Fascinating article in the NY Times discussing public transportation and how the poor planning and implementation of has significantly contributed to global warming.
Unlike many cities in the US cities located in "third world" countries have taken it upon themselves to tackle the problems of global warming caused by corporate driven transportation systems. The article describes how almost a decade ago the city of Bogota, Columbia built a Bus Rapid Transit system that has allowed the city to remove 7000 smaller buses from its roads reducing the use of bus fuel and the harmful exhaust by 59%.
Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India.
And now for the startling fact:
Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.
Aren't taxpayers funding a subway system in Los Angeles? How did that project get funded and who's benefiting from that? We need to control our own destiny and take it away from people who are using our money to benefit themselves.
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