RWThomas,

You are pretty much on track about transportation in europe. Paris is an excellent example. You can go anywhere you want to in Paris and quickly. You just hop down a hole to the Metro and jump on a train which comes along every few minutes. If you want to go a another large city in Europe, you jump down a hole with your luggage and take a train to the North or South station and jump on one of the big trains that constantly traverse Europe. There are two reasons our fuel is so much cheaper. For one the heavy taxes in Europe subsidize the the mass transit systems. The second reason is, the cost of fuel is subsidized by the Federal Government in the US. Our whole economy is built around the sale and fueling of automobiles and Detroit and especially the oil companies are not going to let that change. What if those subsidies were channeled into alternate energy sources. I can dream can't I? I hope there isn't anyone out there who still thinks we live in a Democracy. What we have is a two party system. Powerful lobbyists like the AMA don't care who wins; they slip a hundred thousand dollars into the pockets of both the democrats and the republicans. Their only interest is to keep third parties from messing with things. When Bush senior was running for re election, he came to the Bay Area for a fund raiser. Did he go to a banquet hall in San Francisco to get a bunch of donations? No he went to the private home of a wealthy oil baron in an affluant town. I better get off of my soap box.

See ya,
Peter

__________________
Auto Zentral Ltd.