TKC EXCLUSIVE!!! OUR BLOG COMMUNITY FACT CHECKS KANSAS CITY TOY TRAIN STREETCAR FAKE NEWS!!!



Mania and hype dominate the holiday season but it turns out our KICK-ASS TKC BLOG COMMUNITY might be the only place where locals can unite in order to accurately identify politico & corporate transit misdirection.

To wit . . .

CHECK THIS AWESOME TKC READER FACT CHECKING THE LATEST STREETCAR PROPAGANDA!!!

The offending headline that we talked a bit about yesterday:

KC Streetcar Authority secures $3M for Main Street extension

Now check the EPIC takedown . . .

"It comes across as boosterism about a whopping $3 million secured but within this story are 3 important facts: 

(1) That federal BUILD cash *is not* going to the toy train and

(2) The KCATA is spending a million on it. That is pretty outrageous. KCATA should not be hemorrhaging money on the rail plan. They should focus on buses. There have been significant cuts to bus lines since the toy train e.g. 47, 28, 570 etc. It is silly because the rail line does not go anywhere that wasn't within the mainstreet MAX (or the 56 line before it),at least before they moved the downtown leg of the Main St. MAX line over to Grand because of the embarrassing reality that the streetcar is completely within an existing bus line. 

(3) This is NOT new money it is just shuffling money around from pocket to pocket among shady quasi public entities, from a TDD to a Streetcar Authority. The reality is there's no big fat federal check paying for this expensive turd - it is just money sucked from local pockets."

You decide . . .

Comments

  1. Of course the streetcar news is propaganda. That's what it was always going to be. But there is a benefit in some way, it keeps city hall from trying any thing else that will hurt the city even further. The expense is huge but it's mostly harmless. I'd rather have Sly playing with his toys than doing something worse with schools or police.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Streetcar is old news T. The young set rides scooters now. The rail transit deal was just KC trying to get more of that Obama money. It's all dried up now and Trump isn't going to fund any of this nonsense.

      Delete
    2. Point number 2 is correct indeed. Please highlight that Tony. We need to spend on buses and not streetcars. The bus actually moves people more efficiently.

      Delete
  2. But what about our momentum?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ^^^^^^^^^ We got a glut of empty hotels because of the choo choo, I'm sure that'll work out.

      Delete
  3. momentum?

    As in standing in a hole six feet deep smiling and chuckling thinking your at a ground breaking ceremony?

    ReplyDelete
  4. ^^^ Good point.

    What's worse is that the business journal is publishing this garbage without going through it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. “The problem with American streetcars”

    One of the hallmarks of federal transportation funding during the Obama administration was a new willingness to support streetcar projects. With the first wave of these projects now in service, their shortcomings are becoming more apparent.

    A report published earlier this year in the Journal of Transport Geography sheds light on the limits of these streetcars: They were always intended mainly to spur real estate investment, not to address urban mobility needs. As authors David King and Lauren Fischer explain, streetcar backers were often more concerned about land development than the transportation system.

    The new streetcar segments typically run a short distance — a few miles at most — in mixed traffic, and they aren’t well-integrated into existing transit networks. So it should come as no surprise that ridership is often underwhelming.

    So, spending nearly a half billion dollars on toy train wasn’t for the public as it was for sLIE’s developer buddies, like we didn’t already know this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Developers don't give a shit if there is a streetcar or not all they want is hefty tax breaks and subsidies.

    ReplyDelete
  7. They sold this scam to the taxpayers as it’s the only way to build new businesses and bring more revenue to the city and people bought into it despite the obvious facts that the businesses got huge tax breaks and made serious bank of our backs. sLIE and his buddies have made millions off these scams.

    ReplyDelete
  8. +1 on that ^^^

    This thing has become such a nightmare, if you ask around, the only people who are happy about it are those who are getting paid to keep the scam going.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 6:01, you summed it up. Yes, the developers don't give a damn about the streetcar. They're building downtown because of their tax breaks and also the nationwide trends for millennials and empty nesters wanting to move back downtown. That happens in many cities without streetcars. You don't see a streetcar on Michigan Avenue or Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and those Lake Shore Drive condo's are zillions of dollars. And buses run on those streets and the "L" takes care of other streets. No streetcar necessary in Chicago.

    ReplyDelete
  10. But point two is an opinion, not a fact.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

TKC COMMENT POLICY:

Be percipient, be nice. Don't be a spammer. BE WELL!!!

- The Management