- People generally live where they want to live, and people moved to the suburbs because they could. I would prefer a large house with a yard over a walkup in the big city, and oddly enough, almost everyone else did too. Then when you throw in irrational zoning laws, rent controls, and other attempts to "fix" things when you don't like where market forces are taking you, you get a situation where it becomes almost impossible to live near where you work. Right now downtown San Francisco seems to be largely occupied with either the very poor or the very rich.

This is not news. I used to be in architecture school, and even back then wonderful "planned communities" with all kinds of advanced ideas about how a community OUGHT to work were the rage. The big thing then was the "new town" of "Jonathan," which encompassed every 1960s idea of what a town ought to be. The outfit went into foreclosure in 1980, and is pretty much a standard suburb today. Imagine living somewhere where the whole damn town acts like your homeowners association.

- Hybrids are a great idea, and I believe that a large number of American vehicles will be hybrids within the next ten or so years (including SUVs). The really good news about this is that hybrids do have large battery systems as part of their operation, and large scale development and sales of hybrids will do more to drive battery technology and reduce battery costs in the near future than all the research projects to date.

- We spent a huge amount of money on a light rail system out here that is going broke, and has about twenty riders on each trip. People like cars. They go where you want, when you want, and are there waiting when you need another ride. You get to listen to the radio, and you get to pick who you are riding with.

The kind of people who plan such things believe that what they think matters a hell of a lot more than what the users want.

When a private company does this, they go broke. Government agencies just suck more money off of taxpayers forever. Nobody has yet pointed out a mass transit system in the last thirty years that actually made money.

Our light rail is currently devouring cash that could be used for the bus systems, which actually do get riders and do the job for many people. I haven't done any numbers, but I wonder if the mass transit authority would actually be profitable if it wasn't carrying the futuristic pet transit projects of Those Who Know Better Than Us around like an albatross.