So true, cars have gotten major subsidies over the years. It's time to make them start paying the true costs then you might see public transit start to blossom.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I will tell you how this conondrum has worked its way down even to tiny little towns like the place where I live: We have NO public transportation as such; there is a free-will offering donation bus for senior citizens: Notify them 24 hours in advance, they will come around and pick you up to wherever you wish to go in the immediate area (around this rural county.)We also have a taxicab service: It _was_ four dollars flat rate to anywhere in town, and a dollar per mile outside of this town. (For example, Coffeyville is twenty miles, the fare is twenty dollars.) Now that four dollar flat rate in town was raised recently to five dollars anywhere in town after gasoline got to be so expensive (three dollars plus per gallon.) For senior citizens and other disabled people like myself, the fare is two dollars anywhere in town, plus a coupon, redeemed by City of Independence so the cab driver gets the full five dollars. Cab driver (he is a sole owner; it is a family operation) says now it appears they may have to raise the fare again, if gas prices continue to rise. Trouble is, they have to get permission from City of Independence to raise the fares. Now he says they may instead go out of business if they cannot get the raise requested.
Fortunatly, I now have my motorized wheel chair which allows me to get around _most places, most of the time_, but not everywhere, obviously. I suggest that the high price of gasoline these days also serves as an excellent incentive for people to use public transit if their town has anything like it. PAT]