[PRCo] Re: Portland Green Line

[Schneider Fred]

Then you can continue to pay for $4 gasoline.   And if our  
politicians have any brain cells, they'll put $4 a gallon tax on top  
of it like the Europeans do.   They you might reevaluate whether LRT  
is good or bad.

I think you will find that the current low price of gasoline is  
simply a matter of supply and demand.   We went into the recession in  
2007.  Worldwide demand for oil went down 3% and therefore the price  
went down.   But think long range.   We would love to have more  
cars ... that has been our trend.   Tata motors would like to put  
every adult Indian into an automobile ... that market is twice the  
entire population of the United States.   China ... same opportunity  
to use up fuel.   If you put everyone in those countries in cars  
today, you could possibly use up every last drop of oil in 5 to 10  
years.   Think so?   Remember we've used about half of the oil now we  
represent 3% of the world's population .... those two nations have  
20% of the world's population.   Think of the potential.

But the operative word in your last paragraph, Joshua, is "want."      
None of us "want" to change our life styles but it is coming.   Those  
of us my age will do it through death.   Those of us who are my  
granddaughter's age will find that they won't have the gasoline to  
support the lifestyle their grandparents and great grandparents had.


On Sep 16, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Joshua Dunfield wrote:

> 2009/9/16 richard allman <allmanr at verizon.net>:
>> Guys-there is  FABULOUS on-line 80 page brochure about the new
>> Portland Tri MAX Green line which I accessed via the Gogle news link
>> indexed under light rail today. I think(in my 'umble opinion!) that
>> Portland is far and away the best of the new LRT operations.
>> Have a look and see what you think. RICH
>
> I can't find it.  Can you post a link?
>
> I lived in Portland for a few years (1997-2000); I've never been that
> impressed with MAX.  It can't seem to decide if it's trying to be a
> local streetcar system or a major rail system.  I don't think it can
> be the latter until they run trains longer than two cars, but they
> won't, because of street running downtown and Portland's short blocks;
> and until they speed it up.
>
> The Tri-Met website is trumpeting that it's only 39 minutes from
> Clackamas TC to downtown.  By my calculation that's a whopping 22 mph
> average.  And that's the fast part of the system.  *And* I'm comparing
> it to the distance along I-205/I-84, rather than the crow-flies
> distance.
>
> If we accept that we can't have anything more than LRT, and that LRT
> has to be slow and low-capacity, maybe MAX looks good.  But I don't
> want to accept any of those things.
>
> -j.
>
>