Re: Clean Technology Bigger than Internet Claims Bill Joy

But the big problem is that we are forced to drive, we live and work
> in sprawl where public transit doesn't exist or won't work. Trains > are far more efficient than autos but we kill off our trains. Amtrak > could be time competitive and far more energy efficient on regional > trips but we starve Amtrak and make it unattractive. The few places > Amtrak was allowed to improve service were huge successes with greatly > increased patronage.

YES!!!

Anyone who's had the chance to live in a European city with good public transit knows that the availability of a good, reliable, well-planned, integrated public transit system is not just more energy efficient (and also more economical) -- its availability, and all the individual and commercial and social responses and asaptations that society makes to its availability, also combine to make everyday life simply immensely more pleasant in innumerable ways.

Trouble is, there's a chicken-and-egg problem: you have to have the whole integrated system and the associated personal, social, and commercial adjustments to get the benefits; but until you have the system, the associated responses don't happen; and until you have the responses and adaptations, the transit system can't be built and be economically viable.