by jboogy » Mon 14 Jan 2008, 18:04:42
That was pretty cool Rocc. We're a country unto ourselves when you look at personal transportation. While Europe made gasoline very expensive in order to fund mass transit and other socially beneficial programs , the U.s. made it as cheap as possible , encouraging waste and consumption while letting the rail system fall apart . We have millions spread out everywhere that will find it hard to get around once gas gets really scarce , ghost towns and migration back to the cities won't be pretty when everyone tries to do it at once . I think there will be a lot of places in the east where there are tracks but they're just not used anymore . These towns will survive but the subdivisions that are really on the outskirts may be abandoned. My hometown Lansdale PA. is a perfect example , when I was young you had trains from Philly that would go to lansdale , from lansdale you had a line that went NW to quakertown , east to Doylestown and west to Norristown ( or somethin' like that ), over the years they dropped the spurs, leaving lansdale to philly the only one and almost noone rode that except at peak times. But they never tore up those tracks , even when land got super pricey , ( did they know about PO back then?)I think they at least suspected or they would've torn up those tracks. Once you see the people who are struggling give up their cars you might see a lot of these tracks freshened up , you might see a resurgence of the traditional town business district because people can't afford to drive to the mall , I think you'll see communities that weren't built near a rail line disappear to a certain extent , ( like out west) Or pigs might fly out my butt and it's virtually assured that the earth will be ruled by demon zombies that roam the land seeking gasoline and/or human victims to power their dual fuel ,tracked metal monsters of death.
Perhaps the population would be less swayed to socialism if we had fewer examples of socialism from our "Free Market Capitalists". -----fiddler dave