Posted on 04/30/2010 9:24:22 AM PDT by Willie Green
The Facts:
At the Chancellor’s Liaison meeting Wednesday, Chancellor Randy Woodson challenged administrators and student leaders to act boldly.
Our Opinion:
What could be more bold than a visionary statement on campus? A monorail or a like-kind transit system would benefit the entire community in many ways.
At Chancellor Randy Woodson’s first Chancellor Liaison meeting at N.C. State Wednesday, he put forth some bold challenges to University administrators and student leaders. Among those, he challenged the group to fight bureaucracy at the University and dream big.
It’s warming to see a man, a chancellor, who is in touch with the problems the University faces and isn’t afraid to call for a grandiose vision; it’s a good lesson for the rest of it.
Part of dreaming big and riding along the autobahn of innovation is looking for opportunities to expand the campus’ scope, driving it to its limits —new horizons.
Centennial Campus is a very real opportunity to realize this kind of groundbreaking change in the University’s midst; its campus of the future, which stretches down Centennial Parkway and out to Trailwood Drive, has incredible potential if its faculties are fully utilized.
However, to witness that utilization of this incredible resource, students, faculty, staff and alumni must be able to effectively move between the campuses in a reasonable fashion.
The University, its student and community, must demand a pensive response from the administrators who are instrumental in ensuring that projects like a rapid-transit system between the campuses takes off.
Let’s build a monorail. Let’s build underground walkways. Let’s do something imaginative, creative and befitting of the state’s foremost technological learning institution.
On a very basic level, a high-capacity rapid-transit system is a need the University identified when it developed its long-term physical master plan. Taking advantage of that need and seizing it as an opportunity to create something great for the University is a bonus.
It sounds comical, but it’s really not. A monorail or other really inventive system falls into the category of identifying a need and filling it. This campus is going to have to figure out a way to conquer transportation issues, rapidly growing classrooms and declining class offerings. It’s going to take extraordinary solutions on a monorail scale. Perhaps it’s time we all find a little of that inventiveness within ourselves.
If one of these schemes were a good idea, private enterprise would have built it long ago and it would be so desirable to ride that people would pay what it actually cost to ride it.
Don't be silly.
It would be foolish for the Transit Authority to privatize and lose all the tax advantages it enjoys as a non-profit organization.
As a quasi-government agency, it can borrow money at lower interest rates than a private company by issueing tax-free bonds. Then it's also exempt from having to pay all kinds of income and property taxes.
It's a much better route to go... the private sector can't compete with it.
I guess you could call the ability to financially rape the taxpaying public a 'tax advantage'.
Look, when the ridership can pay the full cost of building and operating the railroad, then it will be acceptable. But at this point, all we have is a bonified redistribution scheme - robbing the tax dollars from the productive to give cheap rides to the deadbeats. Like all transit systems - like all leftist governments really - it's all about getting someone else to pay for it.
But at this point, all we have is a bonified redistribution scheme - robbing the tax dollars from the productive to give cheap rides to the deadbeats.
Don't be silly.
Most local businesses recognize that transit commuters are their employees and customers... not "deadbeats". And it benefits the whole community to provide economic transportation.
The only real opposition are the special interests who don't welcome the competition: taxi & bus driver unions, gas station owners... anybody wanting to gouge commuters pockets by depriving them of a choice.
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