"Fred Dehl" wrote in message
...

No, Fred, you didn't make any points. You made a number of
unsubstantiated claims.

Every statement I made is 100% true and backed up by federal and transit
association data. Our city is in the midst of blowing some $6 billion on
new mass transit, and I was tasked with writing several columns for the
newspaper offering some truths about other cities' experience with it.

Your reasons are true, but they don't mean that the system cannot work. Your
reasons point out that in order for a system to work in an optimum fashion,
you cannot simply stick buses or trains in place. Unfortunately, it requires
a bit more thought, which can be a difficult thing when you're predisposed
to dislike the idea, for dark reasons of your own.

1) In many instances, mass transit drops you off someplace where there are
no other necessary services such as grocery stores. This is because in the
past 50+ years, very few communities could've known of the urban sprawl we'd
eventually have. Some communities are redesigning to make some areas more
useful to pedestrian shoppers.

2) People (like you) believe that the purpose of mass transit is to stop
people from driving their cars 100% of the time, which is absurd. If a
person takes the train into NY City, and avoids idling on the Long Island
Expressway for 2 hours, they still have to drive home from the train
station. So what? Now they're driving for 10 minutes instead of 2 hours. Has
this achieved nothing?

3) Politicians persist in their criminal relationships with the construction
business, so we keep building roads that create short-term solutions (and
jobs), because this is what the construction business wants. Meanwhile,
perfect mass-transit solutions opportunities often exist, but are ignored.
Example: Here (Rochester NY), highway route 490 is one of the busiest in the
area. Parallel to the highway, about 1/2 mile away, is an old, unused rail
bed in good condition. At every point where the rail bed crossed the same
main roads as the highway exits, there was cheap property available for Park
& Ride lots. This meant that motorists who normally got off at those exits
could, instead, leave their cars in those lots, and use a light rail
service.

The city hired two engineering firms to evaluate the possibility of
installing light rail service. The independent conclusions were that unlike
other cities where light rail had been considered, our situation was
perfect. The vast majority of the automobile traffic on that road ends up in
downtown Rochester, whose entire business district encompasses maybe 10
square blocks. The railway could've taken people exactly where they wanted
to go, to a place where they finished their trips on foot even if they
drove.

The idea was so perfect that it was ignored. The highway was widened,
instead, to handle more traffic. Matter of fact, the work began on the
highway about a month after the studies were presented to the city
government. The mayor was interviewed on TV around that time, discussing his
solutions to sprawl. Waiting near the podium for him to finish was a very
happing looking guy in a suit too expensive for a public official, smoking a
big cigar and smiling broadly. I later found out he was the owner of the
company which got the contract to widen the highway.