How to Make Transport Available for All at a Fair Price

The UK and Europe know a thing or two about making transport available for people. The USA has largely forgotten it, due to the aggressive marketing of automobiles after World War Two. Subways in California and many railroad lines disappeared so long ago. If there's any truth to Peak Oil, alternatives need to be found - the sooner the better. From Norman Tebbitt telling people to get on their (bicycles) and go find work for all those jobs that weren't there to overpriced private taxi services, the car-less have major problems when it comes to transport. How can one tiny hamlet or countryside be connected to another tiny hamlet when the only enticement might be that someone is going to commute to a job there? One hamlet has a bus or train station that the other hamlet does not. How can this be made accessible for someone in the trainless or busless hamlet to access in order to go to the big city? In the US, the brilliant and clever leaders told the people that certain banks and industrial giants were too big to fail. Could a similar plan to make people able to travel with relative ease and at reasonable cost be done? Even if it were subsidized or bailed out, it would have to be cheaper than saving the poor banks and the jobs of those who ran them into the ditch. With a little planning, it would benefit more people than the CEOs who helped derail those companies. How could a green, economically sound scheme be achieved?

 

Public transport needs to be subsidised. It is part of a country's infrastructure. The economy benefits from it in the end. Privatised public transport doesn't make sense for this reason. Making profit out of infrastructure is counterproductive and leads to poor quality and expensive services.

 

Of course it should, but it isn't. Those who control the strings do not care for it and even Amtrak subsidies are opposed by Keating Five member John McCain. They don't mind subsidizing bank bailouts or too big to fail mismanaged companies. Without a change it is going to be up to the people to find a way to make it happen. It would be nice to have the government on board for it. A public works program making a monorail or super speed train like China's would put a lot of people to work and help unclog the highways, but it would only work if it is getting support from those who can make it happen. Smaller projects like getting a single trolley for instance from one burg to another where the other burg has a connection to the fast train or any other hub would be a great help. It might never happen but it could if people want it.