Tappan Zee Bridge to Cost $16 Billion to Replace. Car CULTure apologists say "Pshaw!"

The same "renewables will save us" car cultists who whine and whine and whine and whine over the costs of nuclear plants while planning to grind up who rain forests to sustain the car cult, seem notioriously indiffenent to the government subsidized costs of the car CULTure.

Now comes news that the Tappan Zee bridge, which happens to be relatively close to the Indian Point Nuclear Station - the plant that has caused infinitely fewer deaths than the Tappan Zee Bridge - will cost $16 billion dollars to replace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/nyregion/27bridge.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin">Um, NNadir, some trains are involved too, you know. Only about 7 billion bucks is for cars.



Of course, the train part is good, but it sort of makes one wonder about the existence of suburbs, all of which derive their existence from the government subsidized highway system.

To be clear, I am criticizing the culture of which I am a part.

You got a problem with that?

I was born in Brooklyn though and I have a sense of what it once was and is no more.

What was the Bronx like before the Cross Bronx Expressway sliced in half?

How about Brooklyn before the BQE?

Staten Island before the Verrazano's Bridge?

For that matter, what were San Diego and the LA Basin like before the Freeways?

The fact is that Americans take it for granted that they should do anything in their power to maintain car CULTure status quo.

I think we should be doing something else. How about we stop subsidizing the car culture to the tune of trillions of dollars each year?

How about a few trillion dollars to install electrified light rail in communities. I live in a town that once had less than 3,000 people and had a trolley on Main Street. There were local businesses, hardware stores now replaced by Home Depots, tailors now replaced by Shopping Malls.

There will be no other way until one asks fundemental questions.

But if you must know, my real intent here is to make fun of the anti-nuke cults that when they aren't trying to vandalize the world's largest climate change gas free form of primary energy are coming here to tell us how we can save our car cult with a little more corn and sugar cane.

"... the existence of suburbs ... which derive their existence from the government subsidized highway system."

OUR tax dollars are being spent to destroy rural communities, subdivide and pave over entire COUNTIES, increase pollution, decrease efficiency, AND pollute the planet beyond short-term recovery. We are paying for the gun & bullets used to shoot ourselves. :crazy: Yet bring this up and you're called a loon.

"How can we live without cars!?" they say...

That's all there is to it.