Bob R.: Your numbers have been widely and repeatedly debunked.
JK: No they haven’t, you just keep bringing up irrelevant little nits because you are blindly supporting failed transit.

Bob R.: So is it fair to say you supported the recent increase in CAFE standards?
JK: No. The government has no business dictating to people without a really good reason. Al Gore’s lies are not a really good reason to get people killed (per Brooking Institute study of the previous CAFÉ). Of course getting people killed never seems to be a problem for progressives if it furthers their fantasy agenda (except bike riders.) Light rail kills people at over two times the rate of cars, but progressive keep pushing it.

Bob R.: (Also, your energy/CO2 figures have been repeatedly debunked, and even by your own figures published on one of your several web sites, electric rail transit uses less energy than cars.)
JK: You seem to have missed the qualifier (appropriate when we are discussing social engineering alternatives): SMALL cars, not the average car. Small cars, particularly hybrids, beat mass transit. You know that - why do you keep denying it? As a public policy matter, pushing people to sam ll cars would save more energy and be more likely to succeed. But that would not feed Portland’s developers’ massive subsidies to build future ghettos at all of the toy train stations and bus stops.

Bob R.: Cars usually are faster than transit.
Usually, yes.
JK: Thank you.

Bob R.: BUT WE DIGRESS ...
Let's get back to the cost of cars and this supposed 22,000 figure, which (according to Terry and JK) states that a bus does 22,000 times the damage to roads as do cars.
JK: Actually, that came from Sam. Why do you have to distort its origins?

Bob R.: I'm going to assume a typical mid-size car (instead of a larger car, truck or SUV) .....Starting with the car...if the taxes weren't "diverted" to transit and "non-road" projects like stormwater runoff, curb extensions, etc.... Let's give those critics the benefit of the doubt
JK: Notice the carefully constructed “straw man”?

Bob R.: That's right, according to JK, Portland-Metro area roads are disintegrating to the tune of FOUR POINT EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS --- EVERY YEAR! --- just because TriMet drives these buses around.
JK: Now he uses his straw man to deceive us!
Aw, come on, Bob. you don’t begin to pass the smell test. You are writing pure rot.

Take a break, contemplate a world without transit - with only happy people, of all income levels, able to go where they want, when they want, at low cost, with low energy consumption and thus low pollution in a car. For those few unable to drive, there is door to door service supported by the millions saved by not feeding wasteful, government monopoly, mass transit. That is the real ideal world, not some high density rat hole served by overpriced toy trains created because of massive campaign donations by those that profit from it.

Thanks
JK