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How To Immediately Decrease Oil Demand, Partially Solve Traffic &Decrease Pollution
Please forward this to others if you like the concept of formally, explicitly incentivizing carpooling. 'If You Hate It, Why is This Concept Dumb?' A solution to our public-transportation woes By Randall Osborne Sick of traffic jams on the ozone-shrouded freeway into Atlanta? Tired of the backed-up clog on Pike Street heading through Lawrenceville? Robert Cohen has an idea. I like it. Cohen's partial solution to traffic woes is "obvious (at least to me)," he writes in a memo to county planners. But it hasn't been obvious to everyone else. Cohen, of Lawrenceville, is getting the word out. "Encouragement of reproduction in whole or part," he adds, fragmentally, to the two- page document. "Not copyrighted." His plan has a few hitches. Cohen admits that much, right off the bat. For example, to make it work, insurance companies would have to "reconfigure" the way they write liability policies. What's more, Atlanta and Fulton County -- which have monopolized the taxi and limo market -- would have to ease up a bit, and ... You're probably starting to figure it out. Anyway, once we bring the insurance companies in line and bust up the sweet deal held in place by chauffers in Fulton County, we can move on to Cohen's plan. Summed up, in his words, it's this: "Fare-payin' passengers." Old-timers will recall a bumper sticker along these lines, favored by ruffian hippies. The sticker bore a little rhyme that dealt with an anatomy part and with hemp, using slang vernacular for each and concluding that "nobody rides for free." In Cohen's world, few people would. "We need to reconceptualize," he writes. In the memo, Cohen reconceptualizes like all get out. "A major problem with facilitating the private vehicles carrying of paying passengers also has to do with crime potential," he writes. "One solution might be that potential paying passengers could carry picture ID (cards) and these ID (cards) could be scanned or checked via the vehicles' cellular telephones. Such a screening process would seemingly be of some expense, but it is a technological possibility to utilize." Under Cohen's plan, the driver would not be obliged to take anybody with a valid card. "There would be no requirement that a vehicle would carry just anybody who is unknown to the driver," he writes, which is a relief. "In the typical situations where the drivers and passengers are co-workers and/ or neighbors (thus known to each other), then no screening is needed anyway." No, but you could still charge them. That's the beauty of the plan. The car-pool moocher would be a phenomenon of the past. Nobody rides for free. Exact amounts owed could be calculated. "Electronic taxi meters themselves should now hopefully be cheaper because of efficiencies in electronics. Best Buy, et. al., might sell and install the things. Or the vehicles' odometers could be utilized along with (the) wris****ch, and a simple formula formulated." Cohen's memo is more than practical advice. He throws in a few opinions, too. "The perimeter highway in DeKalb County is becoming increasingly clogged," he declares. "I currently favor an outer perimeter, possibly as a toll road." Mostly, though, Cohen wants to guide officials through the process of clearing up the roads. "The concept is to encourage more semi-public/semi- private taxis, so that not as many cars are needed. The incentive system could help to solve the transportation problem -- if institutions and laws could appropriately be reconfigured." Ah, there's the rub. Cohen includes a series of questions in which he rails at conditions that he knows are bad. Very bad. "Is our society too crime- prone for this?" he asks, apparently in reference to the prospect of bogus ID cards. "Does the automotive industry want to sell less vehicles?" He seems to know the answer. "Isn't Gwinnett doomed to gridlock, no matter what? If you hate it, why is this concept dumb? Please critique." I'm no traffic planner, so I'm hardly qualified to critique. Plus, the memo wasn't addressed to me. I only got a copy. But, in the manner of a non-skeptic and optimist, I like Cohen's solutions. They suggest an earlier time of free enterprise, the pioneering spirit, rugged individualism and clean air -- not to mention ruffian hippies, who (unlike everyone else) were not altogether serious. It was a time when (unlike today) people didn't really mean it when they said: "Nobody rides for free." | Gwinnett Loaf Home | Copyright 1997 by Creative Loafing | Published Feb. 15, 1997 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Google Home - Advertise with Us - Search Solutions - Services & Tools - Jobs, Press, & Help ©2003 Google Subject: How To Immediately Decrease Oil Demand, Partially Solve Traffic & Decrease Pollution Paying would help _all_ parties. The trouble with hitch hiking with strangers is they feel like they own you. The bumper sticker is what a lot of people believe but just aren't honest enough to admit to themselves. Not a bad idea. Bret Cahill Subject: How To Immediately Decrease Oil Demand, Partially Solve Traffic & Decrease Pollution Increase the cost of gas. Increase the cost of everything and force us to become lean and mean. Stop processing everything by adding "value". Force us to become environmentally healthy by making all the crap we consume to become too expensive to buy. This is what will eventually happen anyway. Subject: How To Immediately Decrease Oil Demand, Partially Solve Traffic & Decrease Pollution Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author This would work well with pay by day or pay by mile auto insurance. You always have the vehicle in your driveway ready to go but you only pay insurance when you actually drive the thing. Bret Cahill |
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