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Easy for you to say. The distaff side is not amused.

My city has built a monument to government in a new intermodal traffic center. It’s large, fashioned after traditional train stations, and is envisioned as the place for the commuter train folks, the bus and I suppose other public transportation systems. It’s been built now for several months with nice landscaping, parking, working clock in the tower, but is not being used. It was sold on the idea that the commuter train station, really just a large concrete platform, was too far from the downtown area. The city purchased land from Union Pacific and placed its new station downtown. The area isn’t the nicest and during the construction, vandals smashed several windows.

But there’s problems. The station doesn’t have near enough parking for the commuters on the train, let alone other types of commuters. The city sold the station on the idea that it would draw business to the old downtown area but chances are high the parking situation would discourage increased business there. It also requires the commuter train to change its route from the outskirts of our city to city center where the route would bisect the all the city’s main north-south and east-west streets in the southern half of the city and shut them down several times a day. There is no way for auto commuters to take an alternate route at present, although I suppose overpasses would be possible in the future (but this is California so such measures would be years from now). The city (pop. 85k) has a fledgling bus service and a few taxis.

All in all, the planning was lousy, the timing was lousy, the vision myopic. But we have a cute retro station sitting empty near my office which, I believe, does have bathrooms.