History Forum / General / General Topics / April 2006

NEWS & EVENTS

'If You Hate It, Why is This Concept Dumb?'
A solution to our public-transportation woes

By Randall Osborne

Sick of traffic jams on the ozone-shrouded freeway into Atlanta? Tired
of the
backed-up clog on Pike Street heading through Lawrenceville? Robert
Cohen has
an idea.
I like it.

Cohen's partial solution to traffic woes is "obvious (at least to
me)," he
writes in a memo to county planners. But it hasn't been obvious to
everyone
else. Cohen, of Lawrenceville, is getting the word out. "Encouragement
of
reproduction in whole or part," he adds, fragmentally, to the two-page
document. "Not copyrighted."

His plan has a few hitches. Cohen admits that much, right off the bat.
For
example, to make it work, insurance companies would have to
"reconfigure" the
way they write liability policies. What's more, Atlanta and Fulton
County --
which have monopolized the taxi and limo market -- would have to ease
up a bit,
and ...

You're probably starting to figure it out.

Anyway, once we bring the insurance companies in line and bust up the
sweet
deal held in place by chauffers in Fulton County, we can move on to
Cohen's
plan. Summed up, in his words, it's this: "Fare-payin' passengers."

Old-timers will recall a bumper sticker along these lines, favored by
ruffian
hippies. The sticker bore a little rhyme that dealt with an anatomy
part and
with hemp, using slang vernacular for each and concluding that "nobody
rides
for free."

In Cohen's world, few people would. "We need to reconceptualize," he
writes. In
the memo, Cohen reconceptualizes like all get out.

"A major problem with facilitating the private vehicles carrying of
paying
passengers also has to do with crime potential," he writes. "One
solution might
be that potential paying passengers could carry picture ID (cards) and
these ID
(cards) could be scanned or checked via the vehicles' cellular
telephones. Such
a screening process would seemingly be of some expense, but it is a
technological possibility to utilize."

Under Cohen's plan, the driver would not be obliged to take anybody
with a
valid card. "There would be no requirement that a vehicle would carry
just
anybody who is unknown to the driver," he writes, which is a relief.
"In the
typical situations where the drivers and passengers are co-workers
and/or
neighbors (thus known to each other), then no screening is needed
anyway."

No, but you could still charge them. That's the beauty of the plan.
The
car-pool moocher would be a phenomenon of the past. Nobody rides for
free.

Exact amounts owed could be calculated. "Electronic taxi meters
themselves
should now hopefully be cheaper because of efficiencies in
electronics. Best
Buy, et. al., might sell and install the things. Or the vehicles'
odometers
could be utilized along with (the) wristwatch, and a simple formula
formulated."

Cohen's memo is more than practical advice. He throws in a few
opinions, too.
"The perimeter highway in DeKalb County is becoming increasingly
clogged," he
declares. "I currently favor an outer perimeter, possibly as a toll
road."

Mostly, though, Cohen wants to guide officials through the process of
clearing
up the roads. "The concept is to encourage more
semi-public/semi-private taxis,
so that not as many cars are needed. The incentive system could help
to solve
the transportation problem -- if institutions and laws could
appropriately be
reconfigured."

Ah, there's the rub. Cohen includes a series of questions in which he
rails at
conditions that he knows are bad. Very bad. "Is our society too
crime-prone for
this?" he asks, apparently in reference to the prospect of bogus ID
cards.
"Does the automotive industry want to sell less vehicles?" He seems to
know the
answer. "Isn't Gwinnett doomed to gridlock, no ...

Copyrighted by CREATIVE LOAFING 1997