[pxpaulx]

The economics are not there, though. The real answer (and here is one area where I think MikeMike and I tend to agree) is to have the price of oil reflect its true cost. This is what Europe has done. Even at $4 per gallon, we aren't coming close to paying the total cost of oil. We subsidize it and the automobile when it is not in our long-term interest. We spend trillions on wars to protect it and environmental laws to clean up after it. We develop our land in wasteful ways to accommodate overuse of oil and automobiles.

Tax it to pay its full freight, and loan the money out for alternative energy and mass transit projects. Stimulate the economy and change habits. Of course, encroaching upon oil would be political suicide, as Jimmy Carter discovered.

That is fine by me! Just remember to build a nationwide viable, convenient public transport alternative. Wife and I had no problem in italy for 2 weeks traveling to 4 cities using the rail system there, both on a national and local scale. Good luck with that in 95% of the US.

[GeneV]

That is fine by me! Just remember to build a nationwide viable, convenient public transport alternative. Wife and I had no problem in italy for 2 weeks traveling to 4 cities using the rail system there, both on a national and local scale. Good luck with that in 95% of the US.

I went to college in Vienna one semester during my undergraduate time. It was an eye-opening experience how clean, efficient mass transportation could be. Buy a card, and you could go anywhere you wanted at any hour. No worries.

[pxpaulx]

I went to college in Vienna one semester during my undergraduate time. It was an eye-opening experience how clean, efficient mass transportation could be. Buy a card, and you could go anywhere you wanted at any hour. No worries.

It truly is night and day. It is a geographically smaller area overall, so the need for personal vehicles does make sense in the US from that perspective. I believe it truly starts on a macro level though, with city and regional transport. In the US, taking the train or even bus (not that I'd want to do the latter) is akin to flying - few scheduled times for mass bus/rail on a daily basis require you to schedule an entire day for a trip. Then you still have to drive to those locations, because city transport is completely inconvenient (generally, outside of a handful of major metropolitan areas) as well

In Italy (and I've heard they can be one of the worse systems over there), if you miss a train there'll be another within the hour - and you can choose between 2-3 speeds depending on your need on top of that! And when you get to the next city you'll find city wide convenient rail as well. As long as rail and mass road transit remains as inconvenient as flying, it will remain useless in the US.

Back to the topic, the sooner ethanol subsidies end, the better. Bring on the 70mpg diesels and ditch the landfill killing 500lb batteries until cars like the nissan leaf are affordable too while we're at it.

[GeneV]

The thing is that an American city is generally not that less less dense than a European one, so the possibilities ought to be there.

[pxpaulx]

I think maybe the key difference is a lot of US city growth occurred in conjunction with the rise of the automobile (again with the exception of only the largest urban areas). Since Europe is so much older, even the largest European cities had a transport system built around the existing structure, requiring a greater need for mass public transit.