Really interesting blogger look at Kansas City as a freight corridor with a bit of expert analysis regarding all of the lines that pass through town . . . For transit buff, this quick study is certainly worth a click: Crossing the Lines: Kansas City: Potential
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This is a deeply flawed study conducted from half a country away by a Mike Sanders fanboy. The author has no real knowledge of the KC Metro's economy, topography or politics. Mass transit is just central planning designed to control when and where people come and go. Midwesterners love our cars, and the freedom they offer. We don't want to be slaves to a railroad timetable for moving people. The big issue is cost. These projects always cost an astronomical amount of money, and always exceed estimates. Exhibit A - California. Commuter rail makes sense in densely populated areas like the East coast, Chicago, and parts of the Southwest. It does not make sense in sparsely populated, widely dispersed areas like the Midwest. Sure, it's every progressive politicians wet dream to have shiny trains bringing suburbanites and their earnings tax dollars in to union station, but the author also fails to look at the realities of converting freight lines to rail lines. Full disclosure - I am a 20+ year railroad contractor. Where most people see ties and rails, and think a train is a train, this is not the case. We're talking major, major dollars and engineering to try to make commuter rail work here. There's just no ROI, just a bottomless pit of taxpayer dollars and subsidies. Another flaw comes from the assumption that workers will always flock to urban areas every rush hour. With the great leaps and bounds we're experiencing in connectivity, computational power, and automation, work will become even more decentralized, and require less and less human activity. It will be a rail line to nowhere. The money would be better spent on improving infrastructure and networks.
ReplyDeleteGo walk a few of these "rail lines" some have been pulled up some are in horrible shape and some have a lot of traffic on them already. We need to concentrate on getting jobs, locating new industry, and then maybe there might be a few places that will need the services of existent rail transit.
ReplyDeleteGet the jobs and the industry and locate it on the existing rails first.
Exactly.
DeleteUh, oh! It's time warp time at Tonys Johnson County:
ReplyDeleteCars = GOOOOOOOOOOOD
Transit like they have everywhere else in the fucking world = BAAAAAAAAAAAD
Just cause it works EVERY FUCKING WHERE ELSE doesn't mean it will work in super special super SMART KC.
1987 called an want its dumb ideas back.
Brilliant arguments. well reasoned, grounded in facts and deep knowledge of the subject.
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