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Am I Missing Something Here?
December 24, 2008
This writer is missing something. One of this evenings news reports centered itself around the upcoming hike in bus fares from 1.00 to 1.50 per trip. The C.D.T.A. (Capital District Transportation Authority) announced the possibility of a rate hike months ago and with the state cut of 3.5 million dollars in funding it seems now as was announced little choice in hiking the fares causing an additional hardship on regular mass transit users.
I must credit the bus system of Albany, N.Y. With a system and routing that covers not only the city proper but many of the connecting communities and rural areas. It is indeed a marvel of logistics. It seems that this is one of the routes our society should enhance in order to reduce our use of petroleum products and also the harsh emissions that continue with each year to make our environment more unpalatable.
Cutting the budget needs of a mass transit system that is a good model of what our cities can provide our residents in alternative transportation is in this writers opinion a huge mistake. And, no . . . I am not privy to the budgetary needs of the Empire state nor have a connection to how those funds are allocated. I do however feel that it may not be such a difficult thing to find in a state with a multi-billion dollar yearly budget three or four million to funnel to such a consumer friendly, traffic reducing, public service unit like the C.D.T.A.
I would want to believe that this is the type of transportation system that would be enhanced and polished. Perhaps even providing discounts to the thousands of State Workers that regularly drive solo over the very same roads as the buses. Excuse the sidebar, sadly our society has a unique complex psychological pull to the automobile added to the societal perception of people who ride buses which further reinforced that skewed psychological profile of the independence and perception of a car. Aye, it's a twisted world we've made. Let us also remember the financial hardship on many of the current riders of the buses that cross the capital district many of whom like you would rather have a car. In a society where our minimum wage is not more than six dollars an hour an increase such as this can be a very express hardship.
We must reduce our feeding on the resources of this planet. No, it's not immediate and hence another facet of the problem, ferrying onto the future generations because we aren't going to be around. Well, this timeline is now running dry and the future generation is now here. The last one-hundred years of technological and industrial gains have shown clearly the evident and eventual repercussions. We've done what we've done to our environment in just the last few hundred years worldwide. Imagine, without change what two-hundred more years may show?
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For too long I've messed with the wiring in my head. Now it shorts out more oft than not. But at my age I just sit and enjoy the sparks. RJM '07
Many Exceptional Free and Pay for Images Available here Fotosearch.com
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