Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:25:05 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: mike allison <mallison@konnections.com> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Information Superhighway, etc. (was: Price of FreeBSD) Message-ID: <199704260125.TAA13305@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <335EE479.482AB1F2@konnections.com> References: <199704222100.PAA00146@xmission.xmission.com> <335EE479.482AB1F2@konnections.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199704260125.TAA13305>