-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 03 June 2006 15:03, Jacob S <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > They were having such a riot, they talked the city governments into > giving them even more money to start a rail line. It's faster than > the bus, but only if you want to go to a very selective spot in the > downtown of a member city. Otherwise you have to use the rail to > get to a bus stop so you can still have a 2 hour long ride.
That's been the experience with every city that has put in "light rail". Trains that no one uses, so it ends up costing taxpayers to keep the while elephant alive. San Jose, California, where I lived for a while, had only %14 of their operating costs covered by ticket sales. > I don't buy into the public transportation sales pitch, if you can > call it that. The Future of Freedom Foundation ran a very interesting series of articles outlining the New York City subway disaster. It turns out that they were privately built, and operated at a profit for decades, until the city government turned on the regulatory screws. They eventually went bankrupt, and were bought out by the only buyer left: that same city government. Not only has the system never been profitable since, ridership continues to drop since the just-pre-buyout peak around 1940. Unfortunately, the articles are delayed a few months after their print publication, but they will be available soon at http://www.fff.org/toc/fr06.asp BTW, buried deep in the Portland, Oregon, planning commission report is an analisis of what cities have the same kind of roads for a given population, multi-use high-density buildings, overall population densities, all the factors that the planning commission has targetted. And the city that the Portland City Planning Commission found most closely matched their targets? Portland, your future is..... Los Angeles, California. I'm sorry, but I'm not making this up. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRIIltS9Y35yItIgBAQJ2PAf+O7PkK8I7kcrEhdQ5FXL7yJOAfD9oZZlg wTx5sd2ZzfPxqxklmCSCjsGJGlyr1RS4hx5rLIaFYAdyak4ixEoV01h6Y5DbRKG9 IaSasz+K9FNDSQ/R3IH36VqbF0pQvj9iEp6UiIX5N5QFKsBQ4oVf2Xvs2sPLwgr5 SPoV0xpxACW3GdXu0qDXdDoBSJ+RZPaHJrvN3T8NL7CiAi3pkjSSnQombp063yWo jPgS5osvhAUDhUWwPnSYDoSmQfw5+KsPphRznUan6x/5+O/dhQ/PMocZGfO5qo4Q S/VQrFk3C/fO1CkWPa/iMn2OWvNkzDvgBVy/vX7yt8IaJjjfMjTQxg== =3Glr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
