How about a cap at $10 a gallon? Will we be happy if prices stop at $10? But, why should Exxon and the other Robber Barons stop gouging us there when we’re more than willing to keep lashing out to keep our cars running? As for Arab oil and Chavez setting us free, that will be the day the wells run dry. But, why complain when we so love the status quo?
Of course, we keep hearing various voices from the gallery about electric cars, corn, and other clever means of running our cars without need of fossil-burning fuel. Good old American ingenuity at work, and all is well. The world will be saved. Will the great American invention save us before gas is over $10 a gallon? Forgive me if I’m just a wee bit skeptical. After all, it’s just a bit dubious that Exxon and co-conspirators will be deliriously happy losing out on the record billions in profits they keep churning out each year that we cheerfully help them squeeze out of us.
May I dare suggest the most obvious, rational, indeed, only sane alternative? How about public transportation? Oh, yes, I was prepared for your objections. The first objection is always: it won’t work; it never has. Such objections invariably insist that it has been tested many times, and it just doesn’t work. Well, let’s see if what I’m proposing they have tested to the letter of the plan. You tell me if they have.
Let’s begin by making some simple, logical, necessary observations. Some of the objections are: you can never find a bus when you need one; it takes forever to get to where you want to get, principally because there aren’t enough of them, requiring long waits between them and in making connections; they don’t go everywhere one needs to go; for weekly/monthly grocery shopping, there is too much to carry onto a bus and between transfers; the same problems for traveling by air; etc. These are certainly valid complains as things are today and have been.
Let’s consider the remedy. Some simple undeniable facts: the average purchase of a car is roughly every five years; the average new car costs about $20-25K; if we are optimistic and give you at least 35 more years of driving, that amounts to about $175,000 we have paid to have the “freedom” of our car. How about insurance? How much does that cost, depending on age, accidents, and coverage? If it is high now, do we expect it to come down any time soon? How about betting that it will continue to keep climbing? There is, of course, maintenance, repairs [something that is likely to become more frequent with the millions of additional new cars on the road [what with the countless legal and illegal immigrants and their numerous children, who will soon also be needing a car, that keep streaming into this country until we are bound to outstrip India and China in population in a few years the way this land of opportunity is going, where they are all going “to find a better life], time lost from work for repairs, hospitalization, and even death [a thing we think can never happen to us in the freedom of our cars]; etc. That’s a chunk of change we’re pouring out just for the “freedom” of our cars.
Why haven’t these so-called tests been legitimate, and thoroughly misleading? The honest answer is that public transportation can never work so long as we have our roads cluttered with the millions of cars we have running on them. To make a true test for public transportation, we must take ALL private vehicles that burn fossil fuel OFF the roads! Now, if we can picture NO PRIVATE VEHICLES on our roads and freeways, can we not also imagine how quickly buses and cabs would be able to zip across town as fast and faster than a private car today, especially during rush hours? That would make a difference, wouldn’t it? One we have never seen in those so-called tests. (For fuller discussion see my Missing in America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor and Boy, What I Could Do With Gates’ Billions!)
Obama has earmarked billions of dollars for the repair and building of new roads. What if instead of pouring those billions down the drain [since we shall never catch up with ourselves with the booming growth of our population and the need for millions of more cars and trucks each year, especially now that Mexican President Felipe Calderon has won the agreement from Obama to allow Mexican trucks onto our roads] we invested in a first-class public transportation system? We would not have to keep building and repairing endless roads, and we wouldn’t be slaughtering the millions of people on our roads that we have since the first cars became lethal weapons. [Food for thought for those people so concerned about the number of fetuses we “murder” in abortions.] We get a lot of lip service about our concern for our environment, including its warming effects on our icebergs and rising seas, which are gobbling up our shorelines. Could we make a difference by removing all fossil-burning private vehicles off our streets and expressways? So, why aren’t we doing it, or do we really prefer just to listen to ourselves talk?
We see in our major cities buses running virtually empty, and people complain because of high fares and poor service. With everyone using the buses, the fares could be nominal and plenty of buses and cabs available at all hours and along all thoroughfares and most side streets. Cabs, at nominal fares, would be the means of connecting buses and shuttle vehicles when necessary and convenient, especially to connect at airports. Because the demand of oil would be reduced considerably the price of a barrel would plummet, and to run planes, buses, and cabs would also be reduced. With the billions not wasted on new roads, they could be used to build “bullet” trains, so that not as many planes would be necessary.
Obviously, if our proposal were taken seriously, we could expect the oil and car manufactures to wage implacable war against it. Can we imagine seeing their top executives smiling and giggling while their billions of profits fly out the window? We can also anticipate the loss of jobs, of course. But did we mourn too much when the Pony Express was supplanted by the Stage Coach, the Stage Coach by the train, the train by the car and plane? I dare say not very much or for very long. We now have the Internet, practically making the Post Office and book publication obsolete. It seems just about time for public transportation, if not to modernize, at least to save our necks – and spare us Hugo Chavez.
David Hernandez, Ph. D.
For More Information Check Out Boy, What I Could Do With Gates' Billions! and Missing In America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor.
