From David Bleicher
I am sceptical of any article that starts out: “It’s time we got all the cars off the roads”
(Forum, 24 April, p 51).
While I believe it is in our interest to
reduce the number of cars on our roads and make new cars safer and more
efficient, it would be neither practical nor desirable to eliminate cars
altogether.
Michael Le Page tells us that we can create a Utopian transportation system
using technology that is “just around the corner”. The fact is, we do not need
to reinvent the wheel in order to move passengers more quickly and efficiently
within and between cities. The technology exists in the form of subways, light
rail vehicles and high-speed trains.
Unfortunately, this technology is all too often misapplied or simply absent,
the result being that, while sitting for hours in traffic jams or on delayed
trains, we have a tendency to think up “revolutionary” new transportation
systems.
Looking back over the past few decades we have heard ideas such as tracked
air-cushion vehicles, linear induction monorails, jet-propelled vehicles and
maglevs, none of which has come to fruition. Personal rapid transit is destined
to join this list of failed pipe dreams.
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Solutions to our transportation and environmental problems do not lie in
waiting hopefully for new technologies to emerge, but rather in using public and
private funds to make optimal use of existing technology.
dsb@cdae.com
