Sometimes, when you describe "California" to the naifs who don't live here, I think you must be describing Planet California instead of the State of California, where I live. A few miles from you, in fact...yet we don't seem to be occupying the same Bay Area.

But then, I seem to recall that you work in a home office, so I guess you don't get out much.

If you did, you'd notice that the Bay Area has some of the worst traffic in the world (which is not an opinion, but the result of studies that measured average speed during rush hour [a period that lasts from 5AM to 9PM]). It's an illustration of the law of supply-and-demand: Too many cars, not enough road.

The road systems around here either can't be expanded at all because of physical limitations (e.g. Hwy 17 over the mountain), or because it would be prohibitively expensive to acquire the land adjacent to existing roads (another example of the magic of supply-and-demand).

What road expansion would be possible is usually torpedoed by the anti-any-tax-ever Rightist crowd (motto: "Let them fly helicopters!").

So, if it's not possible to jam any more people into cars jammed on to the overburdened roads, what alternative exists besides mass transit? Mass transit is one attempt at a practical solution, not an ideological jihad.

--Robert