Hmmmm. Didn't we used to call these something else?
Yep, and sadly to say some FReepers praise toll roads because there just isn’t enough money for highways any longer.
Folks, wake the hell up.
I understand they are raiding the highway fund to pay for light rail and they are misusing it in billions of dollars of other ways. Get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse, and there would be more than enough to maintain the highways.
Hmmmm. Didn't we used to call these something else?
Our esteemed career politician RINO loser Mica helped push through Sunrail (I call it Slumrail) and instantly graffiti sprang up along the route. Lots of new paint now.
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(Photo credit: Michael Barera)
“Actual ridership of light rails is consistently much lower than bureaucrats’ overly optimistic estimates. The Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) projected that the West Rail Line would carry 29,000 people each week in its first year of operation. Yet, the actual ridership was only about one third of that projection. Even this was only achieved by the RTD cutting off six bus lines so people were forced to take the light rail. After so many long term bus riders’ (many from low income families) complaints, RTD was forced to resume those bus lines. So nowadays, the West Rail Line runs pretty empty.”
Why, heck, I’ve seen 15 or 20 people at a time on one of these things as I DRIVE to my destination, which is almost always no where near a light rail station.
The big problem comes when the government agency running the system can't pay the operating costs to run the service. This is happening in some older cities with growing operating costs for their systems (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are good examples of this). The Federal government offers big matching funds to build the system, but once a system is built the state or local government is on its own.
So my first experience with Uber in NYC went like this. We were visiting a client downtown in lower Broadway. After our meeting, it started downpouring and we were a few blocks from the nearest subway. The co-worker I was with whipped out his Uber app and the nearest ride was four and a half minutes away.
As we headed down the elevator and out into the lobby, he was tracking the progress of our ride from his cellphone. As soon as we saw the car turn the corner, we walked outside and got right into the car. 10 minutes later, we are back at the office for less than half the price of a taxi. Plus the driver asked us what we wanted to listen to on the radio and had bottled water and snacks to offer us.
We would have gotten drenched even if we had decided to hail a cab. This Uber business model is the future of transportation and ultimately, I believe that is where the "driverless" cars are heading. Soon, our cities will be full of driverless cars waiting at the beck and call of passengers with cell phone apps.
Nobody wants to be waiting at train and subway platforms when they can get a personalized ride from point A to point B with a couple of taps on a cellphone app.
The name should be “A Streetcar Named Desire”
Oh man we fought these hard in Charlotte. We lost. I knew it was time to get out.
What a colossal waste of tax money.
IIRC For the cost of light rail that would carry approximately 10,000 people up South Blvd, we could have added 3 lanes on each side of I-77 which then carried over 500,000 cars per day. Which one makes more sense?
Idiots.