Monday, February 11, 2008

Sub-cycles

I've now created a diagram showing the basic government-transportation-choice cycle and some of its consequences, and another one showing its interaction with land use and relative quality of life. Now here's one showing two sub-cycles involving carnage and corporate profit.



In words, government priorities largely determine land use and the relative quality of transportation modes. These in turn cause more or less carnage. The carnage, along with land use and relative quality, determine individual choice of mode.

There is another sub-cycle involving corporate profit. The extent to which people use a given transportation mode influences the degree to which they buy goods and services related to this mode (primarily cars and car stuff, but also patronizing newsstands, reading subway ads, etc.). In turn, the profit encourages corporations to market not just the goods and services, but the modes themselves, and to influence governments to invest in the modes that are more profitable for them. The government also buys contracts to subsidize the creation, maintenance and expansion of transportation infrastructure, contributing to corporate profits, and the corporations will be more likely to influence individual choices and government priorities to get contracts for the more profitable modes.

As you can see, the chart is pretty complex, and I'm thinking now that there's also a relationship between land use and corporate profit. I've tried to take the information on all three charts and combine it into single charts that I've drawn on paper, but it's a big mess. I hope that these three are fairly clear.
you can imagine what it would look like if I had the information on all three charts

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