What can we do to make light rail work in Phoenix? Let’s make it impossible for people to drive.
By: Cathleen CollinsJuly 25th, 2007
Category: Beyond Categorization!,Historic Homes,Neighborhood News
About a year ago, when I was hosting an open house at one of Greg’s listings in F.Q.Story, a young man came to tour the home. While he and I spoke, I mentioned the home’s proximity to Phoenix’s planned light rail system, expecting that he, like most people whom I have talked with on this subject, would subscribe to this being a benefit.
“Bah” (or something to that effect), he declared. “I’m from Houston, and I know that light rail systems don’t really help people… they only sound good, and make politicians popular. They’re just another boondoggle.”
Well… I pretty much agreed with him. Greg’s very first post on the weblog that eventually became BloodhoundBlog compared the “popular” (read that “politically correct”) heralding of Phoenix’s light rail with The Goldwater Institute’s forthright white paper on light rail.
Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about killing the 27-year-old reversible lane system on 7th Avenue and 7th Street that has served us so well. It came up again yesterday in an article in the Arizona Republic, which talked about how nice it would be if our streets were more pedestrian-friendly.
And now I have to compare that to a podcast I listened to recently, in which Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow with the Cato Institute, and author of the insightful book, The Best-Laid Plans, discusses how Portland deliberately created gridlock as a way to ensure their failing light rail system would work.
Hmmmm….
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In Houston, we call it the toy train.
If the Dallas light rail is any indicator, the rough math goes like this: Between the massive debt service for the system and the very low ridership(meaning no ticket sales), you could buy every light rail rider a new Lexus and come out ahead.
These things are boondoggles and are laden with the opportunity for corruption. Watch carefully the use of imminent domain to condemn cheap property (owned by political contributors, perhaps?) and convert it to multi use transit center developments enriching the landowners.
Our toy train has already caused Metro to curtail and revise the bus routes in order to pay the massive debt service on 7 miles of light rail. Of course the stress has fallen on the folks who depend on public transportation the most, lower income people and the elderly.
But hey! We are now a world class city with losing professional baseball, football, basketball teams all with new multi million dollar taxpayer funded playpens and, by golly, we have a toy train.
At least we don’t have a dog fighting quarterback as the face of our city. Idea! The abandoned Astrodome served well for the Katrina refugees, maybe we could make the Dome a dog fighting venue, refuge and resort for NFL players. Just like casinos, the revenue could help pay for construction of more toy trains.
Just think of the economic development opportunities-since the Dome is right next door to the football venue, Reliant Stadium, the visiting players would surely patronize the Astrodoggie Dome for epic dogfights such as Astro Dog vs Underdog. Houston would always be guaranteed the Super Bowl because the NFL Player’s Union would not allow the Super Bowl to be anywhere other than the premier dog fighting venue in the world.
We would make so much money hosting the Super Bowl every year that in addition to toy trains, we would be able to build a nice big water(can’t be much different than natural gas, and we know how to do those around here)pipeline all the way from the Great Lakes for our good friends in Phoenix.
Wow- who’d a thunk a rant on toy trains would have developed into ideas for the fiscal salvation of Houston and water for Phoenix?
[...] Because the Monorail is quasi-private, it lacks the legislative clout to stack the deck in its favor in the style of municipal transit systems. It can’t disrupt traffic flows on busy thoroughfares, for example, or impose automobile-hostile real estate development restrictions. Even so, mass transit is never profitable, and it is only popular when it is the preferred alternative to walking — that is to say, where traffic (or parking) is very difficult, as it is on Las Vegas Boulevard, or where income is too low to pay for a reliable car. Where people can — and can afford to — drive, they will. This is a simple and completely obvious fact — which suggests that you are unlikely to find it in the newspaper. [...]
[...] Because the Monorail is quasi-private, it lacks the legislative clout to stack the deck in its favor in the style of municipal transit systems. It can’t disrupt traffic flows on busy thoroughfares, for example, or impose automobile-hostile real estate development restrictions. Even so, mass transit is never profitable, and it is only popular when it is the preferred alternative to walking — that is to say, where traffic (or parking) is very difficult, as it is on Las Vegas Boulevard, or where income is too low to pay for a reliable car. Where people can — and can afford to — drive, they will. This is a simple and completely obvious fact — which suggests that you are unlikely to find it in the newspaper. [...]
You crack me up, Tom. Did you look at Greg’s post on BloodhoundBlog? One of his readers pointed to a YouTube clipping of a Simpson’s episode, in which a huckster, ala Harold Hill in the Music Man, convinces Springfield that they need a monorail.