patrick.net

Well no one has really added anything of note to the transit discussion.

Ava was such a brave girl, only crying for about 30 seconds during her shots, until I could pick her up. I gave her Tylenol about an hour before, I think that helped. She cried for like two hours after her first set of shots, when her mom brought her.

I am not trying to claim transit is the cheaper solution in all cases: it might make more sense to travel by automobile in Portland, where land is cheaper, trips are shorter, and the population is spread out more. I really have no opinion on it, not having spent any time with the studies. I do know that it is considered some kind of labratory of New Urbanism, which is a movement I am mostly symapthetic with.

But it really irks me when people complain about all the "subsidisies" that transit users get and then refuse to even admit that automobile users get subsidized, too. It smacks of hypocrisy.

Well at least you came back, but still, I notice without any citation for the 28 cents/mile that you pulled out of thin air. And still no estimate what the cost of all that free parking you enjoy.

The truth is that you are not really qualified to participate in this debate and you are trying to cover it up by changing the topic, engaging in ad hominem attacks and when all else fails, just making numbers up. You don't even know what an exteranilty is? Did you know that the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics went to the person who formalized the study of them?

Our friend is an excellent example of a “liberal rationalizer.” Oh, yes those darn "liberal" disciplines of economics and engineering really can be a bugger can't they? Facts are such inconvenient stubborn things, aren't they?

"A 1994 U.S. Congressional study found that highway-related taxes only covered between 53 percent and 68 percent of the total cost of highway programs when factoring in the external costs of road congestion, accidents and injuries, highway patrols, and air quality impacts to public health." This is from the Saving Energy in U.S. Transportation study by the Office of Technology Assessment. Since the total cost of road construction and maintanence in the US was $330B in 2004, that means that fully $120B was drawn from general taxes. Your laughable .4 cents/mile comes out to $52/year at 13000 per driver per year. Do you honestly expect anyone to take that at face value?

The most amusing part is that you claim that transit is nasty, dirty, expensive, congestion causing and time wasting. Is this a severe case of transferance or what?

Calculations of the impact of a car in use make the generous
assumption that the car has a three-way catalytic converter and
uses 10 litres of lead-free petrol for every 100 km. Over 10
years, the Heidelberg researchers believe that one car will
produce:
 44.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide;
 4.8 kg of sulphur dioxide;
 46.8 kg of nitrogen dioxide;
 325 kg of carbon monoxide;
 36 kg of hydrocarbons.
Each car is moreover responsible for 1,016 million cubic metres
of polluted air and a number of abrasion products from tyres,
brakes and road surfaces;
 17,500 grams of road surface abrasion products;
 750 grams of tyre abrasion products;
 150 grams of brake abrasion products.
 Each car also pollutes soils and groundwater and this
calculated for oil, cadmium, chrome, lead, copper and zinc.
The environmental impact continues beyond the end of the car's
useful life. Disposal of the vehicle produces a further 102
million cubic metres of polluted air and quantities of PCBs and
hydrocarbons.

http://afo.sandelman.ca/cc1.html

One easy way to tell if something is being subsidized is if people will stand in line to get it. I notice there is a 30 minute wait at the toll plaza every day for people crossing the Bay Bridge. How can this be unless automobile drivers are getting something for nothing? Who in their right mind would do this otherwise?

There is no one, I think, qualifed on this blog, to make accurate predictions, on the cost/beneift to society of public transit.

There is only one prediction that is accurate. That is, that if some had their way, they wouldn’t be paying for it.

The exact same thing could be said about the automobile.

I have to admit though, I find your estimate of 71 cents per mile reasonable.

Each transit mile reduces automobile usage by a factor of three to four times, so cost per user is less for transit, even using your low numbers for automobile costs.

QED

Sure I made a mistake in translating your numbers. I was in a hurry. Mea Culpa.

Sorry I can't spend all evening posting here, my wife gets mad which has negative externalities of its own :-)

Nice chatting with you though, in spite of occasional snarkiness. On my side too, I must admit.

DS says:
whereas FDR got nothing but a cursory ‘thanks’ for entering the war and saving england from the hun (altho he did die inconveniently)…

Uh, England saved itself from the Hun. Then a group of English speakers (American, Canadian, British) pushed the Hun out of France. Of course, this was greatly aided by the Red Army putting pressure on the Hun from the other end of Europe.

well, not really -- england was reeling from the effects of the war, and bombardment and invasion was imminent. churchill was begging FDR to get involved, and isolationist sentiment stopped him from some time. then there was pearl harbour, of course. if germany hadn't overreached, and had stayed just in france and a few other austro-hungarian places like poland, czech territories, etc, it may have regrouped for a subsequent annexation of england. i don't know how long a fascist german european empire would have lasted even if they were successful in invading britain and other places -- it was lucky england had enough foresight to set up a pool of reserves in the north american continent a few hundred years earlier ;)

of course, there were a few self-interested twists in the tale as it developed -- the US hitting Japan hard before the Russians could get there, the general attempt to stop the USSR from taking too many possessions as the next most likely enemy, and so on...

Where do you think Hitler would have gone after England?

hard to know. you really might have seen a 1984 style world of oceania, eurasia, etc, with russia, the US and some germanic empire the 3 superpowers -- england might genuinely have ended up as 'airstrip one'. there would have been a 3 way arms race. i think there would be some pretty stiff resistance if hitler tried to cross the atlantic and take on the US.

the US at one level wanted to remain neutral and remain isolationist mercantilists and saw it as a 'european war'. and, in retrospect, the devastating effects of total war between evenly matched opponents are so great that it allows a relatively 'peaceful' country like the US to surge ahead economically while the warring countries drive themselves into economic ruin at great loss of life. but that was the european way for centuries, the idiot ideas were deeply ingrained, and at last there has been 60 years of peace (in western europe at least) under modernity.

once again, it's hard to know how long a despotic empire can last ruled by a charismatic leader -- what happens when the leader dies? -- it really started out as a european, french-german war with overtones of millennial movements and imperial ambition. of course hitler got bogged down in the russian winter just like napoleon. and when it all went pear-shaped, he said 'the german people were too weak' to realise his ambitions.

Now you know why the US invaded Iraq. Not the b.s Bush reason to secure Peace of Democracy in the middle east. That’s a crock fed to idiot flag wavers who, now Iraq has turned into a mess, are not waving flags so much.

oh really? i should stop listening to my toby keith CDs then. i haven't posted anything on the PNAC and caspian sea resource ambitions here before, of course ;) i think it's a shame that the last 60 years have seen some increasingly offensive political interference from the US in international politics escalating in this latest rather transparent manoeuvre.

once iraq started going pear-shaped, dubya started talking about nuclear. good thing australia, an ally, has 40% of the world's known uranium resources. maybe that's why halliburton managed to suddenly build a rail link from alice springs to darwin overnight when they had been talking about building one for 100 years without it happening...

DS,

I don't think all Chinese goods are crap. There's lots of high quality stuff produced there. It all depends on QC. Apple and many of the major designer labels assemble there. I have an aunt who has a very successful career of managing a major QC testing lab there, so I know good stuff exists, as long as the buyer company puts in the effort.

Walmart stuff, on the other hand, are always crap regardless of place of assembly. The only exception are major brand name goods like Clorox and P&G, who are big enough to resist Walmart's race to the bottom.