Real Reasons for Mass Transit

Forget about pollution for a moment. Let's talk about the real benefits of a good mass transportation system.

• Healthier People How is it possible that we need machines to simulate walking and stair climbing? Why not just go outside and walk a little bit? Well, if you have less cars, people will walk more. They'll also eat better food.
• Better Food Only the automobile allows people to shop for groceries at a frequency less than or equal to once per week. The supermarket may be the destination, but the car is what allows you to bring back seven bags of food all at once. It actually forces you to do that. Who wants the task of driving to the supermarket, parking, walking through the twenty aisles to get what you need any more often than that?

  So when we make purchasing decisions at the supermarket, they favor things that will keep for a week rather than a few days. Frozen foods, canned foods, preservative laden pre-sliced breads, potato chips, cookies, are all favored over ripe fruit, baked bread, and fresh fish which have a shorter shelf life. The markets have them, but we favor the stuff that will last in our houses until the next trip.

  If more people got off at train stations and walked home, there would be more corner markets, more bakeries, more independent grocers. There would be fruit stands. Ample opportunity to pick up what looks good today and bring it home for the family. That twelve-pack of soda-pop would also be a lot heavier to lug home. These are good things.

• Drink Up, Buddy Drunk driving would be eliminated if there were no driving element.
• The Worst Investment You Can Make is an automobile. It is capital equipment, and chances are you don't make anything with it. Even if the costs of using public transportation are exactly equal to the sum of car payments you will ever make (a ludicrous assumption), just think of what you could do with the money you pay for auto insurance. Picture that money earning interest for a child's college tuition, your retirement, or building equity in your home.
• Wal-Mart is Nowhere People love to complain about large discount stores like Wal-Mart because they soon push out smaller businesses from the marketplace. Economists attribute this to the economies of scale. Large discount stores are efficient, which is always favored by the marketplace. Having everything under one roof, centrally located, lowers expenses. Wal-Mart eliminates costly distribution and centralizes purchasing and inventory decisions to make stocking the store easier.

  Bullshit. It eliminates distribution and centralizes purchasing for Wal-Mart - and passes those responsibilities on to you. You are the one who drives out to Wal-Mart and hauls your stuff back home, instead of a smaller delivery truck bringing goods to a local hardware store. You are the one who has to wade through row after row of shit, in lieu of the local 5 and dime manager deciding what to stock on her four aisles of shopping.

  That's not the kind of efficiency I want, thank you very much.

• Kiss Mom's Taxi Service Goodbye A sure sign that people have no clue how mass transit works is when people say, "But how will I take my kids to school before going to work?"

  Here's how: they take mass transit, like you do, only in another direction. They meet up with a bunch of friends, laugh and giggle loudly, and annoy older commuters. Quite simple, actually.

  They can use it other times, too. Instead of twenty parents taking thirty kids to soccer practice, the bus lines could do it quite nicely. That is the kind of efficiency I like.

These are all quality of life issues. They matter, they are important to all of us, and they are not articulated enough in public discourse.

As proof that they matter, I offer the sport utility vehicle. I cannot recall having seen one article about the popularity of sport utility vehicles that actually gave the real reason they are popular.

I often hear that they are large and powerful, popular among young men. Sorry, that explains sales of $15,000 pick-up trucks to twenty year olds who in reality have nothing to pick up. It does not explain the sale of $30,000 dollar vehicles to the higher income brackets.

Alternatively, they get labeled as "rugged". I don't think so. Anything with air conditioning as a standard feature is not "rugged". Tents are rugged, cabins are rugged, Lincoln Explorers with leather interiors and CD changers are not rugged.

These aren't even good looking cars. They look like boxes that are hard to get into.

Please realize that this is purely a quality of life issue. These cars are not sport utility vehicles, they are commuter utility vehicles. They have head room, leg room, and help make the morning trip to work more comfortable.

Just like a train would.

[Summer 1998]
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Last Updated: 16 August 1998
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