Pages

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Light Rail: Sit Your A$ Down, America

from The New Editor by tpelia@yahoo.com (Tom Elia):


Light Rail: Sit Your A$ Down, America:

Max Borders writes at Ideas Matter:
Light rail typically costs 10 times that of a freeway mile but typically carries 1/6th the people. Municipal rail, sports stadiums and convention centers are the modern equivalents of the pyramids: expensive, involuntary and non-cost effective. Well, at least light rail is built in 1/3 the time.

If these things make no sense to build, why are so many cities building them? Two reasons: faddishness and special interests. We should always ask ourselves the four questions: Who benefits? Who Chooses? Who Pays? What's Fair? Light rail does not possibly pass that smell test.

Where does rail excel? In freight.  Only liberals view people as freight.  It is that failure to recognize that people are not freight and can not be treated like freight, stored until the train arrives, stacked like lumber in unheated train cars, that results in their disconnect from reality.

No comments: