This is notwithstanding the ability for people to visit or holiday in far reaches of their country just by using their motorcar. Sometimes I think these environmentalists and socialists want everyone to be poor and unable to travel. Its a bizarre and perverse desire where they claim they wish to end poverty yet they are doing everything they can to increase it!

Your view of life in the pre-industrial world is certainly idyllic. The reality was rather different. Throughout history most people have lived in disease-ridden squalor. Even kings and queens dwelt in conditions that we would consider appalling. Royalty, along with commoners, had to suffer tooth extractions without anesthesia, tainted water, and spoiled food. Because transportation was so bad, local famines were common even when bountiful harvests were being enjoyed as little as fifty miles away.

In early industrial England, people fled the countryside for the cities. Factory life was unpleasant to say the least, but it must have been less bad than other options judging by the way people voted with their feet. Dickens’ horror stories of orphans enslaved in sweatshops described conditions in government run institutions, not privately run businesses (see: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/ideas-and-consequences/child-labor-and-the-british-industrial-revolution-2/).

The free market, by increasing productivity so that a single wage-earner could support an entire family, ended child labor. A big part of that productivity gain was based on improved transportation.

The facts would seem to contradict that statement. The internal combustion engine was only possible with intense cruelty and slavery in the form of the industrial factory system. Prior to that, many people were self-employed and worked at their leisure. Traditional forced slavery of the ancients was just replaced with modern wage slavery.

Fire engines and ambulances rushing to the scene of car wrecks trying to rescue people killed or injured due to travelling at abnormal speeds using automobiles. Hmm…Makes a lot of sense sure…*cough* The cruelty inflicted by the internal combustion engine, whether caused directly or indirectly fars outweighs any supposed benefits .I reckon most firemen and ambulance workers would be out of a job without the ever-frequent car collisions. Some people also like silence and the sounds of nature not the blaring noise pollution of ambulances and fire trucks which can cause hearing loss and hearing problems.

It’s also easy to dwell on the bad and ignore the good. Vehicles do more than belch smoke and kill people in wrecks. Fire engines and ambulences save lives by bringing people help far faster than could teams of horses. Farm tractors have helped increase farm productivity so much that hunger is no longer the norm. Automobiles, by ridding city streets of mountains of manure, streams of urine, dead horses, and the swarms of flies that went with them reduced disease and death.

So, ride your wondrous horse and be of good cheer.

Horses beat cars every time in my book. Machines suck. i don’t understand how some people get satisfaction from tinkering with engines and mechanical parts that are to all extents, dead matter. Horses are alive with spirit and life. Some of us have never owned cars and never will because we don’t like AUTOMOBILE POLLUTION and all the expenses that come with owning them.

I prefer to keep horses in the country, but if I had a choice I would rather city streets be full of horse manure and horses rather than noisy, stinking fumigating automobiles polluting the air with smog and noise and horns honking, where you can’t even cross the street cause you might get smashed to death by a speeding car. There are no car accidents with horses, no insurance payments, plates to pay for, cops giving you tickets, maintenance expenses, filling up at the pump, etc.

Cars suck. Horses are living breathing animals that get us from point A to point B and run on grass. I never feed my horse oats or the like. He eats grass and lives out in the country open air all the time, not in a stall.

“Oh horse you are a wondrous thing,
No horns to honk, no bells to ring,
No license buying every year
With plates to screw on front and rear,
No spark to miss; no gears to strip,
You start yourself, no clutch to slip,
No gas bills mounting every day,
To steal the joy of life away.
Your inner tubes are all O.K.
And thank the Lord, they’ll stay that way!
Your spark plugs never miss or bust,
Your motor never makes us fuss,
Your frame is good for many a mile,
Your body never changes style.
Your wants are few and easily met,
Your something on the auto yet!”

~Verme Bell

One gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 BTU or 121 MJ of energy. If we took a trip with an average of 35mpg (more than most cars on the road get) that would be roughly 3.46 MJ/mile. Double that for your SUV that gets 18mpg on the highway.

In 2005 Amtrak reported the energy use of 2,935 BTU per passenger mile, equal to 3.09 MJ/passenger mile. If we could displace more flights between cities, this number would only improve. This is without high speed rail, (TGV is under 1 MJ/passenger mile) or hybrid locomotives (not so far away.)

So unless we are all driving a Prius or carpooling, I do not think cars are blowing train travel out of the water.

America dedicates its rail lines mostly to freight, which is very energy efficient. But we can’t pack 100 tons of passengers into a single railcar. Europe dedicates its rail lines to passenger, and so 75 percent of its freight goes by truck. Not a good trade off!

Thus, just as the helicopter is typically used for short flights and special missions, while jets are used for air freight and long-distance passenger flight, so we should use trains for travel between cities. A good train network will encourage the mega-cities to redistribute into more medium-size cities centered around rail stations, as the trains will make cities deep within the continent as accessible as the port cities; in fact, train transportation can be nearly as cheap as ocean transportation, yet much faster. With more people living in smaller cities, commute times and miles traveled in cars will drop.