Is that bad? Probably. Is it going to change? No. It's one thing to build mass transit to move people into the core, but quite another to connect the exburbs. It is exponentially more difficult and expensive, with little to show in return.

If only people could be put into capsules, and zipped from place to place like at the bank drive-up window....