Ditch the Car, Take the Train

I have been riding mass transit(bus) here in Fort Lauderdale, Fl for over fifteen years. Two buses to and two buses from work five days a week for the past 15 years. Donating my car back then to The Salvation Army was the smartest move I made. I decided, even back then that the savings I would accrue would help fund my son's college. And it has! All people seem to do is complain about gas and nothing else. They complain as they pump it and they complain as they pay for it. If only these same people would let us drill within our boundries and build more refineries and atomic power plants so many propblems would be solved. But they are against that. So, when they complain, I just laugh. The biggest fear that I have is my monthly bus pass going up a buck in the near future.

High gas prices have hurt rural areas like Vicksburg ms. Vicksburg/Warren County Ms doesn't have a real mass transit system like those of you do up in the Northeast. But if the county and town did I guarantee you the populace would take buses. The only equilivalant to mass transit the RiverCity has is NRoute buses. There are small buses but the fleet is too accodomate the needs populace. Not to mention the Mayor of Vicksburg Ms and the President of the county board of supes haven't honestly done enough for mass transit here. Which is real unfornunuate. Now in the capitol of Jackson Ms,there is mass transit. JTran serves its customers in the Jackson metro area. The buses are everywhere. When I was in Europe I enjoyed riding the commuter trains in England,the commuter trains to Barcelona and Catalonia. Put me on a European train I honestly enjoy it. But the small minded leaders need to grow up and examine mass transit issues,especially for those who don't want to drive. Small rural areas like Vicksburg and the surrounding communiies are the real victims of high gas prices. Mass transit is the future. :)

I would dearly love to take the train. Problem is there is no train, there is no bus. There are millions of people in America that do not have those options. When I was still at home with my parents we lived in the city and I took mass transit everywhere I didn't walk or ride my bike. Nowadays if you ride your bike you had better look out for the cars and trucks.

Here's a follow up story that was filed in the Vicksburg Post,Saturday Edition. It deals with the Vicksburg Ms National Military Park and high gas prices. Now high gas prices are beginning to bite into tourism. Administratiors of the Vicksburg National Military Park. In the summer months the the Civil War military Park is a big draw along with reenactments of Cival War Conflicts. Now the admistrators of the Park are now predicting a low turn out for the summer months due to high gas prices. In fact this spring the numbers of visitors has dropped off significantly. Honestly I thought the adminstrator who spoke to the paper went overboard when he included Iraq in his quotes. Now already down here with gas prices have reached 3.73 to 3.75 thus far. And the high gas prices has hit the local tourism business. Even the local spring pilgrimage has been hit with a signfinant drop in numbers. Now with families cutting back Vicksburg's own tourism,convention businesses are facing drop offs. But the Vicksburg Military Park is a real big draw. Now I toured this park and it's beautiful park. Landscaped and green with cannons facing the Mississippi River. It has Civil War markers of various state battelions who fought in the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863. I expected the tourism numbers to drop and the article confirmed this.

I am sick of hearing your analyst telling me I am using too much gasoline and need to conserve, that I need to carpool or use mass transit. These are the same people that don’t own a car and if they do they are not carpooling either. Pretty tough to carpool when you leave for work at 4:30 AM isn’t it? These people telling me I use too much fuel, when they want more streetlights so they feel safer. I cannot even see the stars in the small town of Greensburg, PA because of all the lights burning all night long at the empty malls, factories and stores. Maybe the insurance companies requiring all these lights in order to insure these businesses should be paying fuel surcharges. How many lights burn in empty offices at FOX each day? How many lights are burning empty offices all day and night around the country? I was brought to turn the lights off when I left a room because my parents were brought-up during the depression. I never saw my grandparents step over a penny on the street. Everyday I drive past dozens of parents sitting at school bus stops with their engines idling either picking up or dropping off their children for school. Many drive their children to and from school each day because they don’t want them to ride the school bus. Most of these people are sitting there in SUVs too. Personally I think all these people should be fined for this behavior. Walk with your children to and from school or the bus stop. These analysts have no clue what is going on in rural America. First there is no mass transit out here. Most of the manufacturing facilities in this country have been built in the middle of nowhere because they were given massive tax breaks and free land by our lawmakers. These analysts of yours are the same people throwing away three Starbucks coffee cups a day and three plastic water bottles a day. The people working in rural America use a device called a thermos bottle because it is cheaper and reusable. How much of the billions of barrels of oil are being consumed each day consumed by the Federal Government, such as Congress, the Military, etc. I cannot even imagine how much fuel has been and will be consumed by the Presidential Candidates in this election year. I they were truly interested in conservation they would have sat in front of a camera and made their points. Do you want to save millions upon millions of barrels of oil everyday immediately, raise the legal driving age to twenty-one. This will pull millions of cars off the road, not only saving fuel but the trickle down savings to our highways and emissions will also be enormous. Another big savings that could be accomplished immediately is bringing back the “Blue Laws”. For those unfamiliar with the “Blue Laws” you just close everything but essential services on Sundays. Families could actually spend sometime with each other and maybe even eat together. Not one these candidates cares about conserving fuel, they just want me to save fuel so they can use more. Like Al Gore flying around the world in a private jet telling us that Global Warming is being caused by carbon based fuels! My mother always said, make sure your own doorstep was clean before complaining about your neighbors doorstep.

Why don't some of these American billionaires start a foreign based drilling company and start drilling off the US coast? What with a 3 mile limit what is stopping other countries from drilling now, capital that's all. And sooner later the world demand for oil will have foreign rigs setting of our coast. And this will cause great outrage in Congress and they will immediately want to change the 3 mile limit! Other than capital, what is stopping any foreign power from drilling off our coast? (answer 'Nothing') I say let American capitalist do it first. The heck with the environmentalists, and a US Congress that does not have the American Citizens best interests at heart. It is time for capitalists to rebel against an increasingly socialist government. Let us pool our capital, invest it in a foreign held offshore drilling company of our choice and start drilling now. It won't affect the price significantly now but it will insure a future supply to the USA, regardless of the power struggle in the Middle East.. Face it, putting a solar array on your roof is not going to put gas in your car.