Boondoggle in the Motor City: Detroit's Train to Nowhere ( Choo-choo! )

Reason ^ | Oct 13, 2010 | Reason

[GonzoGOP]

The greatest myth about light rail, intercity rail, monorails and maglev is that fancy new transportation systems will create demand. Transportation systems follow and cannot create demand. The fact that the roads are empty during rush hour demonstrates better than any government study that there is no demand. It doesn't matter if you put in Jetsons flying cars. If they don't go where people want to go it is just a phenomenal waste of money.

Too bad Willie Green is no longer among the Freepers as I would love to see him explain how this money sucking patronage pit is a good idea.

[Leisler]

Unions, hack contractors, hiring the politicians kids, and profits for debt sellers==banks, GS, ....

[Leisler]

Willie be gone? What happened, I missed it.

[Tribune7]

What happened to Willie?

[Tribune7]

Btw, good point about light rail et al almost always being scams to transfer money from producers to government drones.

[SamAdams76]

Choo-choo Willie is gone? What happened? His obsession with 19th century transportation always provided some comic relief in this forum. I’ll miss him.

[GonzoGOP]

What happened to Willie?

On the 15th he made one of his typical nasty replies to a post asking him if he was "a socialist, Marxist, or just born stupid". Problem was the post was from Jim Rob. He was told to stop posting socialism or get the Zot. Next day there is an opus on Willie's home page.

[Venturer]

Washington DC bought streetcars years ago. They sat in Sweden, or wherever they were manufactured for years.

The District didn’t know what to do with them so they decided to put them in the middle of H st. NE.

It may improve the neighborhood and it may not, but they are building it as we speak.

[kosciusko51]

He walked away from the forum, as he states in his profile.

[Tribune7]

It does appear Willie is still with us.

Which is good.

FR would not be the same.

[Doctor 2Brains]

Been lurking here for something around two years, and found his obsession to be stragely fascinating. What a bizarre man. Far from being merely enamored of trains, and thinking they were economically desirable, he seemed to believe that they could cure cancer, do the dishes, and return us to Eden.

[Leisler]

(From Willie’s page)

I am an Industrial Engineer.
I am neither a lawyer nor politician, journalist nor pundit, salesman or stock broker. I am not trained in rhetorical hyperbole. I do not advocate communism, marxism, socialism, hedonism, atheism, libertarianism, conservatism or capitalism.

I am an Industrial Engineer.

I promote “continuous improvement”.
I promote changes in methods/procedures and technology to improve work productivity and quality in a manner that is not abusive to the workforce and is compliant with regulatory safety and environmental standards.
The Industrial Enginering motto is “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, and in my dozen years of participation on this forum, I’ve posted countless articles in the vain hope of helping people become better informed.

It is with deep regret that I no longer find this to be an acceptable venue for those efforts.
It has become merely another setting where tactics of intellectual thuggery and intimidation are used to maintain the status quo and keep people disinformed and misguided.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Leisler Comments. Typical. First Willie cries.

Secondly. Engineers are not economist. No doubt Willie never took a political history course in his life. He wouldn’t know collectivists from recidivists. He admits to not having fair language skills. That is, he is unable, and is confused about describing the world around him. Which is often the case with engineers. I took four years of engineering at UMass( Civil ). Nice guys, but clueless about social/political currents.

Engineers want to build. They just want someone else to pay for it, and often, if extracted by force, would be fine.

By and large, much of the engineering in the US has been captured by government, or government contractors. Basically, engineers are upscale unionists. On government subsidies.

[taildragger]

This is a nuevo-socialist dream... very, very trendy...

This lady is a academic pinhead, I bet a cup of coffee she didn't take any Economics or Accounting.Why Royal Oak?

It is very liberal-artsee fartsee downtown and how should I say this... Barney Frank would like it...

So tell me who benefits?

All the constituencies of the Democrat Party, I'll let you brainstorm them and name them...

IMHO they would be better off spending the 1/2 Billion in mental health care or trying to get people into 12 step programs, Detroit needs it heart and soul healed, not some socialist 5 year plan devised by an apparatchik.

[netmilsmom]

No, he left.

From his profile page

“It is with deep regret that I no longer find this to be an acceptable venue for those efforts.
It has become merely another setting where tactics of intellectual thuggery and intimidation are used to maintain the status quo and keep people disinformed and misguided.”

[70th Division]

We do not need this. But let me tell you that the roads are NOT empty during rush hour. I drive it every day.

[Fraxinus]

The greatest myth about light rail, intercity rail, monorails and maglev is that fancy new transportation systems will create demand. Transportation systems follow and cannot create demand.

I think many Freepers are excessively negative about Rail.

Too bad Willie Green is no longer among the Freepers as I would love to see him explain how this money sucking patronage pit is a good idea.

Wille on the other hand went too far the other way.

It would be interesting to see if the cost and ridership projections were based in reality, often they do not seem to be.

[cripplecreek]

If trains create jobs, why can’t anyone explain why all towns with rail access aren’t boomtowns?

[GonzoGOP]

light rail et al almost always being scams to transfer money from producers to government drones.

Light rail is particularly guilty of this. The one things passenger trains to well (freight trains to a lot well, but this isn't about moving cargo) is move vast numbers of people from point A to point B while avoiding traffic. Light rail tends to run at surface level, or worse yet, in the street. So it has only slightly greater capacity than a bus, gets caught in traffic jams, and cannot detour around construction or accidents. In the case of Houston it is actually usually in the accident. It is literally the worst of both worlds.

Contrast this with systems like Chicago's or New York's. The trains, subways and elevated trains are grade separated. They move literally millions. They function as remote parking lots for the densely populated inner city financial districts. While they lose money, the subsidy is less than would be necessary to expand the highways to accommodate the traffic. Remember these are old cities and making the highways larger means knocking down buildings. And in the world of bad government interventions a stipend for commuter rail ranks far better than massive eminent domain land grabs.

Now both systems are also notoriously corrupt. It would be far better to privatize them and change the subsidy from a blank check to some fixed amount corresponding to the savings from not having to expand the highways.

[SamAdams76]

Thanks for the details on Willie's departure. I know he rubbed a lot of Freepers the wrong way but I always got a kick out of his obsession with railroads.

You are spot on about many engineers (and scientists) just wanting to do their work while somebody else (usually the taxpayers) pays for it - even if by force. The Nazis never lacked for engineering talent. If not for their racial policies that allowed a good amount of their top talent to come our way, they might even have won the war.