[tommer]

Originally Posted by amber

Because our economy and whatever was built during most of this century around the fact that we have cars.
Seriously, I guess it's too expensive to have public transpo run regularly and frequently into a town with not that many people. I mean, If no one had cars, it might make more money, but -
And the nature of our economic development, etc., has become a thing where...people for miles and miles and miles around all come into the city to work. Some towns are barely self sufficient, ie, there is not as many business there that people can buy everything they want from, and not enough jobs for all the people who live in that town to work there. So they have to drive to the city. Mostly it's a suburb type thing, though. People live where it's nice, and work in the cities. it's all very retarded.
Does that clear things up a bit? many people who work in San Francisco have at least an hour commute every morning, and some drive from 2 and 3 hours away. Some of those people could easily take public transpo, though, as we have a great system that goes really far, but for many, it's not as feasible.

1. people own cars everywhere, it's a question of how much they use them; in "normal" countries, to get to the city you use your car to get to the train station, and leave it there. the traffic, gasoline price, parking price/space in the city... they all direct you into doing so.

2. public transportation doesn't suppose to make money, a railway is the worst investment ever, it can take ages for it to pay itself up and make profit. city bus routs are more profitable than rural routs too, so what do goverments do? a. they subsadise, b. they regulate.

3. i don't think it's in a state's interest to have many cars on the roads and in the cities, the need to built, maintain, and expand roads is in fact far more expensive than investing in public transportation. the more cars you have on your roads the more police and paramedic forces you'll need (and i'm not even mentioning environmental issues ect..) , so again, if you wanna own a car, that's fine and decent, but be aware that you now cost more in terms of facilities. you should definetly not be encouraged to own many cars, just to give you a small notion, the simplest 2005 honda accord costs here about 43,000 us$, a price that in a way tries to compensate for some of the infostructure bill you gonna cost your state owning one.