From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Apr 25 19:31:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA00300 for chat-outgoing; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:31:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA00293 for ; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:31:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from obie.softweyr.ml.org ([199.104.124.49]) by who.cdrom.com (8.8.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id TAA25611 for ; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:18:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.ml.org (8.7.5/8.6.12) id TAA13305; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:25:05 -0600 (MDT) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:25:05 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199704260125.TAA13305@obie.softweyr.ml.org> From: Wes Peters To: mike allison CC: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Information Superhighway, etc. (was: Price of FreeBSD) In-Reply-To: <335EE479.482AB1F2@konnections.com> References: <199704222100.PAA00146@xmission.xmission.com> <335EE479.482AB1F2@konnections.com> Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk mike allison writes: > I have to differ.... > > The subway system in New York was initiated in the late 1800's and most > the others were around long before the 2nd WW and WAY before IKE. The No, I meant to say that the Eisenhower administration made the decision to build the interstate highway system and let mass transit rot. This is why the longest of all US "Interstate" highways is named for Eisenhower. (Ten net-dollar bonus if you can tell me which I-x0 is the Eisenhower; the only place I've ever seen it mentioned on a sign is in Santa Monica, CA.) > reason we don't have inner city mass transit is that no one uses it in > the west. Their too wed to their cars. The east coast is closer and > less distance oriented, most things could be had in the neighborhood and > the majority of the people were immigrants who had a much more social > and socialist background and could appreciate the utility of mass > transit. Yes, having lived in a village in Rhode Island where you could walk the village from end to end in 20 minutes, I'm well aware of the differences between eastern and western towns. What you fail to realized is that the U.S. didn't have suburbs until the 1950s. In fact, the world "suburb" was coined by... the Eisenhower administration! The idea of building miles and miles of houses with no public facilities had been played with in the USA and elsewhere, but never achieved workability until the highway building boom, and the associated "city planning", of the 1950s. (Aside: a very astute friend once described L.A. as "a thousand suburbs in search of an urb. ;^) Since most of the habitable (and much of the inhabitable) land in the eastern U.S. had already been settled by this time, they have suffered far less from sprawling suburbanization than western cities. The growing traffic and air pollution problems in formerly "pristine" western cities such as Denver, Phoenix, and our own beloved Salt Lake City is the result of these short-sighted policies. > Pre & Post WWII we had a booming interstate train system which fell > apart thanks to the highway system... and the ready availability of > cheap gasoline... And the federal subsidy of highway building, followed by the removal of federal subsidies to the railroads, followed by deregulation of interstate trucking, etc. Every time I see one of those signs on the back of a big truck saying "this truck pays $972 in annual highway taxes I see red, since each of those trucks causes annual wear and tear to the highways many *times* that amount. The remainder, of course, is paid out of *my* tax dollars. Not to mention the number of people killed by trucks weighing in excess of 100,000 lbs barrelling through our cities at 70 mph driven by zombies who have been at the wheel in excess of 30 hours without sleep... And now, for the one remaining tenuous tie-in to freebsd-chat: ;^) > I also believe the term Info Superhiway was around before '92.... could > be wrong... It was coined as part of then-Senator Gores proposal for the "National Information Infrastructure," introduced by Sen. Gore in the Senate in (I think) late 1990. I don't know the derivation of the term "infobahn", but it followed soon after, and was originally used derisively. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com