How Did I Miss This One

It's a long article, but it has a lot of interesting stuff - some of which I actually agree with. Like the author, I see the future of traffic congestion control as some combination of congestion pricing and computer-controlled vehicles. However, for someone who admits that driving is his least-preferred mode of travel, he's got a lot of specious arguments.

When engineers in San Diego sent a caravan of eight Buicks down I-15 at 65 miles per hour, the steady-handed computers at the steering wheels kept the cars spaced just 15 feet apart. By squeezing three times as many cars on the highway, this technology could drastically ease traffic congestion -- if only engineers could figure out a way to get millions of drivers to buy these systems.

I have long held that a system like this is the ONLY way we will ever eliminate traffic congestion - we simply cannot build roads fast enough to outpace the ability of incompetents and LLBs to clog things up.

Suppose you have a choice between two similarly priced homes. One is an urban town house within walking distance of stores and mbutt transit; the other is in the suburbs and requires driving everywhere. Which one would you pick?

If you chose the town house, you're in a distinct minority. Only 17 percent of Americans chose it in a national survey sponsored by the real-estate agents' and homebuilders' trade buttociations. The other 83 percent preferred the suburbs, which came as no surprise to the real-estate agents or others who spend time in subdivisions.

This is no surprise to me, either - nor is it a surprise that the people who chose these urban fringe "drive-everywhere" housing subdivisions now want to teach their 13-year-olds how to drive so as to relieve the parents of the burden of being a constant chauffeur for their children.

Suburban car culture traps women. Critics complain that mothers in the suburbs are sentenced to long hours chauffeuring children to malls and soccer games and piano lessons, which are tasks that do indeed require a car. But so do most of their jobs.

I see you "forgot" the corollary: Suburban car culture traps CHILDREN, too - a fact that's not so easily dismissed.

Drivers are getting a free ride. Yes, the government spends a lot more money on highways than transit, but most of that money comes out of the drivers' pockets. If you add up the costs of driving -- the car owner's costs as well as the public cost of building and maintaining highways and local streets, the salaries of police patrolling the roads -- it works out to about 20 cents per pbuttenger mile, and drivers pay more than 19 of those cents, according to Cox.

20 cents per mile? Hell, GASOLINE ALONE costs more than that if you drive the average SUV. Check Edmunds.com, Consumer Reports, or anyone else that evaluates cars - for a 2 door Honda Civic, one of the cheapest cars to own and operate, the "true cost of ownership" is $0.4-mile - more than double that $0.20 figure. The Federal government's mileage reimbursement guidelines are also over $0.40-mile. And NEITHER of these mileage cost figures includes the costs of infrastructure, parking, environmental-societal costs, traffic cop salaries, etc. Bottom line, this $0.20-mile claim is complete and utter bullpoo, but that's just the sort of lies that you have to tell in order to make the personal automobile appear to be cheaper than mbutt transit. -- What the heck, I'll play too. - Dave