Geez, that's what you fail to understand. We value our freedom here in the United States. We don't want our decisions made for us. Do you hear yourself? High gas prices "makes people decisions for them". Well, golly gee, that sounds great. Here in the US, rich people can give a flying rats SS what the cost of a gallon of gas is. It's the POOR and WORKING CLASS folks who have to drive to work who care...and you're telling me they should accept high gas prices which makes it even harder for them to hold a job or make ends meet. Your post clearly defines why England is not the greatest place on Earth. You are actually trying to make the case that taxing things "out of people's grasp" is a GOOD thing. Good heavens! Centuries later and you guys still don't understand why William Wallace gave his life up for F-R-E-E-E-E-E-D-O-M-M-M-M-M!!!!
Ian, well said. I think you hit it right on the head in that Europeans have lost the sense of freedom that many Americans are trying to keep. Also, these Europeans have to know that America is very different than Europe. Most of Europe is packed in very densely where there population of the US is spread out. Much easier to build a nation-wide mass transit system when the population senters are not hundreds of miles apart like in the U.S.
It's great how our poorly planned sprawling cities give us the freedom to choose between driving, and..well, driving. What a great choice. I can either buy a car, pay insurance/maintenance repairs/etc or not go anywhere, what a great choice. At least other countries have not planned their cities around cars to subsidize the auto makers and oil industry. You're attitude clearly defines the "ugly american" sterotype made by foreigners. I-G-N-O-R-A-N-C-E!!!
Right, so when governments/citizens actually think and plan where they want to be in the future, they aren't screwed when they get there.
It appears you have missed something. You can live ANYWHERE YOU WANT. If you want to live in a city and walk to work, fine, go ahead. If you want to live in a suburb and drive to work, fine, go ahead. You have the FREEDOM and ability to MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICES. Live close to work, that's my suggestion for you. And, when he said the United States isn't the best place on earth, what does that make him? An ugly Englishman? I spend a lot of time in Europe. I love Italy and would live there without any problems and like it. I am clearly not the definition of the ugly American.
> If you want to live in a suburb and drive to work, > fine, go ahead. You have the FREEDOM and > ability to MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICES. There are lots of businesses in the SF Bay Area that are not located near housing. For example, a very large Sun complex is located by the Bay near the Dumbarton bridge. There are no houses within at least 2 miles, and the closest are crummy East Palo Alto apartments or a Menlo Park trailer park. There are plenty of industrial parks that are even further away from any housing, like the parks near Moffett field (like where Yahoo is based). However, your point is not totally invalid - most of these are now empty so no one needs to drive there anyway.
I can also wait for years to find a employer in the perfect location for this to happen. You see, many companies have sprawled out into remote locations along with our housing. It'd be nice to be able to turn down offers for good positions in poor locations, but since there are few realistic locations for commute without a car, I actually have much less FREEDOM than many Europeans. See, most Europeans can also walk, drive, take the bus/train to work. Only difference is their cities are much more compact, making walking more realistic. Their public transport is much more expansive and effiecient making it realistic for many Europeans to commute. Here in the US we like to build "business parks" surrounded by massive shopping centers so that even if I did want to live right next to work I can't, thanks to the brilliant city planners and developers that have built the majority of our places for cars, not for people. It might make you happy to blindly scream out FREEDOM everytime someone questions the US, but it only makes you look like a child, completely out of touch with reality.
Don't know what cities you are referring to, but here in DC we have a both a bus system and a subway. New York has subways and buses. San Francisco has the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Chicago has the elevated trains. Boston has a subway system. As for being poorly planned, I can't speak for other cities, but Washington was laid out quite nicely by Pierre L'Enfant. You're right, other countries, such as in Europe, primarily planned out their cities -- to the extent they were planned at all -- to keep out invading armies.
Yes, it's terrible how most American cities were planned to subsidize the auto makers and oil industry. Especially since virtually every major American city was built before the invention of the automobile. [/B][/QUOTE] The fact is, unless you live in a big city, you need a car in America. Simply because of the sheer size of the country, and the fact that most Americans like to move around and are not content to live in the same house their entire lives. (Even in some large cities, especially outside the Northeast, public transportation is poor and it is impossible to get around without a car). Because most Americans have cars, we obviously want lower gas prices. To the moron who implied America's high temperatures are a result of us having more cars, we're in a different climate than Europe is. You might have taken note of the fact that winters in most parts of America are also much colder than in Europe, but that would require you to consider facts, which would conflict with your leftist dogma. Alex
Obviously some cities have better public transit systems, having not been to any of those cities on the east coast I can't comment on them, but Chicago has an adequate public transit system for the minor percentage of people that live downtown. Just becuase Naperville or any other suburb isn't called Chicago, doesn't mean it isn't part of the Chicagoland area. How easy is it to get anywhere by public transit if you live in a suburb of Boston/New York/DC? Considering the majority of American housing is in the suburbs, and cities are becoming more expensive to live than burbs, for most American's public transit isn't even an option/consideration. They were planned the way they are for many reasons, but they were planned for people, not cars. Do you not see how that makes sense? Just becuase we don't have armies attacking New York and Chicago on foot, doesn't mean european cities are outdated. In fact, they make much more sense and prove that American planners have ignored thousands of years of city building knowledge, and have in a sense decided to reinvent the wheel.
I'm not just talking about the downtown areas of our major cities. Almost every suburb of our major cities have been developed after the invention of the auto, and this is where the majority of American's live. Just re-read what you wrote there. Maybe there's a reason American's aren't happy with where they live? Could it be possible the correlation between sprawling suburbs and American's wanting to move often isnt' just a coincidence? Which is precisely why I stated our cities (including the suburbs that surround them) are poorly planned and give people fewer options to get from A to B. Since we MUST drive, we MUST have cheap gas for the sake of our society and economy. Instead of developing sustainable living areas and communities, we'll just assume that we can live wherever we want since oil/gas are so easy to get and pose such few problems for us.
In the suburbs NYC, it's actually easy to get around. There's the LIRR which brings you straight into Manhattan, and if you need to get there you can take one of the MANY buses. Heck, even here in Broome County we have a large sprawling bus service that makes it easy to get around without a car. All major European cities were planned LONG before America was founded, and LONG before cars were invented. If you look at major US cities on the East Coast that were founded over 200 years ago you will notice that the downtown areas were designed for people, not cars. Manhattan is a perfect example, it's easy to get around without a car. Don't try to equate cities that have been around for hundreds and some thousands of years to Los Angeles or San Francisco. It's comparing apples to oranges.
One of my coworkers commutes to work from a Maryland suburb to our office here in a Virginia suburb using public transport. He used to live in London and says that public transport here is the equal of anything there. And who drives those cars? Barnyard animals? Yes, narrow cobblestone streets do make sense if your economy revolves around horse and carriages. I'd take DC and it's wide boulevards over virtually any European city in an instant.
I've lived in England and traveled Europe, they're public transportation systems are so far advanced compared to anything I've seen in America I can only laugh at the possibilty the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland simply becuase it sounds absurd. I would love to be proven wrong though. Maybe...just maybe, you can imagine a city that is somewhere between an ancient european village and Washington DC. Due to the wonders of mondern technology, we can build roads AND train tracks AND sidewalks, even subwyas, all in the same city!
http://www.wmata.com/metrorail/systemmap.cfm Take a bus to the Shady Grove stop in Maryland. Take the subway to Rosslyn in Virginia. Done. That is exactly what DC has. Wide roads, subways, sidewalks and you can take the train from Union Station. There is even talk of reviving the DC trolley system and the bus fleet is currently being upgraded to natural gas burning engines that are cleaner than the diesel ones.
All I can say is that looks like it could be a good communter rail system, hopefully this a viable option for a good portion of the people that live and work in that area. Great, it's good to see a city taking the needs/preferences of its people seriously, instead of continuing the same tired methods of the past 40-50 years.
You really are a muppet aren't you? If Europeans wanted lower taxes then they would just vote for one of the right wing parties who say "Our manifesto includes lowering taxes". I'll give you an example, the last UK election there were two main parties "conservatives" (right-wing) and "Labour" (left-wing). Conservatives said "Vote for us! We will LOWER taxes, and cut prices on petrol" Labour said "We will improve public spending, but they may result in higher taxes!". You know who won?
DC is unique because is the destination of our tax money, and they can spend whatever it takes to make a nice system. BART is nothing like the DC Metro. It is more accuratly described as a large parking lot in Daly City and a couple places in the east Bay with a very nice train to the City, and its exists simply to reduce the need for parking in the City itself. San Francisco used to have a very good trolley system, but oil and auto interests (as found guilty by a court of law) conspired to get rid of almost all of it. We would have been much better off keeping the trolley system rather than BART, which is bad on every concievable level except that it is fast.
Hehe, what you've just spouted I thought was an American myth. Once in a corner with nothing to say, you talk a load of crap and then mention FRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOM!. Lets talk about you freedom, lets talk about your Data Protection Rights, your workers rights, your basic human rights. I bet EU sh!ts on America when it comes to this. I reckon you should have a search on the Internet for the "Trade Union Congress" and see what problems the Working Class face in America, you might learn something.
The DC system is funded by the governments of DC, Maryland and Virginia. Each of them pay a certain percentage to fund WMATA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transport Authority. http://www.dc.gov/mayor/budget_2002/pdf/ke.pdf "WMATA receives all of its funding from local sources."
No, you fail to see my point - again. I would never be so arrogant as to tell people my country is the greatest place on earth, I would leave that to people like yourself Ian. Your post gave the impression that everyone must be envious of the US of A. Thus the whole - you could be like us if you tried - thing. Guess what? Not everyone is envious of you. I think it's wonderful that such a nation full of people like yourself should be so set on maintaining their freedom to buy cheap fuel and pollute the environment for the rest of humanity. It's plain to see that when humans are left alone, things don't necessarily go the right way. Without certain levels of pollution controls, you get the situation like that in the former Easter Bloc countries - acid smog, dead rivers etc etc. Sometimes, F R E E D O M isn't always the better option. People sometimes needed to be guided to make the 'right' decisions. You seriously don't see the benefits of raising cigarette prices, to discourage people from either taking it up or continuing? What about you freedom loving people banning smoking from vast chunks of California and other places I'm sure? It's not a question of having freedom is the be all and end all of matters, it isn't. It's an incredibly naive way of thinking. 'We founded this country on freedom - and dammit we're gonna have freedom for everyone - even if that means that lots of sh!t hits the fan because everyone gets to do what they want to do.' Freedom for people to own firearms - great idea. Saddam wants to get rid of the sanctions and no fly areas imposed on his country. He just wants freedom for his own country - is the US willing to give it him? Short answer, no. Freedom is great - but not for others? I vaguely understand why the US wants to keep the sanctions etc, but that just highlights my point that freedom isn't necessarily the greatest thing ever - especially if it's left to it's own devices. Saddam left to his freedom - well who knows what would happen? People need guidance sometimes as to what might be the better option. I'm not sure I've heard such a vehemently short sighted way of thinking before conversing with Mr McCracken
The operating budget for the Metro comes mostly from local sources, but the capital budget to actually build it is mostly federal. And it is far more than the 50% that many mass transit systems will get. Here is a single year's budget. I'm looking for initial capital costs, but I havn't found it yet. http://www.fta.dot.gov/library/reference/sec15/profiles94/top30/wmata/wmata.html
No, don't suck up to Ian. It does you a massive disservice. Your post made far more sense and wasn't wrapped in the star spangled banner quite so much as his drunken jingoistic scrawlings. Problems with logistics I can understand. Trying to go against general attempts to lengthen the life of this planet we call home, by saying that US internal freedom is far more important than anything on a bigger scale or a scale that doesn't end in the next 20 years, I cannot understand. Please don't insinuate that European countries are ruled by an Iron fist -ala Stalin and Eastern Europe. We've got freedom - of course we have, it's just that having high prices on things that aren't 'good' (for want of a better word/phrase) are seen by a number of Americans as an awful assault on civil liberties. Yeah damn the government for for helping me not get lung cancer/heart disease etc etc. I used to smoke 30 cigarettes a day (quiet day at that - could rise to 40+), prices of cigarettes have increased many times over the past few years. I was one of those that said enough was enough, I gave up and now I can probably look forward to seeing my 60's. If I had freedom and £1 packs of cigarettes, it'd be a different story.
I'll assume you meant this quote of mine Read it again moron. I'm sorry if my sentence construction befuddled you.
Again, I'll guess that this is what you're referring to... Am I now not allowed to say that the US isn't the greatest place on earth? I guess not as that would mean having a different opinion from you. I was more taking the piss out of those Americans who keep insisting to other nationalities that the US is the greatest nation on earth. An incredibly ignorant and arrogant opinion. It's an opinion that is subjective at best. Besides all that, if you actually read my post you could pick up on some nuances I worked into it. It obviously lost some people along the way. I'll point it out for you - "isn't necessarily the greatest place on earth (as they keep on insisting it is). I can't understand your logic that, me saying the US might not actually be the heaven on earth that US posters such as yourself and Colin et al seem to want us to believe it is - is akin to me saying my county is the greatest instead. It's not.