For those of you non-DC-area residents: The Silver Spring Transit Center is a bus terminal in a DC suburb. It was supposed to be built by the county and run by Metro, but when it was completed, it turned out to be so poorly built that Metro refused to take it. So it’s been standing empty for years while the county tries to fix it up and get their money back from the architect and contractors.
And the memory is kept alive in Boston — their metro tickets are called “Charlie cards.” And yes, a cartoonist for the Washington Post can do cartoons about Washington, just as the New York Times can publish editorials about New York. No other newspaper has to pick it up, and no one reading it on a web site has to spend more than five seconds looking at it while heading to “Wit of the World.”
I lived for a while in Vienna, Austria. There, the public transit system of subways, street cars, and buses is clean, cheap, safe, and integrated so that it is pretty easy to get from any part of town to every other part of town. As a tourist there at Christmas, I bought a single one-week pass, and for the price of a New York taxi ride from the airport into town, I traveled everywhere I wanted without a hassle. There are few turnstiles or ticket checkers, and the whole system is pretty efficient. Being Americans we had a car when we lived there, but we had no reason to take it out of the garage unless we left the city, and realized we would have been better off without it. (The trains are great, too.) This is possible because freeloading is a misdemeanor. Inspectors periodically check to see if you have a valid ticket, if you don’t you pay a fine. The fines go up with repeated violations. So you can ride for free if you don’t mind chancing a fine. Thus if you find yourself stuck in the boonies at night without any money or any other way to get home, it is worth the risk. If you freeload often however, you’ll eventually get caught. And the Austrians are law-abiding folks, on the whole, and frown at freeloaders. Berlin is a much bigger city, so the system is a lot more complicated, and can be more time consuming, but still puts to shame any system I have seen in the U.S. In this country, we cater to the few rather than the many, and consider public transportation as existing only to move people who don’t matter very much, and threat them accordingly. We don’t take pride in out public institutions, and aren’t willing to spend the money necessary to really make them work. Or so it seems. Why do you think we, who are so much richer as a nation, can’t or won’t provide for ourselves public institutions as good as European ones?
Has the DC Metro Mafia put out a hit on Toles yet? He certainly spends lots of time pointing out its flaws. I find it interesting, but I must say, his national interest toons are so good, I yawn when I see the DC Metro themed ones.
So you never have experienced a good urban public transportation system. Or perhaps of driving in a city. Remember in Vienna we HAD a car, and still found public transportation better. I never suggested anyone giving up his car, or not using it on the occasions it was better. Even in many American cities, parking is such a problem and expense that you still have to walk blocks from the nearest place you found to park. In some places in Vienna, the cars or the buses came every few minutes. Hardly ever had to wait. I enjoyed the EASE and FREEDOM of movement I had there compared to any American urban area I have spent time in. Of course if you are talking about getting about in suburban sprawl, that is a different matter. There we have built a landscape that requires automobiles, though even there public transportation can be useful. Imagine if every high school student had to drive his/her own car to get to school. My idea of “good” in this case is clean, cheap, safe, efficient, convenient, and easy. If your idea of “good” is dirty, expensive, dangerous, inefficient, inconvenient, and difficult. (Which public transportation often is in this country.) Then you can call our systems “good” if you like. We had a house guest for a year from Calcutta. She once took the Greyhound bus to the next state. She was shocked at how dirty, expensive, and slow it was. Not as good as what she was used to in India, she said. India!
Alas, I have. I have no idea how anyone can navigate it. It did not even come close to what I experienced a year ago in Vienna. Even though it was in German! However,in all fairness, New York is vastly larger than Vienna, and it is a city I know a lot better than I know New York. But perhaps you were joking. You must have been.
SKJAM! Premium Member over 10 years ago
“He’s the man, that never returned”
jazzmoose over 10 years ago
God help me, I’m starting to remember the lyrics…
Kip W over 10 years ago
Charlie on the MTA!
Christopher Shea over 10 years ago
For those of you non-DC-area residents: The Silver Spring Transit Center is a bus terminal in a DC suburb. It was supposed to be built by the county and run by Metro, but when it was completed, it turned out to be so poorly built that Metro refused to take it. So it’s been standing empty for years while the county tries to fix it up and get their money back from the architect and contractors.
rockngolfer over 10 years ago
It was indeed the Kingston Trio….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMSGrY-IlU
ARodney over 10 years ago
And the memory is kept alive in Boston — their metro tickets are called “Charlie cards.” And yes, a cartoonist for the Washington Post can do cartoons about Washington, just as the New York Times can publish editorials about New York. No other newspaper has to pick it up, and no one reading it on a web site has to spend more than five seconds looking at it while heading to “Wit of the World.”
woodwork over 10 years ago
I THINK it ws from the album “The Hungry I”
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
Gosh! That’s exactly like our public transport system! You can’t get from here to there, and certainly not on any kind of schedule.
H P Hundt Premium Member over 10 years ago
And the future is the Calif bullet train to nowhere.
Doughfoot over 10 years ago
I lived for a while in Vienna, Austria. There, the public transit system of subways, street cars, and buses is clean, cheap, safe, and integrated so that it is pretty easy to get from any part of town to every other part of town. As a tourist there at Christmas, I bought a single one-week pass, and for the price of a New York taxi ride from the airport into town, I traveled everywhere I wanted without a hassle. There are few turnstiles or ticket checkers, and the whole system is pretty efficient. Being Americans we had a car when we lived there, but we had no reason to take it out of the garage unless we left the city, and realized we would have been better off without it. (The trains are great, too.) This is possible because freeloading is a misdemeanor. Inspectors periodically check to see if you have a valid ticket, if you don’t you pay a fine. The fines go up with repeated violations. So you can ride for free if you don’t mind chancing a fine. Thus if you find yourself stuck in the boonies at night without any money or any other way to get home, it is worth the risk. If you freeload often however, you’ll eventually get caught. And the Austrians are law-abiding folks, on the whole, and frown at freeloaders. Berlin is a much bigger city, so the system is a lot more complicated, and can be more time consuming, but still puts to shame any system I have seen in the U.S. In this country, we cater to the few rather than the many, and consider public transportation as existing only to move people who don’t matter very much, and threat them accordingly. We don’t take pride in out public institutions, and aren’t willing to spend the money necessary to really make them work. Or so it seems. Why do you think we, who are so much richer as a nation, can’t or won’t provide for ourselves public institutions as good as European ones?
nate9279 over 10 years ago
Has the DC Metro Mafia put out a hit on Toles yet? He certainly spends lots of time pointing out its flaws. I find it interesting, but I must say, his national interest toons are so good, I yawn when I see the DC Metro themed ones.
danketaz Premium Member over 10 years ago
“as we go round and round and round in the circle game”
Doughfoot over 10 years ago
So you never have experienced a good urban public transportation system. Or perhaps of driving in a city. Remember in Vienna we HAD a car, and still found public transportation better. I never suggested anyone giving up his car, or not using it on the occasions it was better. Even in many American cities, parking is such a problem and expense that you still have to walk blocks from the nearest place you found to park. In some places in Vienna, the cars or the buses came every few minutes. Hardly ever had to wait. I enjoyed the EASE and FREEDOM of movement I had there compared to any American urban area I have spent time in. Of course if you are talking about getting about in suburban sprawl, that is a different matter. There we have built a landscape that requires automobiles, though even there public transportation can be useful. Imagine if every high school student had to drive his/her own car to get to school. My idea of “good” in this case is clean, cheap, safe, efficient, convenient, and easy. If your idea of “good” is dirty, expensive, dangerous, inefficient, inconvenient, and difficult. (Which public transportation often is in this country.) Then you can call our systems “good” if you like. We had a house guest for a year from Calcutta. She once took the Greyhound bus to the next state. She was shocked at how dirty, expensive, and slow it was. Not as good as what she was used to in India, she said. India!
Kip W over 10 years ago
“I’ll just hang my completely irrelevant whining about my number one topic here, like I do every day!” Ah, the life of a troll.
Doughfoot over 10 years ago
Alas, I have. I have no idea how anyone can navigate it. It did not even come close to what I experienced a year ago in Vienna. Even though it was in German! However,in all fairness, New York is vastly larger than Vienna, and it is a city I know a lot better than I know New York. But perhaps you were joking. You must have been.