Comments on But Did He Mention Public Transit? No, He Did Not.

YEAH Erica!! See ECB? People like you when you do not talk about Hillary! :)

Of course, if we all bought $28,000 plug-in electric hybrids next year, here in the Pacific NW where 90 percent of our power is green, we'd cut both oil imports and global warming emissions by 20 percent.

Think about it.

Either get off your duff and buy a plug-in hybrid or ride the bus.

You choose. Inaction helps al-Qaeda.

Hey Will in Seattle. What about those of us who can't just go out and purchase a new car? Are we supporting terrorism? I ride the bus when I can to save money and wear and tear on my POS. Must be nice to live in your world.

It's a lot easier than that, WIS. Switching from a 10 MPG car to even a 20 MPG car saves more gas than switching from a 20 MPG car to one that gets 60, 70 or even 100 MPG, if such a thing existed. Simple arithmetic shows that most of the gas savings are had at the guzzler end of the scale. All you have to do is get rid of the worst offenders, and you've made a huge dent in the problem.

And there is nothing green about hydropower. Less carbon, yes, but many other devastating effects.

@3, Will in Seattle got his wealth by exploiting the working class. And Charles will back me up on that.

And with a recession on I doubt anyone will be buying hybrids in the coming few months....

Of course no mention was made of public transportation, since it isn't as workable where the Rs live: suburbs, exurbs, rural areas. Public transportation means cities, dense with democrats, and while even bus usage in cities helps with the old carbon footprint, in most rural areas and exurbs, it'd be gas-guzzling buses doing the PT not fuel-efficient heavy or light rail.

The morons who voted for this moron live in places where even this PT advocate (don't own a car) has to admit it's less practical without huge gummint support, and they only like huge gummint when it's blowing stuff up far away.

Fuck you all for voting Prop. 1 down. Now I have to move to Portland, where there is light rail. Fuck Seattle. I want light rail - now, not twenty years from now.

Cool! Now let's get to work on that light rail system! It's a good thing we voted for Prop 1 ... oh, wait. But that's OK, 'cuz we're assured the Democratic legislature will rescue us and ... oh, wait.

$6,200 a year if you use public trans? Why are figures like this not part of our local (extremely loooong) debate about busses, trains, sharrow, bike lanes etc.? Is it just orthodoxy to assume that the global warming/carbon footprint argument carries enough weight on its own?

People vote with their wallets. Behaviors change when they become too expensive. The fate of polar bears is not going to get the job done.

Well, I will still be driving my SUV (yes, I REALLY do). The thought of hanging on the bus with a bunch of stinking bums harrasing my kids, sitting in fetid urine pools, listening to various ethic groups scream at each other or some gangbangers from the CD cursing, drinking, and harrasing the other riders, doesn't really appeal to me.

Put a cop on every bus, and the minute some asshole stirs some shit up, taze his ass. Then I might consider riding the bus. Until then, why would I want to put myself in that situation?

Oh, and all you hipsters laptops are more carbon intensive and energy consuming that 10,000 sub saharan families. I look forward to you getting rid of them.

@ Ecce Homo! You and Dan Savage have something in common! You both hate the bus!!

Good job on that carbon foot print.

can we please ban ecce homo? or at least "taze his ass"?

The why does The Stranger oppose building light rail between the airport and Tacoma? Light rail is only for urban hipsters?

@12, I say dump him at the Eagle and let the fat bald guys have their way with him but Ecce would enjoy that too much.

how about make him move to the central district and ride the 2 every day?

Centralized power plants can also be made more and more efficient to the point of zero net emissions, so mass transit isn't just better but it is continuously improvable in a way that SOVs or even hybrid buses are not.
Also mass transit could be fueled by burning fat people in giant furnaces. In the long run it probably makes sense to burn them because their life-time flatulence totals probably far outweigh the emissions given off during combustion.

@3 - well, you're riding the bus, so you're part of the solution.

But it's a War. And in a war we all have to do our parts.

It's more like 80-100 mpg, Fnarf. As you well know. If you already drive a car that gets 40 mpg or more, you can concentrate on other things, since you're trying.

@10 - Saturn sells a hybrid SUV that gets something like 30 mpg. Check it out or buy the plug-in hybrid SUV instead of betraying America in the Real War.

Hey, ECB, can we get a recipe for kinaidos idea? Mmm, long pig bacon ...

maybe we could put fat people on treadmills and recover the kenetic energy?
just put pictures of Dan on strings in front of them.

Nazi humour. funny.

i was in Bozeman yesterday during a snowstorm & the only vehicles on the road were 4wd.

there isn't shit for public transportation, nor is there any demand for it, nor is it practical as the uncontrolled, sprawling growth patterns deliberately design it out of the equation.

gas needs to go to $5, $6/gallon for red meat 'Murka to take any notice.

That APTA release is asinine on so many level, but just for starters,

What he failed to mention was that households that use public transportation save more than $6,200 every year, compared to a household with no access to public transportation.

you know, you get something for that $6,200, you get to not be a hostage of the transit system. That's worth something. Clearly, to the people paying this alleged $6,200, it's worth more than $6,200. (even assuming that number is real and meaningful)

No, Will, you're wrong.

Moving from a 10 MPG car to a 20 MPG car -- still a relative gas guzzler -- saves 50 gallons of gas per 1000 miles driven. Moving from a 20 MPG car to a 100 MPG car saves only 40 gallons per 1000 miles driven -- and there are no commercial 100 MPG cars. Moving from a 20 MPG car to a 40 MPG car -- a much more likely scenario for real-world motorists -- saves only 25 gallons per 1000 miles driven -- nice, but not as much.

We could massively cut our gas usage simply by outlawing any vehicle that gets less than 20 MPG. Bye-bye giant SUVs with unecessarily huge motors (plenty of reasonably-sized SUVs with smaller motors can and do get better than 20 or even 30 MPG.

The problem with the CAFE fleet average model is that it still allows the worst guzzlers as long as the average is high.

@21 - there are 4WD diesels that get 80 mpg in Europe and Japan. Why not here?

It's a war, even if Fnarf seems not to think so. Everyone has to do their part.

Inaction breeds Republicanism and that is the way to failure, incompetence, and stupidity.

And besides, we could all live closer to our jobs ...

Don't taze ecce homo, bro!

Ecce homo, #10, I know probably IHBT, HAND, but WTF routes are you riding? I've ridden many metro routes, including cap hill and beacon hill routes, and can't really say I've run into any of what you're talking about. ECB has the same lame "waahhh, busses dirty my pristine existence" argument against busses (oOooo, yes, I compared you to ECB!). I think I need more convincing. Is it just that I'm riding commuter times? Do I need to ride the bus at 3 in the morning? Do your children ride the bus at 3 in the morning?

Fnarf, #4, can you explain your math? Suppose you go 80 miles in three different cars: 10mpg, 20pmg, and 80mpg.

10mpg uses 8 gallons, 20mpg uses 4 gallons. That's 50% savings.

20mpg uses 4 gallons. 80mpg uses 1 gallon. That's 75% savings.

How is 10mpg -> 20mpg better than 20mpg -> 80mpg?

I realize 10 is just trolling, but the bus is not a mobile island of anarchy. The ones that aren't pristine sanctuaries serve neighborhoods where you're living in it anyhow, so using the bus won't be a shock to your psyche. I understand that it's chic live in fear, but the homeless really aren't in league with Al-Queada, waiting on the next suburban 5-year-old to piss on in the name of Mohammad, despite what Bush tells you. Take your head out of your ass and ride the bus.

Switching from an average American diet to an organic vegan diet saves 6248 pounds of CO2 per year. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian (organic) saves over 5280 pounds of CO2.

Take that, public transportation!

http://redwood.sierraclub.org/articles/December_04/FoodClimateCrisis.html etc.

The apta is a transit advocacy organization supported by big corporations that make huge money off transit projects.

What he failed to mention was that households that use public transportation save more than $6,200 every year, compared to a household with no access to public transportation.

How do they arrive at $6200 by taking transit? ...compared to a household with no access That sounds like not owning a car savings compared to someone living outside the city. So no car versus living in Montana.

ST2 would have cost $23,000,000,000 in year of expenditure. ST estimated that 37,500 new transit riders would have resulted by 2030 or 2040. So from a public expenditure perspective that would be about $600,000 per new rider. If weatherizing and other work on a house save half what using public transit would save, clearly the money would be better spent on housing work. Five lightbulbs save 1/10 what a transit rider saves, costiing what $10?

Selling people on giving up their car can use the $6200 number but it won't sell the people that have to pay for transit that aren't near it. People around the stations already voted heavily for it.

Clearly we could benefit more by spending public funds in other places. Alternative energy, weatherizing houses, converting existing cars to electric and reducing commute distances would be better.

At $20,000 we could weatherize 30 times as many houses as new transit riders.

w7ngman - the objective is to reduce burning gas not increase percentages. So while going from 8 gallons to 4 is only 50% and from 4 to 1 is 75% the former saves 4 gallons while the latter saves only 3 gallons.

W7ngman, you're not trying to save percentages, you're trying to save gallons. I made the same mistake when I first saw this. Here's my math again. For every 1,000 miles of driving:

 10 MPG ==> 100 gallons

 20 MPG ==>  50 gallons, saves 50 gallons.


 20 MPG ==>  50 gallons

100 MPG ==>  10 gallons, saves 40 gallons.


 20 MPG ==>  50 gallons

 40 MPG ==>  25 gallons, saves 25 gallons.

I suspect that the guy who murdered Shannon was a bus rider.

I am sure that he hung out on the bus talking to himself and fantasizing about who he was going to kill and why while sitting on the #7.

I have seen those types of people on the bus a bunch. I have seen guys who look and smell worse.

Homeless people can be dangerous. Just ask someone who has had a run in with one.

For city dwellers, some of you sure are stupid, or scared of admitting that you know what I am talking about.

But why drive 1000 miles?

I take my car in for servicing about once a year, as I don't get enough miles on it from the little I use it.

Thus, if you have bus service, use it. If you don't (e.g. parts of Ballard where they are cutting back Metro service), buy a plug-in hybrid and drive.

If you live as close to work as ECB or I do, then walk, run, bike, and bus depending on your mood.

and @28 - if you buy local organic food, the carbon used drops dramatically, especially if you eat local WA state beefalo from free-range bison. And eat some local veggies with it.

I bet that gen_psycho_1 walked in my neighborhood park, ergo I shall never walk in my neighborhood park. I bet that gen_psycho_2 ate at this pizza place, ergo I shall never eat at this pizza place. I bet that gen_psycho_3 flew on this airline, ergo I shall never fly on this airline. Brilliant reasoning there Ecco. Homeless people can be just as dangerous as your fucking psycho suburban kid who brings his semi-automatic guns to the same school my kid attends. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, homeless people are just as dangerous as suburban teenagers. Sure...

And it's ECCE you retard...

WIS: "there are 4WD diesels that get 80 mpg in Europe and Japan."

Name one.

When you shill incompetently like you always do, you hurt your own argument. Small Japanese and French, Italian, and Spanish cars (not "European")? Yes. Should we have them here? Yes. 80 MPG, 4WD? No.

You make enviros look stupid.

ecce homo, you're cherry picking here. asking anyone who has had a run in is selecting for people who have had a negative only incident with them. that is what a run in is.

its like saying "ask gunshot victims if guns are dangerous." obviously they are dangerous to gunshot victims but the amount of guns, and the amount of people hurt by guns is relatively small to the general population.

#30, #31, thanks, makes sense now.

Echo, you have a lot to learn about trolling. YBHT, HAND, etc.