Almenningssamgöngur í umræðunni - ekki bara á Íslandi - Það snjóar í ........... !!!

Mikið hefur verið rætt um almenningssamgöngur á höfuðborgarsvæðinu undanfarnar vikur.  Ekki ætla ég að blanda mér í þær umræður, enda ég ekki neytandi þar.

En umræður um almenningssamgöngur eru ekki bara í umræðunni á Íslandi, þó nokkuð mikið hefur verið rætt um almenningssamgöngur hér Toronto, raunar má segja að þau séu nokkuð stöðugt í umræðunni hér, enda mikilvægar.

Sjálfur tek ég gjarna "subway" ef ég á erindi niður í bæ, en það getur verið gott ef meiningin er að skjótast og heimsækja afmarkað svæði og ekki þurfa að hafa áhyggjur af bílastæði.

En oftast verður þó bílinn fyrir valinu, enda þægindin og oft tímasparnaðurinn mikils virði.

En Margaret Wente skrifaði ágætis pistil í Globe and Mail um daginn, þar segir m.a.:

""Hah!" said my instructor, the Pilates queen. "You know what TTC means? Take The Car." She's no fan of Toronto's public transit. That's too bad because, according to the politicians and the urban planners, public transit is the answer to all our woes. Everyone knows cars are responsible for everything from gridlock to pollution and obesity. Pry people from their cars, and the world will be a better place. (innskot frá bloggara: TTC stendur fyrir Toronto Transit Commission).

Unfortunately, most people are refusing to co-operate. In 1988, TTC ridership was 463 million, the second largest in North America. By last year, despite the Greater Toronto Area's explosive growth, ridership had shrunk to 410 million.

Transit advocates blame higher fares and service cutbacks for this decline. If only we invest more in improving public transit, more people will use it. To a limited extent, this may be true. But transit advocates ignore the overwhelming evidence from around the world: People still prefer their cars."It may not be the faster way, but public transit remains the better way," The Toronto Star argued this week. New statistics on commuting times reveal what everyone already knows: Public transit is a whole lot slower than driving. People who commute to work by car spend an average of 59 minutes on the road each day (round trip). Transit riders spend 106 minutes. The Star says the answer is massive new investments from all levels of government so public transit can "better compete against the unwholesome lure of the automobile." My own trip to work takes less than 20 minutes by car, but an hour by TTC, much of it standing up. The unwholesome lure of the automobile is darned hard to resist.

Southern Ontario is the third-fastest growing region in North America -- in the next 25 years, the population is projected to grow by a staggering four million people. So what's the plan for constructing new road systems and highways? Um, there isn't one. The province plans to re-engineer people's behaviour so they'll take public transit."

"As for Toronto, everyone agrees it should become more like Paris, where people live in higher-density apartment buildings instead of single-family houses, and walk everywhere to do their shopping. There's just one problem: Most Parisians don't live in central Paris any more. Three-quarters of them live in the suburbs, where they can find single-family houses, get around by -- mon Dieu! -- car and shop at -- quelle horreur! -- supermarchés and big-box stores."

"Public transit systems are certainly no bargain. "Transit subsidies are hugely greater than any subsidies to the automobile," says Peter Gordon, a California professor of planning and economics. And some people say the cleaner, greener virtues of public transit are vastly overstated. "Most new autos generate little or no more pollution per passenger vehicle mile than the average bus," says Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History. He argues it would require a massive increase in the use of public transportation and improvements in transit vehicles to bring about any meaningful reduction in energy use or pollution."

Svo mörg voru þau orð. Kannast einhver við umræðuna, rökin og mótrökin?

En greinina má finna hér.

Svo þegar Norður - Ameríka og stór partur af Evrópu þjáist vegna hita, snjóar í byggð í Suður Afríku, það er eins og allt sé komið á hvolf.  Sjá hér.