Q, the infrastructure is in, but it's the power source that's the problem. It doesn't have to be coal or nuclear. The Pacific Northwest, for example, gets most of its electricity from hydropower. This, however, has problems of its own. Damming rivers, reducing salmon runs, etc.

But there are good sources of electrical power that have only been piddled with so far. Solar, wind power, tidal power (several ways of harnessing that), plus a couple of systems that haven't even been experimented with yet.

The potential sources of non-polluting, renewable (green) electricity have hardly been plumbed yet.

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Ebbie, I recall the light rail system that was in place in the Los Angeles area when I lived there as a kid. One could travel all over the area on the "streetcars" and the "interurban rail" system.   One could zip pretty easily around Pasadena and environs, or the whole Los Angeles area, and it wasn't really necessary to own a car to get places.

That all changed when the automobile companies, the oil companies, and the tire manufacturers talked the Powers That Be (Were) into dismantling the perfectly good light-rail system and building a system of "speedways" (now called "freeways"). "Modernizing," they called it. Now, you can't go anywhere around there without a car.

I can see a system like the one I remember in Pasadena (before smog) working quite well in an area like Juneau. And I don't think it would cost all that much. For an area with not all that much population, it needn't be elaborate, just functional.

Don Firth