Can I drive it too?

Since, perhaps, not everyone will get to participate in the actual construction of the trolley system, perhaps everyone can have a chance to drive it. Maybe everyone should be required to take a turn driving it, and not for pay, but as a civic duty.

If every citizen drove a trolley for 4 to 8 hours per year, would there be much conflict with their regular jobs? Think of how many people you would meet driving one. I suppose you'd meet more if you drove it more, right? But when you're driving you have to watch the road, so you can't talk much face-to-face.

What are the odds that you'll meet somebody new, have a face-to-face conversation with that person that leads to a long term friendship, if you each drive cars? You leave point A at time x, and she leaves point B at time y. You are each headed for separate random destinations. If you pull up next to one another in traffic, what can happen? Can you talk? What are the chances you'll be headed for the same destination and then have a chance to talk?

What if there was a comprehensive city wide public transit with residential service rail lines and you each leave your homes headed for random separate destinations. What are the odds that you'll meet at either a stop or on the train? They are probably much higher; think about the stop light in traffic. What if all of you are in the same trolley car instead of in separate automobiles at a traffic light? Now you can talk to one another if you like.

I'm reading a book that says that we live in a life-world composed of independent actors whos actions are influenced by linguistically mediated inter-subjectivity. It follows that increasing everyone's number of opportunities for communication with others in the community will have an effect on what those actors, seen as a whole group, do within the context of that life-world. What actions will people perform to bring about a change they've never even considered? They need to think it over, and to do so, must communicate with those other people about it! Never forget that you are one of those people too.

We've all heard the old adage “Divide and Conquer”. In the social community with shared transportation resources, there are a great number of opportunities for communication with others. The overall structure of that communication is dynamic and perhaps mostly non-hierarchical. But when people are separated from one another so they can't talk, and they listen to mass media more than to each other... It begs the question: if they are playing follow the leader, then who's leadership are they following, and why?

Hay, ewe. What's your sin?

Hay.

I grew up in a rural area of south western Wisconsin. My Dad was a carpenter, and we rented an extra farmhouse... Years ago when they farmed with horses, farms were smaller. With the advent of mechanized farming, some farmers lost their land, and now what used to be several farms is one, so they have extra houses they rent out to hired hands and other people. If you know someone, you can get a fair rent.

When I was a boy, my odd jobs consisted of lawn mowing, bailing hay, milking cows, feeding hogs, shoveling stalls, painting and construction cleanup. We always grew a large garden, had fresh milk and meat we grew or hunted ourselves. The environment one grows up in has a great effect on how a person thinks about and sees the world. We lived closer to the land than most of you have. Some people think I'm Amish... that's not really true, though I have probably been influenced some by some of their philosophy of life. I can't be Amish unless they say I am and I agree. I'm probably more Wiccan than Amish.

Years later, I was living on the streets in a large city. I had everything I needed on my back in an REI backpack. The air is fouled with automobile exhaust (car cucka) and after you breath it long enough, you can't smell it anymore, especially if it's all you've ever known. I think that song that goes on about "ooh, ooh, that smell; that smell that surrounds you" is about petrol fumes and car exhaust, not drugs as many people sort of like "think". I think that if I tried to point it out to them, they would think I'm nuts. They don't see it. It's out of the picture in their minds; elided by that process of mind which strives to eliminate cognitive dissonance. They're all like "what for my daddy-owe? There's petrol in the car-owe!"

At one house we lived at, there was a sheep pasture across the fence around the yard behind the house. There was too many sheep on too little land, and they grazed it down to nubble shorter than a golf-course green. The rain began creating runnels in the sheep ruts that turned into washouts high enough to hide a ward. I'm told that one of the ancient greek writers told a similar tale. Part of ancient greece washed off into the sea because of over-cutting of forest and overgrazing by sheep herders. It used to be verdant pasture and lush forest, but is now rocky and sparse, from what I gather. It makes me wonder how much of that has gone on in the long forgotten past. We mostly don't notice it now, since what we see now is all we've ever known; there are no before and after photos to speak of.

Talkoot Reading List

A “Streetcar” is a passenger vehicle about the size of an urban transit bus that rolls on steel wheels over steel track. The track is often embedded into the street, so that the right-of-way may be shared by rubber-tired vehicles. An electrical contact apparatus reaches up from the roof of the Tram where it brushes along a fat copper wire strung above the track, gathering power for electric motors and coach lights. Getting from one place to another by Streetcar in a rail connected municipality is quite a lot like getting from one floor to another by elevator in a skyscraper. You wait a short time at a well-designated location, step in, ride it, then step off when you're there.

It's very convenient — what if you had to park the elevator after each use? Or what if each of us had our own individual elevator? That's absurd! The personal automobile is useful and always will be, but honestly, it doesn't scale to this many on the road at once. Traffic congestion is horrible. The collective fuel waste is outrageous! The time lost to busy idling just sitting in traffic or driving the same route day in and day out is priceless. On the Streetcar, you can read or have a face to face conversation with a fellow commuter...

Assuming that it will take a fuel shortage to make it happen... When we begin to manufacture fuel, there won't be enough for the number of cars currently on the road. If there was an alternative form of transportation and most people used it, there would be fewer cars on the road. That would make driving more enjoyable for everyone else... It would also reduce fuel demand, one factor of the Supply and Demand economic equation. Perhaps if fuel demand decreases, so will prices? If.

Another nice thing about socially shared transportation is that costs are carried by the commonwealth collective, aka, the government of, by, and for the People, where money is allegedly spent according to laws, not men... And so with this deal, provided that capacity planning is on track, as demand increases, the price carried to the individual actually decreases. Or we could leave it in the supposedly capable hands of a large capitalist corporate entity and let them determine the price. Or?

What it comes down to is that what really needs to happen is for humanity to quickly convert to technologies that are compatible with life. How quickly can it be done? Have you ever heard the one about “somebody else's job”? Tired of producing air pollution everywhere you go? Tired of being part of traffic congestion? Tired of using more fuel than is truly necessary? Tired of being dependant on fossil fuels? Tired of contributing to resource contention that can lead to warfare between nations? Who's job is it to solve these problems? Who's job is it to help implement them? Why join the military when there are solutions available that do not involve killing other people? Why not instead join forces here at home to grid our cities with Streetcar rails powered by wind and solar energy?

Below is a reading list with things pertinent to an upcoming article containing some ideas that I have been incubating regarding socially-shared transportation and the fuel problems. I have some relatively concrete and detailed solutions in mind that I still plan to write about, on a future occasion. Please read at least a few clicks deep into the following mesh; I've got to read them also, it'll take maybe a week at an hour or two a day...

• Great American Streetcar Scandal
• Business Model (Evolution)
  • Razor and Blades Business Model
• UN Agenda 21
• Talkoot, Barn Raising
• Tram, Streetcar, Trolley
• Category:Sustainable Technologies