I suspect that most who have visited this board are too young to have experienced the world's best transportation system. Imagine major rail lines that ran from inner city out the various major places of interest, ports of transportation and egress/entry into the modern city. Then, other smaller lines that ran both up and down and left and right throughout the city to enable people to get from homes to work and to places of relaxation on the weekends. Then also imagine that automobiles did not really interfere with the public transportation system, there being few of them due to the lack of need, since the transportation system was so well conceived and functioned so well.
A future city on another planet? No, how about Los Angelens in the '30s and '40s, before the major auto companies, the tire giants and the oil companies conspired to convince the citizens of LA that 'Owning" a car was better than riding on public transportation, which they already "owned". Today we drive over the still-in-place iron rails of the Pacific Electric street car lines that were paved over with asphalt to enable more and more cars to crowd onto the streets. Ah, progress! Now they are re-building the street car lines as "Light surface rail lines" now called the "Blue Line", "Yellow line" or "Orange Line" (a bus line), which all must interrupt the very car lanes that once were not so populated, resulting in the weekly accident reports wherein train hits car at the crossings. This just ain't progress folks.
The only real hope is to make the cost of individual transportation so high that the concept of public transportation will again seem attractive. The "Electronic Highway" is likely to be the best solution, in the short term, requiring less travel, as we are all interconnected by the internet and information is moved, not people. I have shared Ray's belief in the Monorail concept ever since I first rode on the Alweg system at Disneyland in the '60s. All the arguments against it sound to me like more of the justfications offered up by the Automobile/tire/oil conglomerate interests to convince the people that surface public transportation was not sufficient and should be replaced by the individual cars so that we could "see the USA in our Chevrolet" etc. I would like to see the city of Los Angeles from the seat of an elevated, quiet, smooth moving and banking, automatically controlled system of monorails that run down the already paid for rights of way. Ah, but logic aside, let's build more "light surface rail lines" and have even more conjestion than we now have, and more people injured as they try to cross the rail lines in their shinny new SUV guzzling 10 miles to the gallon and spewing out noctious carcinogens to clog our brains and bodies, while the dollars rain in to the few who really do profit from this madness.

Ah, yes, Mr. Blevins, that's what I heard about the Seattle monorail. A fuller article can be found on the Weekly Standard webside. (Conservative bias? Me? Why, I never!)

Well, if I hadn't already outed myself, I might as well continue. .

So, patrask, you're opposed to freedom, are you? I give the public a little more credit than you in that I believe they chose individual automobiles over mass transit on their own, thank you very much. Who needs this shadowy conspiracy of automakers and oil producers? Out here in Oklahoma, and in California at one time, automobiles mean freedom and that won't be given up lightly. Yes, LA has a very real problem, one that a good mass transit system might help solve - (We visited Washington D.C. this past summer and it was my first experience on a subway. I really enjoyed it except, well, it's a SUBway; how much nicer it would have been to see that beautiful city if it had run above ground. But I suspect the designers knew more of what they were doing than I do.) - but the only real way to solve that kind of overcrowding is to not move there. Goodnes, people, as wonderful as LA is, there are other places to live in this vast country. Come to Oklahoma!

Pterran:
Maybe you are right. What we need is a reverse migration FROM CA TO OKLAHOMA. Then you can call the new arrivals CALies, as we once called those who came to CA in the thirties Okies. What is fair is fair. If we can decrease the population out here I am all for it.
P.S. There is no freedom of the automobile any longer. You can't get anywhere without staring at the back end of a large vehicle for hours on end. The myth is over. We need immediate action before we start to kill each other over the tension caused by the stress of (if you want to call it) driving. Sign me up. Oh, by the way do they have an ocean over there?

FAHRENHEIT 451 TO BE SHOWN--OFF BROADWAY

[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/arts/13arts.html]

TAKE CARE
PATRICK

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FH 451,

Wow! Thanks, Patrick.

Could you cut and paste the NYTimes article to this board?

The previous linked worked well. How come the change?
Maybe this link will get it back again...and then maybe not. Oh well!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13arts/13arts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Regardless, hope the people involved do a job worthy of Bradbury. The news article stated this run of Fahrenheit 451 will be quick, thus the opportunity brief to get in and get a seat and see what wonders might be revealed, perhaps those never before seen on stage. Wouldn't that be nice!

patrask,

No, no oceans, but lots of nice lakes. Okay, you've got me on that one aspect of which California is superior. Still, how often do you get to the ocean? Oh, that often. Well, never mind.

But, yes, by all means, come to Oklahoma. You'll be quite welcome.

Thanks for the courtesy of your reply.

Best,

Pete

Oklahoma? Never been there.
Love the musical, though.

I almost spewed coffee on my monitor again.

Great Honk!

He must have just returned from the cellar again. Recharged, Espresso in hand!

A real gunslinger in a previous era, I'd venture.

You say...wake up and smell the coffee?

Where else, then, but the Bradbury Suites. All this and a coffee-maker thrown in for good measure..

http://www.hotel-rates.com/us/georgia/atlanta/bradbury-suites-hotel.html

"Great Honk" was "The Music Man," though, not to put too fine a point on it.

Any good musical is a “Great Honk”. Especially “Oklahoma!”. And I’ll bet you know the territory.

"Whaddaya talk? Whaddaya talk? Whaddaya talk?"

He’s just a bang beat, bell ringin’ big hall great go-neck or nuthin’, rip roarin’, every time a bull’s-eye salesman. That’s Professor Harold Hill.”

“…Look, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk?” “He’s a bare faced, double shuffle, two bit thimble rigger.”
***
Ah, River City, Brigadoon, Innisfree, Gloccamora, Greentown and Silverado. “’Ride boldly ride’, the Shade replied,--“

“Run boy, run,” said the King.