Heh! We'll that a blog entry I wouldn't have expected!
Uneccesary to post though... just look and see what *some* people think.
Imagine... $5 a gallon for gas! "That'll show those SUVers!"... yeah.. just like it showed those smokers!

It was interesting.

I was wondering if the bulk of the railroad crowd these days is skewed left by their favor of public transportation. In Colorado, where any rail projects would be new build, that attracts a decidedly left-wing element.

JK, It seems to be skewed to the left. Here's why.
Public transit is the great equalizer. There's no Cadillacs, no Porsches, no Ford Escorts. Everyone's the same.
Everyone suffers through the same lousy service and endless waiting around.
Just like socialism to evenly distribute the suffering.

Alex is right. There are other, I think larger, reasons why socialists argue for more and larger public transit projects. First is the fact that only a government can afford to support a money losing enterprise year after year without going out of business. Expansion of such ventures entails expansion of world socialism. Another is the anti-industrialization ("green") movement. They want us all living in mud huts and walking to work... at the nearest vegetable farm.

Consider this excerpt from the "railroad" forum: "Longer commutes are the norm where 50 years ago, we lived in the city and worked a few blocks from home. In the bigger picture, we almost need a reform organization for where we work and how we travel. Corporations rule us all because they dictate where we work and how we get there."

A reform organization?! Sounds like the People's Central Committee to me. Rand said that people who deny the existence of reason cannot be swayed by it. Don't bother trying to convince these people they are objectively wrong. Just keep telling them so from time to time. They really do consider it a "buzz kill."

Reminds me of the US36 traffic mitigation meeting I attended here in Boulder, CO. For reference, this is a 4 lane highway of about 25 miles length that runs between north Denver and Boulder, CO. It was built in the 1950's as a toll road, and once the bond was paid became a freeway. The population along the corridor has increased 30 fold in the last 50 years with no major improvement to the road which has now, lo and behold, become crowded. Boulder is quite liberal so I expected a majority of mass transit supporters (trains good, cars bad) as well as the NIMBY's (Not In My BackYard) but was suprised by the SEM's (Somebody Else's Money) if you will allow me to coin an acronm. These folks wanted comprehensive studies (I am NOT making this up)on noise pollution, and not just Db related but frequency analysis and its affects on humans, animals and plants; air pollution studies, especially the effects on cyclists using bike lanes along roadways; and my personal favorite, light pollution caused by the installation of overhead lights along a roadway or railway. They were joined by the folks who wanted to make sure that all train stations were underground to avoid disturbing the environment - hey, what the heck lets make it a 25 mile long subway of highway and railway and get rid of the noise and light pollution while were at it!

In my PR days, I worked with the Bond firm that underwrote the bonds. At 0.25 each way, the road was paid-off years early. Getting the politicians to turn off the money machine early was another matter.

There is a place for free markets in transportation (see my column "Austrian Econimics in the Fast Lane"

Agreed! And there is a place for "public financing" of capital projects as well. It is called, "the dustbin of history."

I would still like to see telecommuting put forth as an option. What if we spent 25% of the proposed transit money on communication upgrades and used another 25% to provide some serious tax breaks to companies who utilized it?