BIKE: Matters arising

[rcbaker]

In case anyone is in doubt that world oil production is fixing to peak soon, the 
media has discovered the fact recently. Here is a pretty big collection of articles on 
same. The best current thinking is that world oil will peak about 2008, with oil 
prices strongly interacting with the global economy before then, acting much as a 
limiting effect to restrain economic expansion until the peak.

http://www.peakoil.net/Newspapers/Aarticles.html

Meanwhile, everone has the right to be wrong now and then, but Mike Dahmus 
seems to me to abuse this right by supporting toll roads while at the same time 
opposing the rail line up to Cedar Park and Leander. 

The fact is that no matter who pays for $2.2 billion in new and expanded roads, 
suburbanites or whomever, to let the real estate scam artists and special interests 
successfully promote these roads (that is who is overwhelmingly behind them) is 
an enormous planning mistake of the first order. Mike used to deny that we are 
rapidly approaching a peak in world oil production, and his support of billions in toll 
roads backed with local debt indicates to me that he still believes that stuff. 

On the related matter of regional rail, it seems to be trendy to think that the red line 
would be an inefficient link that would benefit the suburbs. There is at least some 
truth to this line not being a good first choice for a good system, but at the this 
point this line is the only possibility. The line is dirt cheap at $60 million, and 
probably would be popular -- and would have the great advantage of preserving 
Capital Metro's funds from a total raid by the road hogs like Mike Krusee. 
According to Peter Calthorpe, this red line has a good potential for upgrading to a 
more frequent service level approximating the characteristics of light rail. 

A friend told me Krusee is trying to threaten toll road opponents by promising to kill 
this rail line if the toll roads are defeated. Roads in Texas are the distilled essence 
of rotten politics. Anyone capable of understanding the energy crisis should fight 
major new and expanded roads in favor of maintaning what we already have, and 
especially toll roads built with borrowed money. Toll roads are based on the 
premise of business as usual, and fly in the face of the planning philosophy of 
Envision Central Texas, if anyone still takes that effort seriously, after spending a 
few million dollars on it. 

 -- Roger