We don't need more cars on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, we need public transit! Another Bay Bridge will mean not only more traffic but more urban sprawl since bad development ensures further bad development. Public transit development, on the other hand, encourages city growth around an efficient central structure and lessens the marred and anti-social landscapes of car dependency.

Why doesn't the Eastern Shore have any significant public transportation like a rail transit system? (*) Because we wouldn't have enough paying people to justify the cost? This is partly true because most people are already locked into an automobile orientation. Also true is the history that led up to the apparent cost justification problems of building rail transit.

For example, decades ago a corrupt plan was put into action by some automobile and oil companies to minimize public rail transit in favor of cars, trucks, and buses, called the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. With the U.S. government essentially run by big business and pro-auto lobbying interests, public transit development has been going downhill ever since. (answers.com)

Having a few buses or shuttles milling about the Eastern Shore of Maryland just isn't effective for current population levels. What we need is a rail line that connects with the Washington/Baltimore rail lines, bridges over or under the Chesapeake Bay, runs through Easton, Cambridge, Salisbury, and over to Ocean City. Too expensive you say? Sure it would be expensive, but only because the wrong infrastructure was built in the first place.

The original Bay Bridge design should have included a rail carrying underbelly instead of designed exclusively for cars. And if that was not possible then a tunnel should have been built. The public transit infrastructure should have been planned and built between the 1940's and 60's. Instead, massive amounts of money were spent on highways crisscrossing every square inch of America, blighting the landscape and eviscerating communities.

The trillions that have been doled out over the past decades on automobile infrastructure is staggering, and the resultant pollution, traffic jams, and environmental destruction continues at an unabated pace.

The federal transportation bill, called the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, appropriates over $217 billion, but it spends five times as much on highways as on public transportation. A single track of rail moves as many people as a six lane highway during rush hour. For every $5 that is spent on highways, only $1 is spent on public transit…. (sierraclub.org)

Trucks are part of the problem too. Long haul trucking is massively inefficient compared to freight rail transport and the average highway carries hundreds of semi's barreling along contributing to congestion, pollution, and safety problems. While trucking within cities and connecting between nearby cities is necessary, a proliferation of long distance trucking in place of freight rail transportation simply doesn't make sense.

Is public transit the only way in which people should be able to move long distances? No, but it should serve as a transportation option between longer unwalkable distances. Cars should be largely subservient to public transit, so that the predominance of going to work or shopping from home is satisfied by transit and especially walking, and special occasions are satisfied by car.

Cities and towns (where most people live) should be planned according to a predominance of public transit, but more rural areas would highly utilize the automobile. Still, if supported by the community, rural transit routes and communal sharing are easily realized.

Many countries in Europe have an effective public transit system. Sweden, for example, has a quite efficient transportation system. Sweden also has one of the highest levels of automobile ownership within Europe. The difference between Sweden and the U.S. is that most Swedes don't have to drive their cars everywhere, they use available public transit for a high percentage of their daily trip distances. The public transit option is there so they use it, and their high standard of living allowing them to purchase a car gives them another transportation option.

On the Eastern Shore of Maryland there is no predominance of transit, so we are presented with only one option: You have to have a car and use it for all distances traveled. Basing future development plans such as an additional Chesapeake bridge on the further glorification of car dependency is poor reasoning. Eastern Shore residents and the millions of tourists that visit the beach should be presented with a more efficient and comfortable way to travel—rail transit.

(*) This question was originally posed by the great thinker and educationalist Christopher Callaghan.