Capitol wrote:

Mike Mitchell wrote in message ...


And the Belgium taxpayers are paying for free commuting which benefits
their environment, their health and their children's safety by having
fewer cars on the roads.



NO! There is no such thing as good free public transport. Providing it at
the expense of the majority taxpayers, simply distorts the market and
enables an elite minority to continue with an unsustainable way of life. The
number of cars on the road decreases by a negligible amount. The much
vaunted London congestion charge only increased rush hour bus usage by 111
people per day( if I have done the sums correctly). If you wish to live in
a socialist state, where everyone WILL use public transport, then take the
honest solution and ban personal ownership of any means of transport
(including bikes) and increase income tax to pay for it! Then try to get
re-elected!

As a further comment, how many people become sick from say colds as a result
of using public transport and what does this cost? It is reckoned that the
infection rate on a transatlantic jumbo jet is close to 100%!

The problem is not public transport, but centralised employment! Public
transport is an uneconomic patch applied to cover up the real problem.

In 1970, 90% of people in new towns worked locally. Today, it's less than
30% as a result of employment instability together with lack of housing
mobility. Public transport has no hope of providing the transport routes
required!



Hear hear!

Its also worse than that, the real problem is that car being up till now
ceap and convenient, and towns being expensive and dificult tpo park in,
most major large volume ot latge o]bject stores now have to be placed on
or near arterial roads, this increassing traffic levels enormously.

Instead of driving into town, parking by teh electrical shop, one
drivbes miles into the nearest Curry=s, to find they haven't got what
you want in stock, don't understand your questions, and in any case will
have to arrange to have it delivered sometime next year.

I teh beginning, we had towns with roads going through them, As
journeys increased in length, we built roads around them. This was the
last sesnible idea road planners had.However since then we have ben not
releiving traffic in towns, but banning it altogether , thus forcing
intra town traffic, and most of the shops at which you need to load
goods directly into the car, not to mention businesses, out along the
places you are stil allowed to drive - the by passes. The net result is
that we have reversed the trend of separating localised traffic from
arterial traffic, and every major road near any major town is now
blocked up by short haul traffic.




Regards
Capitol