{"id":1399,"date":"2011-03-03T00:10:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T05:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2011-03-03T00:10:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T05:10:39","slug":"mass-transit-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/mass-transit-musings\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Transit Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three governors have wisely turned down federal money for High Speed Rail projects.\u00c2\u00a0 They know accepting it will cost them billions, and probably tens of billions, in cost overruns for a project that will create enormous, but speedy, white elephants.<\/p>\n<p>Progressives (i.e. socialists)\u00c2\u00a0 all pissy about these decisions.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, the left has always been ga ga about mass transit.\u00c2\u00a0 They insist that everyone riding together like sheep, following someone else&#8217;s schedule is far superior than people going where they want, when they want, in their evil evil private vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Mass Transit makes perfect sense in densely populated areas.\u00c2\u00a0 The higher the density the better it works.\u00c2\u00a0 But with the exception of a few major cities the US is very <em>very<\/em> spread out, which makes travel by those evil, individual cars the best way for most of us to get around.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll support high speed rail, or regular speed rail, or even a bus, when it offers me the following features I currently get from my 11 year old car.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pick me up at my doorstep at the exact moment I&#8217;m ready.\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t want to wait in the rain or the cold or the heat or the wind.\u00c2\u00a0 Not for ten minutes, and certainly not for an hour when they screw up the schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 If I want to go somewhere, or leave somewhere, at say, 1:21 AM, it should be waiting for me at that exact time, at my exact location.<\/li>\n<li>After picking me up I need it to go directly, non-stop, to my endpoint as quickly as possible.\u00c2\u00a0 That means it can&#8217;t stop every block to pick up other people.<\/li>\n<li>Along the way I want to listen to the music or podcasts I choose, at whatever volume I like.\u00c2\u00a0 I should be able to sing along to my favorite tunes as loudly as I wish.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I will sing on key.\u00c2\u00a0 Other times I will not be <em><\/em>even <em>close<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t care, and no one sharing the ride is allowed to either.<\/li>\n<li>During the ride I will not have to listen to the inane (and often insane) jabber of annoying people sitting near me, unless they&#8217;re friends or family I&#8217;ve willingly let join me.<\/li>\n<li>During the trip I may decide to smoke a cigar. It may be a fine high quality smoke or a cheap stinky dog rocket.\u00c2\u00a0 This must be legal, and I will not tolerate anyone bitching at me about it.<\/li>\n<li>I should have lots of room for groceries, coolers, and anything else I want or need to bring with me.<\/li>\n<li>My dog must be welcome.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of these requirements are negotiable.\u00c2\u00a0 Give me mass transit that meets <em>all <\/em>these criteria and I&#8217;ll happily give up my car.\u00c2\u00a0 Until then, I&#8217;m keeping it.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;ve got places to go and things to bring there, and nothing will do the job nearly as well as my own vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three governors have wisely turned down federal money for High Speed Rail projects.\u00c2\u00a0 They know accepting it will cost them billions, and probably tens of billions, in cost overruns for a project that will create enormous, but speedy, white elephants. Progressives (i.e. socialists)\u00c2\u00a0 all pissy about these decisions.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, the left has always been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}