With gas prices still hovering around $4 a gallon, even after the summer peak, it looks like many people are learning to love the train. Amtrak ridership on the Valley's San Joaquin trains in July was up a whopping 32.1 percent. More than 100,000 passengers took the San Joaquins last month. The San Joaquins are now the fifth busiest Amtrak line in the nation.
Around the country Amtrak is posting other impressive gains. Overall ridership was up 14% in July, with a total of 2.75 million passengers -- the most in Amtrak's 37-year history.
Naw, Americans will never get out of their cars.
If there is an incentive they will get out of or refrain from using their vehicles.No train to Shaver yet but with the 32% increase in usage the air must be crystal clear now in the Valley.
The increased train ridership this summer is a great example of peoples' ability to change their transportation behaviors in response to expensive gasoline. Of course, the only way to achieve short-term reductions in the price of gas is reduced demand. Less driving by lots of people will quickly result in falling prices at the pump.
The interesting thing is that people might actually learn to prefer the train, the bus, and the bicycle once they get used to alternatives to the single-occupant automobile. This is the best possible thing in the long run, even if gasoline prices fall in the short run.
It is probably a geological reality that all the easy and inexpensive petroleum on earth has been discovered, so even if petroleum as a transportation fuel is around for a few more decades, it will become increasingly costly in the long run.
Americans need not "get out " of their cars, but share it with public transportation.
I would hate to schlepp a week's groceries from store to house on the bus, and then walk a few blocks from the bus. I would gladly ride a bus to anywhere if there is no toting of stuff involved. I would gladly go to and fro my doctor on a bus unless it would take a long walk to and fro the bus. I would gladly go places on the bus on
weekends if there were a bus to take. I would not take a bus to places where
I can go only to but not fro because no bus in the evening. That there may be an
evening bus in one part of the town is of no use in the part of town I happen to live.
It is a fact that in some American cities one can live a very mobile life without a car,
but Fresno is not one of them. I personally can not think of a single world capital where the most excellent public transportation systems are paying for themselves.
We are paying for hordes of bureaucrats some of whom have nothing better
to do then to transverse the city in search of visible garbage, green waste or recyclables
containers, or look into garbage cans. Why the latter I really have no idea.
And talk, talk, talk and planning, planning, planning is not going to save a single car
trip nor a drop of gasoline, hence not a red penny.