Informed but opinionated commentary and analysis on urban transportation topics from the Secret Worldwide Transit Cabal. Names have been omitted to protect the guilty.

Our Mission: Monkeywrench the Anti-Transit Forces

 
SONGS FROM THE WOOD(S): MORE VAPID VERBIAGE FROM RANDAL O’TOOLE

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"Truth passes through three phases: 1) It is ridiculed. 2) It is violently opposed. 3) It is accepted as self-evident." Albert Schopenhouer. In the United States, rail is currently passing through Phase Two.


From the Cabalmaster:

“You could put everyone in this country in California and there would be plenty of land left over.”

(Randal O’Toole, at www.sdearthtimes.com/cut_to_chase/ctc_74.html.)

Well, yes, as anyone who knows anything about Japan knows well.

Japan is roughly the same size as California, has half the population of the U.S. . . . but, paradoxically, most of the country’s land area is sparsely-populated or uninhabited.

However, moving everyone in the U.S. to California could not be accomplished without drastic government intervention to compel people to accept much higher residential population densities that exist today (outside of San Francisco, parts of Los Angeles, and adjoining very dense “suburbs”). Much more drastic than the planning and land-use policies that draw so much ire from O’Toole.

Of course, if everyone in the country moved to California, within 10 years a significant portion of their housing would go up in smoke from the inevitable wildfires, as shown in (seemingly) half of Southern California burning down recently.

Is there a contradiction here, Randal?





posted by The Cabalmaster, Master of All Transit-dom 11/24/2003 05:53:00 PM