Peak Oil

[archangel7]

404titan,

Do you use public transportation? Of course you do. Even if you live out in the country, you use public transportation when you drive to the city..."No, I don't," you reply. "I drive all the way into the city. I don't change from my car to a train or bus."
That may be true, but you still use transit to help you get around. How? If it weren't for public transportation, there would be thousands more cars on the road. You would spend hours more driving in or out of the city, because congestion would be far worse than it already is. So even if you don't ride public transit, you still use it, and it is still working for you.Reducing traffic congestion for people who drive is just one way but there are many more! It is also more cost efficient to use public transportation, particularly in business and urban areas, helps promote cleaner air by reducing automobile use and it can also significantly reduce dependency on petrol, reducing auto fuel consumption by 1.5 billion gallons annually. Of course it is also the safest way to travel! There is, however, another reason why we need to move cars and trucks out of cities: the space they consume. A two-track rail system can transport 48,000 passengers per hour in each direction (with seats for everyone); a two-lane road can transport 2000 cars (say 2400 passengers) in each direction. Since a metro track is the same width as a freeway lane, the space savings are about 20-fold, without even considering parking requirements. In some center-cities, as much as 70% of the land area is dedicated to roads and related infrastructure.

Titan, have you ever been to Melbourne? It has one of the world's most extensive tram networks, one of the few tram systems in Australia. Maybe the best PT system in Australia, maybe even the best in the Southern Hemisphere. Sydney has a good PT system as well, when I lived there for 17 months, I traveled to bankstown everyday to and from work. Not once have I waited for over 15-20 minutes for a train and it was never late... the trains where always packed thousands of people on board moving students and all types of different workers etc..
cars are not needed and they are a waste...if we improved our transport system including the GA we could move more people to and from work... But this would require a lot of hard thinking and planning...with the rising prices in fuel, naturally you then wonder if you can do without cars at all.