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Metrolink receives $60 million to upgrade equipment
Where is this bankrupt state getting the money for a project that seems nice but hardly necessary at this time.
Socialist California has a mega debt which it will be passing on to the American taxpayers in other states, yet it has money to spend on socialist welfare transportation which can’t cover its own costs. Socialism is an idea so great that people try to move away from every place it is tried.
Had the CA Transportation Comission chosen to allocate the $60 million to highway construction instead of commuter rail, I wonder if there would be any charges of “socialism” leveled here. Highway transportation in Southern California is a real mess and building more freeways won’t solve the problem. Commuter rail works. Riders are flocking to it. Sounds like the CATC did the wise thing for the regional economy.
Yeah, and let’s not forget those socialist airports and socialist highways as well.
As a native Californian now living in Texas, I applaud the California Transportation Commission, the Legislature and the Governor for doing all that they have done to make California a more mobile place. The two comments above are from people who live in states where there have been strides in high speed rail. Does that make Michigan and Illinois socialist? I think it makes those states smart and progressive because they have tried to do something positive to give people options for transportation. Here in Texas the highway and oil industry controls the legislature and so we get nothing but more highways. For the past 30 years that I have lived in Austin, I-35 has been under continuous construction between Dallas and San Antonio. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent and it is still a miserable drive.
Jeff, California tried a socialist idea of supporting welfare for the automobile by building toll roads to gated communities built by greedy developers. Those toll roads did nothing to relieve traffic congestion and are the primary culprit of an insurmountable debt because so few people use them. On the contrary, long drives to the suburbs and exurbs are why some folks are moving back in closer to the cities to reduce not only their commutet times, but costs as well. The privatized toll roads in Orange County bring in more revenue from violations than they do in aactual toll collections. Some people who have made the mistake of moving out to these gated exurbs have lost not ony their cars, but their homes as well. Don’t you think the toll roads are the real boondoggle? And if Orange County is home to the largest percentage of megamillionaires and billionaires in the nation, why is Orange County broke? There should be no excuse. California came up with the concept of the freeway, and likewise, as mentioned above, it came up with the concept for a “greedway”.
Gary: I’ve driven my truck on I-35 too many times to know better. You’re absolutely correct and I-35 isprobably one of the most congested pieces of interstate in the whole nation. A toll road was built around Austin to relieve congestion, and it has turned out to be big bust as very few people are using it. A cousin of mine who was living in Georgetown and working in Seguin just recently moved to new Braunfels. The money my cousin’s family use to spend on tolls and gas for that part of the commute is now paying for their house payments with change to spare,and it even gave them an improvement on health, too.