[ROCKMAN]

VMarcHart,

You walked to work in Houston!!! Thank goodness you moved north...we don't need communists like that down here.

Actually I wish I could have afforded to move to the downtown area but it's been booming for sometime now. With PO starting to rear its head there may be even a greater push. Lots of old neighborhoods to tear down and throw up $500,000 townhomes with 1400 sq ft (I know that sounds cheap to you Yankees but we're use to really cheap housing.) But I did buy in the eastern industrial burg so it's only a half hour drive at rush hour. And I do live across the highway from the largest refinery (Exxon) in the US.
Free gas every other Tuesday.

But this highlights the negative impact of adjustments. The old worn out downtown properties won't continue to provide cheaper housing for the folks at the low end of the economy. They've been slowing migrating to the outer burgs where public transport is almost nonexistant. We, as a country, have a lot of fat on the high end so shedding a little lifestyle won't hurt too much. But for the folks near the bottom it could become a much worse nightmare.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'Y')ou walked to work in Houston!!! Thank goodness you moved north...we don't need communists like that down here.

[TheDude]

I see ad hoc solutions being implemented when the pain is simply too great: school buses being used as jitneys, markets thrown up in suburbs, ideally with official approval, but we'll likely turn to things like this even if it's officially illegal.

Rail, whether LR or CR, takes time to build/develop, and their obvious advantages might not be of interest to a population desperate just to get from here to there. Some propose massive buildup of electrified freight and commuter rail - "cheap" for the US at ca. $100 billion. Dimitri Orlov points out that easily accessible and reliable MT was one of many advantages the FSU had in its collapse, along with inefficient but extremely sturdy appliances - "refrigerators that kept the room warm" for instance but would last for generations. Same was true of the Soviet electrical grid.

I'm really hoping for our next POTUS to conduct a massive rail buildup/electrification - can't see a downside from any angle.

[btu2012]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', 'T')o know so much and not share in a civilized manner is fruitless. Food for thought. Peace and Love.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('btu2012', 'W')ell imagine for a moment you are a school kid entering a room full of PhDs and start giving them lessons about how to solve a difficult physics problem. You better know what you are talking about unless you are prepared to be laughed at.