[Willie Green]

What will the government do — force people at gunpoint to ride trains?

No, here in the United States, people freely choose to use mass transit if it's an available alternative.

What a friggin’ waste of the taxpayer’s money!

American commuters make over 27 million trips on mass transit systems DAILY.
They, and their employers, are all taxpayers who benefit from this form of transportation.
It is economically irresponsible to flippantly dismiss transit funding as "a waste".

[Jimmy Valentine]

Well something needs to be done in the greater Baltimore-Washington SMSA. The road infrastructure is tapped out.You just cannot expand the roadways any further.

Self propelled street cars might be the way to go if old railbeds can be reclaimed.

[SatinDoll]

I live in southwest Washington State. We have a transit bus, paid for by federal tax dollars, that cruises around town empty the majority of time.

AMTRAC runs daily between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. It, too, is mostly empty. The automobiles on Interstate 5, running nearly parallel with AMTRAC, move faster. Three people in an automobile can travel more cheaply than those same three people could riding AMTRAC.

Like I said, albeit tongue in cheek, will the government force people at gunpoint to ride trains?

[Leisler]

It’s provable waste. It can not fund its construction. It requires funds collected at the point of a government gun.

Mass transit can not even generate the cash flow for day to day operation, let alone paying off bonds, or maintaining the infrastructure.

But, it isn’t a ‘waste’.

Let’s recap. It can not fund,run, or maintain itself. So, it must be then what, productive? Wealth producing? Cost effective?

[palmer]

American commuters make over 27 million trips on mass transit systems DAILY.

Being one of them I can attest to the fact that government is not the answer. My bus is private and gets almost no government subsidies. The 10% or so of operating costs that the state gives is not nearly enough to make up for taxes (diesel, business taxes, etc). Private mass transit like my bus is a freebie for the government and is milked to subsidize your stupendously wasteful government mass transit.

[sand lake bar]

I agree with you, Willie. I consider mass transit to fall under the government’s defense responsibility, in the same vein as what was done with the Interstate Highway system.