Re: [SLE] Warning to Americans!(now going OT)
On 01/05/06, Wendell Sexson
I would be willing to bet that public transport is more practicable and reliable in the UK than it is where I live (Los Angeles). It will have to be improved.
In the big cities it is excellent. These are the places that have loads of cycle lanes or people could indeed walk. Out in the country, where I live, more and more buses and trains are being taken off the timetable. A few years ago you could walk to the end of my street, go a few more yards round the corner and catch a bus within 20 minutes to the nearest town. That sort of public transport encourages use. Yes, it was used to the point where you could often not get a seat. Today, you are lucky if a bus comes by within an hour. There is no shelter so this is not ideal for the elderly or disabled. Where there are shelters, by the way, idiots have this ingrained need to vandalsie them :-( Now, I said you were lucky if that bus came within an hour. Well, you are very lucky if the bus comes at all. My daughter lost a job due to very poor public transport. I recently helped conduct a survey - I used SuSE for much of the paperwork - of many aspects of village life. Transport was one them. Nobody trusts public transport to turn up here. I know it's a different story in Australia as I used the buses every day and they were like clockwork.
If employers do not give leeway for being late due to public transport delays they will no longer have any employees. Employers here have to give leeway for being late due to traffic congestion because it is all but impossible to avoid getting stuck in traffic sometimes (frequently, even). Things will adjust to what is unavoidable.
It will have to do so over here too.
I am going by the assumption that automobile use as the primary means of personal transportation will become uneconomical for the majority of people, even in the wealthiest countries, in the coming decades. I may be mistaken. Perhaps developments in so called "alternative energy" will make it so that the majority will still be able to just barely afford driving. We shall see.
There are alternatives but one is branded a conspiracy theorist if you so much as hint at the oil companies perhaps keeping them quiet. There is no reason why we shouldn't have safe engines running on water. There is no need to have a tank of highly flammable hydrogen gas (from the split H20) as it can be split in small quantities and fed into the engine that way. Bearings can be made that are magnetic and far, far more friction free (and energy sapping) than the present metal type. Heat energy from braking can also be harnessed and poured back into automotive power. These are nothing new, they are not science fiction but they simply do not get implemented. I do believe that the average member of the public could still have their own private transport in 100, 200 years time. Could being the operative word. There are, of course, other reasons why private travel might want to be curtailed. -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== PLEASE DON'T drink and drive it's not clever, it's just stupid. Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR
participants (1)
-
Kevanf1