Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Rematog]

James,

I’ve had the please to travel to Britain twice in my life, and greatly enjoyed it and the wonderful underground system in London.

But, as I posted, this type of system only exists in the great metropolises. It may be possible to reduce car usage, and I’m sure that practical electric vehicles are possible in the near term.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that Europeans are, for the most part, lacking a “gut feel” for the size of the United States, esp. the western half. They can understand it when they look up a distance and make calculations, but their “feel” for the world is just smaller then the reality of the western US.

One small example, I was working at a food packaging plant in Iowa with a couple of vendor’s engineers from Italy. When we were about to have our Memorial Day holiday, which gives Monday off, making a three day weekend, they asked my about the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and begun to make plans to drive there. They asked my if they could get there after work in an evening’s drive…..I pointed out, that it is about 2,000 kilometers from Des Moines, Iowa to the Grand Canyon. They were thunderstruck.

What this means is that the type of public transportation systems the work in Europe, and the American Northeast, are not so practical in the Mid-west and western US. Yes, our cities were designed for the car. They grew up with it. It would take, I believe, more then one generation to change that. And what is the driving reason to make that change?

Some light rail for larger cities heavy traffic corridors makes sense. Add practical electric vehicles for commuting and alternate fuel (name one) vehicles for long range use. Remember, for a family living on a ranch in Montana, a trip to the city for grocery’s and sundries is a long range trip (often over 100 km each way).

Rematog