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Trains News Wire EXCLUSIVE: Opening date set for new Twin Cities light rail line
What Mel and Mo Miller fail to understand is who is paying for it. If the riders paid for building and maintaining it, no problem. But in this socialist country, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the rest of the country pays for building and maintaining it via big government grants and other funding methods. What benefit does this street car provide for somebody living in Garden City, KS? Zero. None. Yet those people living in Garden City have to pay for it when they pay their taxes and their tax money gets redirected toward big city money pits unable to be self sustaining. There is a reason why the original system was yanked. Nobody was using it enough to make it self sustaining. Oddly, this was well before the first interstate was built, so you can’t blame the truck drivers for getting it removed. Instead, how about blaming the people living there but refusing to use it because it was uneconomical and inconvenient? The trouble with mass transit system planners is they still seem to think everybody works downtown. Everybody doesn’t. The overwhelming majority work anywhere but downtown. Therefore, it will fail from a legitimate economic standpoint. But this time around, big government will take care of any shortfall by taking from those who work for what they have and giving it to those who refuse to pay for what they want.
The reconstruction and opening of the Green Line coinciding when the 60th anniversary of the abandonment of previous streetcar service is certainly a tribute of a reawakening. Many cities across America are now realizing that rail isn’t such a bad idea after all. I’m sure that certain trolls will wholeheartedly disagree with me.
It was the advent of paved roads that helped to kill the private sector street car lines.
It was the advent of paved roads that helped to kill the private sector street car lines.
Does Mr. Guse apply the same logic to bridges, sewers and fire departments? Clearly some infrastructure facilities and services afford social value that transcends individual user benefits and thus warrants broader funding than user fees.
It is a fair question, however, to debate how broadly that extends. Does the benefit of urban transit warrant any federal funding, in any case? Why should federal Amtrak subsidies be used on East River tunnels used by LIRR trains? Why should Minnesota taxes be used to subsidize Illinois corn or dairy farmers or METRA trains? Maybe federal money should be used only on matters of genuine national significance. But good luck with the politics of that idea.
Yea people that use everything should pay directly. Interstate toll roads for everyone using them commercially and no trying to bypass them by using state roads.
lets get electric car rails…lol
OK - so they expect 40,000 daily riders 16 years from now. In the meantime, what are their initial estimates for this year and next?
For the last few days, it was sooo peaceful!!! But the Goose is back, quacking away!!!
My tax dollars well spent here in Minnesota. You betcha!
Vasyl, you know as well as I do that the Goose continues to honk his nonsensical flatulence. He seems to thinks it’s okay for the public to subsidized the roads that he can drive his big rig on whether he uses it or not and yet, DON’T DARE subsidize any rail at all, the H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E!
Baltimore Streetcar Museum takes delivery of former Twin Cities Rapid Transit #416 P.C.C. car.
Baltimore Streetcar Museum takes delivery of former Twin Cities Rapid Transit #416 P.C.C. car
Don’t feed the troll. Er, goose.
Guse is right on the money again. But, to add to this, doesn’t anybody question why it cost nearly $1,000,000,000 for a line less than 10 miles long? This is certainly corruption. Didn’t somebody (or bodies) go to jail for this outrage? What would it cost to build a 10 mile expressway that would certainly be used by more than 40,000 people per day 26 years from now. No wonder the country, states and cities are broke.
Okay Jeff and all the rest of you rural rednecks-if you think the funding for mass transit in cities is expensive, so is funding for rural roads. All of the property taxes rural folks pay isn’t enough to cover the annual maintenance costs of filling in a few potholes, needles to say all the other expenses for rural public services. Too much of income taxes from city dwellers is directed to paying for the expensive maintenance and upkeep of rural roads. When all roads are dirt roads outside city limits, I will then be in agreement. You get what you pay for.
@ Mr. Wrightstone: For the most part, private streetcar lines were killed because their owners, who by and large were also suburban land developers, no longer had desirable land to sell to home builders and potential home buyers. As long as the land developers had land to subdivide and sell along or near their streetcar routes, revenue from these sales subsidized and sustained the financial viability of their streetcar operations.