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We have a couple of cities here in the South, who have suffered through this insanity of Heavy or light rail transportation.

I lived in Atlanta from 1972 to 1992. They passed the bill for Marta(after six tries, and then barely by the slightest majority, in the early seventies.) I still visit Atlanta from time to time(my son works there) and I would not ride Marta on the South side of town without a gun.

In the late eighties, I remember Marta as a mechanism for distributing crime throughout the city. Areas known for being nice places to go and relax suddenly were over run by thugs from the projects.

Charlotte, NC, is now trying to prove that government control, by installing light rail in the city will cut down on inner-city traffic and transform an inner-city crime cesspool into a Norman Rockwell painting.

Government never has solved any problem by pissing our tax money away, by they keep trying.

And if not with rail, how does one propose people get in and out of dense population centers where driving/parking is prohibitive?

I worked in downtown San Francisco for 18 years and rode commuter rail (60-mile round trip) everyday. When I left that moral-less stinking hellhole I was paying $9.20 for a round trip on the train. Driving would have cost: 3 gallons of gas @ $3 = $9 + $3 bridge toll + $15 (minimum) to park = a total of $27 a day + vehicle mileage depreciation - easily another $3 a trip = $30.

So - I should have been paying $30 a day to commute rather than $9 because some folks think communter rail is 'socialism'?

Okay - okay, I understand it's smaller markets you're talking about, and the extra tax burden for unused services in those markets amounts to socialist waste. It's foolish. However, to denounce 'commuter rail' in general as a tool of a socialist devil is also foolish.

Trivia for the day: Even with approximately 400,000 people riding rail everyday in San Francisco, there still are not enough parking spaces - during peak hours 'X' number of cars must be on the street moving at any given time.

And just so you all know - YES, I do have "special interest" in transportation projects. In fact, right after Labor Day I'm off for a 2-year assignment in Honolulu. They just got the money and have overwhelming public support for their own light rail system. I'm on the design team that will make sure they get what they want.

It's the operational management of the systems that make some of them 'evil' - not the vehicles and guideways.

Guns don't kill people.

The best 'public transportation' is usually privately operated 'for profit'. Just like public education, when you get a bunch of liberal bureaucrats in charge, things go to hell post haste.

I'm done ranting now. Maybe.

Yeah, KC wants light rail too. They've been pushing it for over 10 years and still haven't managed it but like you say, socialists love to repeat others mistakes.

jimbo,

Your first mistake is trying to contrast SF with an American city.

I lived there for over a year, and I feel your pain. And I have since spent probably a year in SF in the eighties and early nineties on an expense account. Really the only way to live in SF. I have no problems with the city as a visitor, probably my favorite city in the US. I would go pack, hop a plane, and go there tonight if someone would pay the freight and room and board.

SF has some unique geographic aspects about it. Coming in from the East Bay and north of the Golden Gate bridge. Even coming up from the south, out of the San Jose region present a challenge at times. These are problems dictated by geography, compounded by the totally leftist regime that rules San Francisco. The Bart probably works well for you in that region, but your situation can not be used as a justification for rail solving all inter-city problems.

Why don't you do what I did...leave....it will give you a fresh perspective(especially on American politics and culture) and go back for visits and enjoy the uniqueness of Sf and the region.

Another point to be made here, is that probably over ninety percent of the funding for Jimbo's BART, Ted's Boston Dig, Atlanta's Marta, and every metropolitan rail system was financed with federal funds. Money taken from you and I.

He would be paying more than he is now, if all this financing came from local sources.

Actually, the concept of light rail in Milwuakee goes back to former Mayor, John "I had an affair but I'm sorry" Norquist. He convinced enough people to tear down a section of freeway in Milwaukee and to use the land for developement. Unfortunately, the land was so contaminated that no business would have the resources to clean it up. To this day, most of the land is vacant. With that resounding "success" he went to a think-tank which, in part, promotes tearing down all metro freeway systems and replacing them with light rail.

In Portland 2/3rds of the budget goes to the 1% of commuters who ride LightRail. As fares only cover 1/6 the budget you have a situation where every 1.25 bus ticket actually costs twice that though I think it's reasonable to subsidize bus service.

Do the math. Every 1.25 Train ticket costs the city hundreds of dollars.

That is the rub. Buses are flexible, inexpensive and an easy burden to bear while trains were pulled out of downtown Portland at the turn of the century as uneconomical.

Trains simply indulge bus riders at prohibitive costs spreading blight along their right-of-ways.

What business can serve commuters on a train except at their few stops? Who wants to live on a train-line? So the train creates a corridor of unsightly run-down buildings owned by speculators looking for more city handouts to "rejuvinate" their dumps.

The city government of Portland knew they didn't have the population density to support the Train so they imposed draconian land use controls to promote 'vertical growth', diverted Federal highway money fund LightRail creating further traffic congestion and narrows streets deliberately in a policy they call "traffic calming".

Yet even if Portland's population multiplied many times over, which would take decades, the train would still not be economical.

The result is that Portland's downtown is losing it's tax base to the suburbs...

...which makes traffic even worse.

Yeah.

Let'm all walk. Shoot - let'm sit in gridlock on a bridge until it collapses. Doing nothing. That's the ticket.

A less facetious point; if we sent 30 million illegal aliens back home maybe we wouldn’t need so much mass transit.

Eneils – partial federal funding, yes. As are 90% of all major transportation projects in America. That’s a fact of life as we know it. Do you have any idea what a widget manufactured in Georgia would cost in California without said system? Yes – getting to work to produce the widget is also part of the overall system that makes the widget affordable in California.

Also, I wasn’t attempting to “justify” anything close to “…but your situation can not be used as a justification for rail solving all inter-city problems.” How the flying Sam Hell did you manage to extract something so fantastically idiotic as “solving inner-city problems with rail” from my posts? My god – do you have reading comprehension problems?

Rail moves people into and out of dense population areas REGARDLESS of “unique geography” and “inner cities” be damned. What’s the “unique geography” in Atlanta and Dallas?

Now Eneils – your assignment for the day: You have to devise a daily plan to move 1,000,000 people into an area with only enough parking for half of them – then see that those folks get home at night. How you gonna do that? What’s your plan?

PS - I got out of that hellhole several years ago.

Now Eneils – your assignment for the day: You have to devise a daily plan to move 1,000,000 people into an area with only enough parking for half of them – then see that those folks get home at night. How you gonna do that? What’s your plan?

Um, build more parking?

And don't forget that Portland sold the rail system to the community on the promise that it would lighten traffic and provide winter transportation. The reality?, they are widening the freeways now, and ice stops the train by breaking the connection to the overhead wires.

V the K -

Good start. If you demolish enough buildings for parking lots, eventually you reach parity, huh?

V the K

"Now Eneils – your assignment for the day: You have to devise a daily plan to move 1,000,000 people into an area with only enough parking for half of them – then see that those folks get home at night. How you gonna do that? What’s your plan?

Um, build more parking?"

Good Answer...Good Answer... And the Survey says, Let Private industry build more Parking facilities.
Why rely on the organization(local SF government) that helped create this problem with anti-free enterprise laws and regulations to solve the problem.

Jimbo,
Also, I wasn’t attempting to “justify” anything close to “…but your situation can not be used as a justification for rail solving all inter-city problems.”
You have a good point there. I guess I should have framed it in the perspective of "solving all the Bay Area's travel and commuting problems." I was thinking of Charlotte, where the lefties are talking controlling certain growth and activities along their rail corridor. More high density housing, more schools along the routes, more industry for marginally employable people. Won't happen, productive people are leaving downtown Charlotte like a Snow Goose migration South in September.