> Obviously, anyone is free to own a car if they so choose, and even to use it for everything from going down to the shops for a newspaper to a 500 drive to your location. Personally, though I would encourage people to use puplic transport, if only so that when I'm in your corner of the world, you have a good system for me to use.

This is exactly my attitude. I hate renting cars. They're expensive, there is a ridiculous amount of paper work involved, and they're inconvenient to pick up. I'd much rather hop on a bus or a train.

> Interesting to note that the very idea of public transport evidently didn't occur to eric. Is that a common reaction in America? In England it would occur and be instantly dismissed because of the poor state of the system.

This paragraph fascinates me. In the early 80s, I lived in Shepperton, a small town on the south side of Kingston. (They're famous only for their movie studio, so far as I can tell.) I've also lived in Germany and in various places in the United States. England was the only place I've lived where the public transportation was good enough to actually use. Whenever we wanted to go shopping, we'd take the train. Shepperton was the end of the line for a train whose other end was Waterloo station in London. The bigger a shopping area we needed, the closer to London we'd go on the train. It was very convenient. Within London, of course, we had those nifty double decker busses to get around in.

Now, it's been over half my life since I've been there. I'm sure my memory of the experience is skewed and incomplete, and a lot may have changed in the last 17 years. Still, we were never able to make such extensive use of public transport anywhere else. Now I'm curious to know why we have such different perspectives on the same public transport system. Is it only London's suburbs where trains and busses are readily available? Is there somewhere else you've been, that I haven't, that's even better, which would explain our differing evaluations?

At any rate, as far as whether "the very idea of public transport" not occurring to eric is a broadly American trait or not, yes and no. We're a huge and internally diverse country. Eric lives in the San Diego area, which, I am told, has insufficient and essentially unusable public transportation. A lot of California cities sprung up very quickly during the gold rush and as such were not particularly planned for the huge growth that state has experienced since. Insufficient public transportation is but one of the symptoms. Other areas of the country, however, are better off. I was impressed with the public transportation in Washington, DC. I had been there before last year, but I didn't remember how good the metro was until we were there for the RinkUnion. DC's metro is expansive and, best of all, clean and unthreatening. For all the parts of DC I would not want to enter, the metro felt remarkably safe. Contrast with New York City, which has a subway system with rather complete service, except that you take your life into your own hands. Boston's subway system is only useful if you're already inside the city. If you're not in a city at all but small town country, like I am, then there is basically no public transportation anywhere. There are bus lines here and there, such as the one that goes between the carless student population of Durham (home of the University of New Hampshire) and Newington, where the nearest mall is, but even these are inconvenient to use.

The bottom line, I guess, is that if you're wondering about what "Americans" think of this issue, you won't get a consensus.