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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Sam; I have yet to encounter any of those undesirable fellow travelers of which you speak, and Matthewsaggie knows exactly what he's talking about.  The Charlotte Observer, on the other hand... [/quote] I rode public transit to and from work for 37 years. Most of the people I encountered were OK.  But I had enough bad experiences to know that using public transit does not always generate a pleasant outcome.  I witnessed six instances of violence or near violence, including two directed at me.  I suspect that many of the people who praise the virtues of public transit seldom use it.  As I stated, not a single member of the DART Board of Directors uses public transit on a regular basis.  And there is not a more enthusiastic bunch of transit supporters in the Metroplex.  At least for the press! Last year I rode the Acela from Philadelphia.  As soon as we cleared the platform at 30th Street Station, the woman behind me began shouting into a cell phone.  She kept up a constant chatter until Newark.  The guy across the aisle also spent a considerable part of the trip talking loudly on his cell phone.  Trying to read when someone is shouting on a cell phone is a challenge.  The raw cost of building a short stretch of highway in a congested area of a large city is not a good comparision.  The cost may be over or under represented for the larger project.  Also, for comparative purposes cost accountants seldom use raw numbers.  They are meaningless.  A better methodology is to compare cost per passenger mile, cost per vehicle mile, etc. Clearly, in some areas the cost to build a mile of highway is considerably higher than the cost to build a mile of light rail line.  And the cost per passenger mile can be higher for highways as opposed to railways.  But it is not a given across the board. There is one thing that advocates of light rail, as well as all forms of transit, miss.  Until the cost of driving becomes prohibitive, the over whelming majority of Americans will opt for their car as opposed to public transit.  They have demonstrated this consistently for decades.  And no amount of social engineering is likely to change that dynamic. Last year it was standing room only on my bus from Leander to the University of Texas thanks to $4 gasoline.  This year the average rush hour load is approximately 60 per cent of the seats due to the drop in the price of gasoline.
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