In further response to Bubberella’s question under the Saturday 24 February post “Billions for Transportation – But How Much for Congestion Relief?”
It should be clear that the positions held by frequent BaconsRebellion contributors cover a broad range, and do not represent just one perspective. Here is a quick review:
EMR admits to holding down the True Conservative / Conservation / Science-Based Reality end of the spectrum.
Moving away from this anchor are more traditional conservation-oriented positions held by those who agree on many of the basic realities but fear that strongly advocating the transformations needed to achieve Fundamental Change will require them to give up some or all of what they have inherited and/or worked hard to achieve.
Next come a range of Centrists who see a stronger roll for government actions to achieve Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions.
These three categories represent the interests of about 80 percent of the population. See the 20% / 60% / 20% Guideline.
Beyond the Centrists are the Left WingNuts who vacation in Cuba and have recently bought stock in Citco.
Beyond the Left WingNuts near the bleeding edge are the Right WingNuts.
Right WingNuts are very vocal and occupy the majority of the space on most open fora. Here are some of their favorite positions:
Right WingNuts favor small government unless governmental expansion comes during Elephant Clan administrations. Most favor no government action except that which benefits the very wealthy.
Right WingNuts believe that accelerating Capital Accumulation for the benefit of a few does not threaten democracy and a market economy. They do what they can to support Mass Over-Consumption and thus hasten the slide toward entropy and Collapse.
Right WingNuts take positions favoring Business-As-Usual because they benefit, hope to benefit or recognize that fellow Right WingNuts and other Business-As-Usual advocates make the majority of the contributions supporting the current political party Duopoly.
Right Wing Nuts love to win and do not believe there is a need for a balance between personal rights and public responsibilities to maintain a democracy with a market economy.
Some Right WingNuts are said to hunt small animals with assault weapons. That fascination with firepower is reflected in their posts.
Finally there is one last group: The True WingNuts who have no moral or philosophical rudder right or left. This is a small fraction of participants but they devalue everyone’s views.
True WingNuts live under the assumption that “I live in a human settlement pattern and so I am an expert.” They structure their posts to obscure their true intent, what ever that is.
True WingNuts have no compunction about insulting the intelligence of readers by twisting comments and using misleading words to make what seem like rational points. We cite two examples from the above noted string which are the reason for posting this comment:
“… but the best evidence we have is that transit really works cost efficiently (and envirionmentally (sic) efficiently) for only around 2% of the population.”
The 2 percent is a low ball figure for the number of vehicle trips in a region that are taken on shared-vehicles vis private vehicles. If one considers peak hour vehicle trips the number goes up by a factor of 5 in regions with threshold shared-vehicle system efficiency.
If one considers the number of peak-hour trips where the origin and destination of the trip is within walking distance of a shared-vehicle station the number goes up by a factor of 4 more.
If one understands that the role of shared-vehicle systems is to support settlement patterns where citizens do not need to resort to any vehicle to access many of the elements of a quality life, the numbers are overwhelming in favor of implementation of shared-vehicle systems to provide citizens with mobility and access.
Or try this:
“since shared vehicle systems have an average speed half of that supported by the automobile.”
If one considers Autonomobile travel times in origin and destination rich places served by an efficient transit system the statement is absurd.
On a region-wide basis for the average 10 trips per household per day we know of no data that supports this assumption. The only data we have seen is that a careful cataloguing of trip speed for intra-New Urban Region travel puts the Autonomobile very close to shared-vehicle speed even in areas where there is little or no congestion.
Just as there are no Alpha Communities in the US of A, there are not New Urban Regions with a pattern and density of land use that would support efficient use of a creative mix of shared vehicle systems.
The amazing thing is that in some True WingNut comments two out of three sentences contain this sort of misinformation. One out of three is well founded or congratulates another poster to gain support for unfounded positions.
EMR