I'd take Alan's article a bit more seriously if it wasn't just recycled American rubbish. Look here http://www.demographia.com/dbx-transport.htm for some examples of where the ideas come from. He just plonks some American graphs from an anti-public transport think-tank in his article and we're expected to believe that they are; (1) accurate and (2) relevant to Australia? Lazy, lazy, lazy.

BOAZ_David, I agree with you on the merits pf Singapore's MRT, but it is not going to happen here. Firstly, Singapore has much higher population densities to make it feasible. Secondly, the level of government control in Singapore is more like the old USSR or China than Australia. Thus the massive dislocation of retrofitting a project like this to a city can be railroaded past any opposition. Thirdly, Singapore's planned economy means that they will pay for infrastructure and recoup the money over time (unlike our current short-term govt thinking). I'd rather live in a democracy than a one-party state, no matter how shiny and punctual the trains are.

My spouse and I make 8 trips to work each week, 6 by public transport. This means we only need 1 car between us, saving in excess of $5,000 per year. Should I feel guilty that other taxpayers are subsidising our lifestyle? According to Alan, those taxpayers have made a free choice to use their cars, so obviously I shouldn't

Too many responses to answer all. In most cases people are looking for political solutions. Many will never be convinced by facts.
Sage wants a replication of the British "new towns" which failed because people don't live near their work and work needs are too flexible for the 25 years-in-one-job model.
Sir Vivor draws attention to some US research which has many problems. Among these it models household expenditure rather than using actual data, which is 40% the level. It also uses house prices based on 1999 and, in areas where the planners have prevailed, those prices have increased substantially.
Hasbeen wants more origianl research go do it!
JustinW admits to making his living from being a planner and cites ancient texts to prove it! It would be nice if IPA earned $1 million from car manufacturers, airlines, pigeon post and all other conspirators against public transport.

There are previous examples of species including humans writing their societies out of existance. Doing what they wanted instead of what they required. Col Rouge is a perfect example.

Motor vehicles have the potential to destroy what we have. It doesn't matter what you want or what you choose. The environment doesn't ask you it behaves according to it's rules not yours. Of course you don't learn that in a commerce or economics degree.

And referring to Bay Area Rapid Transit does not make sense. As an engineer with some experience in the railway equipment area, BART was badly planned and conceived unlike dozens of successful urban transport systems elsewhere.

The reason public transport systems have to be subsidized is because motorists don't pay anything like the cost of their required infrastructure. Roads, policing the idiots, ambulences hospitalisation, environmental costs etc. Charge a realistic ammount and imagine the outcry by the ill informed.

So we are faced with subsidizing both the private transport and the public.

PK “Your choice…
Not to see global warming,
depletion of oil reserves
unfavourable Terms of Trade
despoliation of the urban landscape

No one has yet convinced me that “global warming” is an issue exclusively to do with private motor cars, it is inappropriate to assume removing cars will reduce global warming, especially when trams use all that “brown coal” generated electricity.
I doubt you own oil reserves, you get no say in their use.
I doubt what you trade would have any impact on Australia’s terms of trade, you don’t get to decide that either.
As for urban landscape, all them folk have to live somewhere, with or without cars.

what you seek is to impose your will on the choices of other people. That is plain selfish of you.

Individuals, whose petrol taxes subsidise incompetent public transport have the right to exercise their choices and not be restricted by your personal whim.

“Overuse of the private motor vehicle and is not a good thing for the individual, the economy or the environment.”

That is simply your personal opinion and a lot of people disagree with you.

Logic “BART was badly planned and conceived” – but it was the product of supposed “experts”.

Everyone quoting from the “Experts” and the one who admits to being a “town planner”, you are the ones to blame. Based on your track record thus far, we would be better off had we left you to play in the sand pit and got on with life without you.

“There are previous examples of species including humans writing their societies out of existence. Doing what they wanted instead of what they required. Col Rouge is a perfect example”

Individuals do everything, achieve everything and innovate to benefit everyone else.

If humanity is to move out of existence, it will be an individual which does it because – individuals are the ones who do everything.

Remove “individual” from society and what is left? Nothing!

As dear Margaret said, "Society does not exist…"
Society is merely a poorly applied collective noun for all the individuals who comprise it.

Hasbeen, the problem could be the other way around: It is because so many people have cars that your employer felt free to move to an area poorly served by public transport. If the employer thought that it could not keep its workers, or find an equally skilled workforce then it would not have moved away from public transport routes.

And it shows why we don't have better public transport than what we could have. If there was more demand for public transport it would be provided. That is a political reality. Instead there is a demand for roads and other forms of subsidy for those who drive.

A particular need is for transport that flows around the hubs rather than in and out of the centre. This of course will never happen until people not only demand it but then use it.

You can tell that Col Rouge is one of those free-market libertarians, otherwise known as the Marxists of the right. Where Marxists had the delusion that collective action and altruism could run a society, Libertarians think society can purely run on selfishness and individualism.

"No one has yet convinced me that “global warming” is an issue exclusively to do with private motor cars, it is inappropriate to assume removing cars will reduce global warming, especially when trams use all that “brown coal” generated electricity.
I doubt you own oil reserves, you get no say in their use.
I doubt what you trade would have any impact on Australia’s terms of trade, you don’t get to decide that either."

Instead of actually answering some of these points, you simply say that he has no right to talk about them. What’s worse than a libertarian, is an authoritarian libertarian. "No one has yet convinced me", doesn't mean there is not a link (which there is, as a significant proportion of emissions come from private transportation), it is incredibly arrogant to think all because it hasn't been proved to YOU, that it therefore hasn't been proven. Libertarians typically do this. Science, Engineering, Ecology, Physics and other things that embarrass Libertarian economic/social theories are magicked away by not having any understanding of them and therefore simply denying or dismissing them as trivial.

"what you seek is to impose your will on the choices of other people. That is plain selfish of you."

What rubbish. This is done all the time to keep a society functioning. We enforce drug laws to keep the number of harmful drug addicts down. We enforce child protection laws to protect Children from abuse. In times of conflict, we draft citizens to fight so we can remain free(WW2 and the Japanese Advance). The list is endless. What's selfish is to be apart of a society and gain all the benefits of it but be unwilling to sacrifice anything for it. Typical of Libertarians.

The rest of your post is a barely coherent rant, which I wont bother with.