A bike lane only requires sacrificing 3 parking spots?

It’s a big country and mass transit isn’t the answer for most of it.

I can now get from LA to San Francisco in ... never.

My own Minneapolis has a plan for light rail from city center to Eden Prarie that is grossly over budget. Has one of these plans ever been on-budget?

And when it's done no one's going to remember how long it took.

I think you're falling into the trap of looking at the rebudget or rebudget with reduced scope cost and not the proposed cost. I beleive that the original proposed cost of $10B is up to $105B. You're right that if the rail is successful, cost and schedule will be forgotten.

Knowing what I do now, high speed rail in California is problematic. The train need rail with a minimum amount of curvature for very high speeds. The route out of California requires going through or over some mountains and you add in the tectonics of the reqion, there are significant technical challenges.

• Click here for link at https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/infrastr

that will go from one strip of bars/restaurants to another strip of bars/restaurants.

That doesn't go anywhere meaningful. And they can't get anyone willing to pay to ride it.

to nowhere. Had the full support of the county board - one of whom was a consultant for the winning bidder to construct it. Resulted in the only republican (running as an independent) making it on the board in like 30 years.


I think it must be like the musicman. Some guy thinks up something splashy, and gets virtue signalling local governments to sign on the dotted line.

"Monorail!"

Nowhere to nowhere? That's just flat out wrong. It's the busiest bus corridor in Virginia and there is tremendous in-fill potential along the Pike and in Skyline. Also connects to the Route 7 corridor.

Whether light rail could run down it, in-traffic, down the narrow corridor? That's a different argument. But it does no one any good to make up facts like nowhere to nowhere.

Looking at the project for two minutes, I don't think it will be worth it though it will likely facilitate upzoning/building more densely in that area, even if everyone still owns a car. But you also didn't describe it in good faith.

I love the idea of it, but the benefits will be very minor. There really aren't a ton of people that move between the two areas on the proposed line. Getting to/from the CHI/Schwab to the Blackstone area will be somewhat convenient for visitors, but it will take a ton of development for population to expand downtown to really take advantage of it.

A light rail line from West Omaha to the airport would have a much bigger impact for local transportation (at an insanely higher cost). We just put in a rapid bus line partially covering that route, but it's still just buses.

returning to work the on-time performance is back to sucking. 40 mins late getting home last night.

THey need to to prove they can execute what they got better.

P.S. I went in every day during covid. No one was on the trains. They were clean and on-time. It was glorious.

and get something that moves faster. Diesel loco-hauled trains have horrible start/stop timing.

Electrifying the rails would be too much to ask.

Ever check into the costs?

My county has 1.3% of commuters use bus or rail. More walk or ride bikes. Good luck changing culture.

The investment is not much at all.

Light rail costs like $120-200m per mile. Freeways are well south of that.

And certainly not in a per person moved comparison. You really don't want to see that math.

Particularly if it takes into account full gamut of costs, such as:
highways - repaving, cost of cars, gas, parking lots(!), etc
mass transit - operating costs, pensions, loss time due to longer trip times typically, offset by benefits of denser development

And the “per person moved” metric is inherently biased against public transit. People do not take it because it often sucks. Guess why?

Here in Chicago, they are really pushing Transit Oriented Development as they expand the city’s rapid transit lines and bus routes. Developments tend to cluster around transit stops. Without a stop, it’s hard to attract people and businesses to certain areas of the city. At the same time, it’s hard to convince the city to put stops in areas with little to do. They are trying to address this with the new Red Line Extension and bus projects by soliciting proposals from developers for areas around announced transit stops.

Ridership and funding faces a similar problem. Budget dollars from the state and city are often allocated to agencies based on their ridership. It’s generally slow and not well maintained, so people don’t ride it…so that agency gets less funding…etc.

Then I toured the rest of the country and my biases were confirmed.

It's the sun belt cities' fault they zoned for massive sprawling developments with cul de sacs instead of connective grid patterns. Which makes transit ineffective because you have to walk a mile to get out of the gated subdivision first.

Considering the nut-tugging people like to do about their pickup trucks, I have zero sympathy for their poor choices, both financial and political.

And their poor choices, both financial and political.

In particular in Texas, it's ridiculously oversized pickups hauling air so the driver can tower over ordinary sedan drivers. They truly suck in all ways.

Someone actually brought one of those mall crawlers to the UT game in 2015, and he cranked it up for all to see.

I was not impressed.

Texas is for suckers. At least they're trying to build high speed rail.