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Written by Administrator
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Wednesday, 25 January 2012 |
By Michael D. Setty
At the "How We Drive" blog (http://www.howwedrive.com/2012/01/24/systemempathy-in-transit/#comments) leading robocar cheerleader Brad Templeton (http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/) dismisses the need to improve transit:
Tom, now that you’ve seen the speed at which robocars are developing, you may want to consider one of the possibilities I have been investigating, which is the decline of public transit. While there’s no assurance that the world will switch to them, robocars that can self-deliver makes it much more marketable to have people ride in lightweight, 1 and 2 person short range electric city vehicles. Today you can’t sell them but they are perfect as cell-phone-summoned robotic taxis...
...It’s my view that almost all the rules of transit will be erased and rewritten in the next few decades, but transit and urban planners don’t even have it on their radar.
I understand completely when anti-transit activists such as Randal O'Toole or Wendell Cox dismiss transit for conservative/libertarian "philosophical" (sic) or "cultural panic" reasons (for an excellent discussion of the latter phenomenon, see http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/21/harrod.high.speed.rail.trains/index.html), but Templeton's argument that technology will solve what are essentially human social and economic problems is the weakest I've seen yet.
My response to Templeton's comments at the How We Drive blog are "below the fold."
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 January 2012 )
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Read more...
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 09 January 2012 |
Certain of our loyal and disloyal opponents love to quote statistics by the trainload (pun intended) - but avoid certain issues like the proverbial “third rail” (pun intended - again).
You are not likely to see anything related to, um, Amerikaanse apartheid (“American apartheid”) on websites such as this one, that one or that one. To paraphrase Oscar Bonavena, the late Argentine boxer, you’d think they were chicken (“Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!”).
By contrast, we denizens of www.publictransit.us do not shy away from such matters. Thus this post.
For rest of article, please click here. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 09 January 2012 )
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Written by Leroy W. Demery, Jr.
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Thursday, 01 December 2011 |
By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.
We came across an interesting narrative of life in the (former) smelter town of Anaconda, Montana. The excerpt below is from a Facebook page titled “Anaconda Streetcars.”
The writer, “Lorene,” describes a childhood experience during the years immediately following World War II.
First, a bit of background: Copper ore, mined in nearby Butte, was smelted at Anaconda from 1883. The Washoe (or “new”) smelter southeast of town was opened in 1902 and became the the world’s largest non-ferrous metal processing facility. The Anaconda smelter was closed in 1980 and demolished. The location is now a large “Superfund” cleanup site. The single remaining structure is the huge smelter chimney (known locally as “the stack”).
The Anaconda Street Railway was built to provide transportation to the smelter, and opened on September 1, 1890. The Opportunity line, described below, was opened in 1915 to serve a residential community southeast of Anaconda. This was built by the mining company for employees who wished to live away from the bars, bordellos and smelter-generated pollution of Anaconda.
Article continues here. |
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