For the most part, I've been against Toll Roads because they would be sold to foreign companies to began with. How unAmerican is that, selling your highway system to a corporation from overseas. But I'm willing to change my position in opposition of the SA Toll Party if they bring this law suit against the County. For the first time in living memory, VIA are committing funds to a transit route that will never be removed, that will not go away but be there for decades to come.
The people who are against the Light Rail to began with use every single tactic in their arsenal to halt a project from getting off the ground. They will point out how inefficient it is. How costly the rail vehicles are and most of all, they will point out the fact that more buses will do a better job. Well if that's the case, why are we as a nation, cutting the more efficient, cheaper bus lines?
In this video from ReasonTV titled, “17 Miles in Just 78 Minutes! Light Rail vs Reality in LA” he used the famed pop up video routine to point out all the faults with the Los Angeles transit System. 1St, he point out how there's no train to the Airport. Second, the point out how While The Train appears fuler during rush hour, it runs all day and night at much lower capacity. Third, he points out how buses are cheaper, flexable and better. (Remember that word FLEXABLE) And finally, he points to the false fact that it is not energy efficient.
Let me point out to why sir, you have a fuck up Los Angeles Public Transit System....
1. After WWII, the transit company tore up all the Light rail lines in the first place in favor of more cheaper efficient, flexible buses.
2. Using old data on how non Energy efficient rail lines are is like pointing to an airplane and telling me how it uses less gasoline than a family driving cross country. This old data which by the way comes from Galveston, TX Streetcar, doesn't even show the actual data on how fuel efficient it really is. Instead they point to the number of people it caries on average compared to a car. They use the fact that it ain't carrying maximum number of people against the amount of fuel it uses per weight. If this was a true, then the Major Freight Railroads of the North America could no longer be in business because I guarantee you, they wouldn't be able to compete against to more fuel efficient trucks. But we are lead to believe that because it doesn't carry as much people as it suppose to, it uses more energy to get around. I guess CSX and Norfolk Southern are lying out of there with there current commercials.
3. Guess What? While Buses “appears fuller during rush hour, it runs all day and night at much lower capacity”
3. Buses are flexible all right. They're so flexible that they're flexible to be permanently removed.
In City after City across the United States of America, bus lines have been cut all together from services forcing people like me to own cars to get around because buses might appears fuller during rush hour, it runs all day and night at much lower capacity. And when we can't afford cars to get around, well we don't find work.
A news story from 2010 from the Huffingtonpost had a story on a number of people who couldn't find jobs because they didn't have cars.
“Across Milwaukee County, workers want jobs, and businesses want workers. Eric Isbister is the chief executive of GenMet, a metal fabricator located one blocknorth of Milwaukee county. He needs new employees -- the expansion of his business depends on it -- but he can't get them. The nearest bus stop is more than two miles from his factory. He advertises in newspapers, and regularly interviews prospective employees, but he continually runs up against the same problem. Often, he said, he'll see an interviewee's friends or family waiting in a car outside, ready to give the person a ride home. When he sees that, he knows he won't be able to hire the worker.”
But what got me going was a professional woman was demanded that she get a car before get get a job for the Milwaukee transit system.
“"She said you have to be able to drive," Schulz recalled. "I was just so dumbfounded. This was, like, the job I was meant to have."”
All this in a state in where the newly elected governor touted more jobs in his campaign speech. Good luck on those jobs governor. Your going to have a lot of people who simply can't find work in the first place.
But there's another reason why people don't ride buses. Well, there not romantic at all to began with. They're bumpy, uncomfortable to ride let alone to get aboard. We all know the words to “Weird Al” Yankovic of Another One Rides the Bus. Maybe because they're perverts in the back riding the bus.
Trains have tons of songs about riding them. One of them is called the “The Red Line” by It's Casual. He didn't take the bus, he took the Subway. And then there's Thomas the Tank Engine. He beats the bus between destinations on that little island of his. Trains are simply smoother than automobiles to begin with and are more comfortable to ride.
So the next time you hear how it is more efficient, more FLEXIBLE to have buses instead of passenger rail. Always point to the fact that a bus service is FLEXIBLE enough to be permanently removed. Buses are simply not fun enough to ride. And in the end you are not being pro transit by being anti light rail, your just being anit good public transportation in general.
Sources:
Out Of Service: Milwaukee Budget Cuts Hit Bus Lines -- And Keep Residents From Jobs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/milwaukee-budget-cuts_n_844551.html
Foes threaten legal action to derail downtown streetcar project
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Foes-threaten-legal-action-to-derail-transit-2884177.php#ixzz1ldaevA3I
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