Comments on: Science Saturday: December 22, 2007

By: CmdrR

CmdrR — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:42:44 +0000

Don’t forget the zoning commissions. They need to plan communities that have good paying jobs (not just the fast food joints around every corner) in the same places where people actually live. The age of “bedroom communities” needs to end. We need well balanced cities. Not steel and concrete super cemetaries, but real, liveable cities.

By: Ronbo

Ronbo — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 01:46:13 +0000

#30 – We’re not going to change the attitudes of people who like to go where they want, when they want. That’s a losing battle. We can get some commuters to change their habits, and it won’t take startling new technology: make mass transit *very* cheap, right now if I take mass transit to work it costs about the same as the gas to drive! Make it clean, comfortable (not packed in like sardines), and with little touches like WiFi and allowing people to eat and drink during the ride. IOW, make it pleasant and cheap enough to overcome the convenience loss of not taking your car.

Apart from that, move people in to higher mileage vehicles: set an annual tax based on a vehicle’s weight, as that indicates carbon footprint and road wear, make that 5,000 pound SUV cost you twice as much to register as that 3,000 pound car that gets twice the mileage. Encourage motorcycle usage, in part by allowing lane splitting in all 50 states. Have diamond (HOV) lanes in every commute corridor, in my area they’re available on about half the major commute highways.

Finally, toss a fifty or sixty cent tax per gallon on gas, ,and use it to subsidize mass transit fares – but only at rush hour!!! – put a tax on the sale of anything that gets less than 20 mpg and use that for a tax rebate on anything that gets over 35 mpg.

The solutions aren’t technological, at least not in the short term. They’re political, and economic.

By: MrRegular

MrRegular — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 20:54:49 +0000

29: Cmdr:
Well put.
The selfishness that drives the need to “Drive all alone in your living room” is frankly obscene. What a waste of planetary resources…on SUVs and other monster vehicles that are more of a statement about selfishness than actual vehicle requirements.
How do we change the attitudes of millions of Americans who love their cars?
This is one of the great challenges of the 21st Century. I think that the lack of cheap gas will be a prime motivator of a renewed enthusiasm for good, reliable mass transit.
(now I’ll shaddap)
Merry Christmas!

By: CmdrR

CmdrR — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:36:15 +0000

26 –
Mr. Regular.
Not to derail (pun intended) this thread, but it’s almost a Trekkian challenge to get over this selfishness we’ve all developed. It’s not human nature, but lazy thinking that has us all chasing a destructive ideal: drive all alone in your livingroom. We need mass transit as surely as we need a healthy planet for the 23rd century. The funny thing is, this seems to be a situation where there are more solutions than problems. Existing technology (regional rail, jitney bus-type service, etc.) plus any great new technology would be fine. Instead, we get corruption. Methanol might as well be methadone. It doesn’t solve the underlying problem of selfishness. And Methanol strips food resources! You’re driving your dinner and you will go hungry.

IDIC seems to point to a push for logical solutions. Let’s make a Trek difference this coming November, everyone!

(now I’ll shaddap)

By: bernie

bernie — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:18:14 +0000

the blue guy should audition for the movie

By: Anthony (not that one, the one in Indiana)

Anthony (not that one, the one in Indiana) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:52:15 +0000

The blue man’s condition is an actual condition well known to science. He seems to act like he didnt know taking a Silver based solution would turn his skin blue, but it is a fact known to all medical science that it will do that. Silver imbedded in your cells serves no purpose and does not give you better health. I think the reason people were intolerant of him had less to do with him being blue then it did with people thinking he was a total retard for doing that to himself.

By: MrRegular

MrRegular — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:00:23 +0000

#25 CmdrR:
Just so you know I’m not making an argument for Amtrak..but like you I want a GOOD mass transit company. It’s needed. Good ground transportation-rails, buses, whatever, any profitable, reasonable alternative to flying out of congested airports in planes filled to the max.

By: CmdrR

CmdrR — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:27:13 +0000

Fold Amtrak; get a GOOD mass transit company out there. Can’t somebody make a buck out of green buses and regular hours? 300 million need something, you’d think the capitalist saliva would be flowing freely.
Or, somebody invent transporters, please.

By: MrRegular

MrRegular — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:34:43 +0000

Nice travel pod, now if they could set something like that up for me so I don’t have to play mind games with the local bus drivers who don’t follow the posted schedule with any regularity…
Seriously, with increased ridership on Amtrak it’s time for more money to be put into mass transit in the good ol’ USA. The era of cheap gas is over.

By: Chris Pike

Chris Pike — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:24:28 +0000

and I thought I suffered badly from the blues…