[milwaukee-electric] Re: Milwaukee streetcar route.

[Gary Schnabl]

On 5/10/2010 2:26 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:
> Personally, I'd rather ride on rails, but I believe truncating bus lines
> short of their original terminal and forcing people to transfer to a car
> line would be a publicity nightmare, playing right into the hands of the
> Wendell Cox crowd.
>
> The accusations that doing so to inflate the rail line's passenger count
> and/or giving the Rush Limbaughs of the world ammunition, as they would say
> the mandated transfer is an example of "government making the public do 'the
> right thing.'" I see this as being detrimental to the "Back to Rails"
> movement.
>
> Just my uneducated opinion.
>
> K.
Detroit has its few, but very vocal, lightrail and commuter rail 
proponents. I suppose my former home and birthplace--Milwaukee--has its 
share of them.

My primary reason for not wanting either rail projects here is the co$t 
factor. The city of Detroit had a combined deficit this year of $800 
million between DPS (schools) and the city, and those rail-transit folks 
will not get it into their heads that the city is essentially bankrupt 
and has only survived without Chapter-9 bankruptcy the past decade by $ 
multi-billion bailouts from the state, county, and federal governments. 
It's like they go around with fingers in their ears and shouting, "La, 
la, la" in order to drown out anything that they do not ever want to hear.

SEMCOG has been planning its intercity (Ann Arbor to MidTown Detroit) 
commuter rail for years now but last month put it on hold indefinitely 
due to not getting boondoggle megabucks from the feds this year (or any 
year) because their plans always show the route to be a colossal 
potential failure that the feds will not fund. Nobody here seems to 
really want it anyway. The primary users of the Amtrak runs are college 
students at the University of Michigan and nearby Eastern Michigan 
University, and many of them (most?) head the other way--towards 
Chicago, not toward Detroit.

Metro Detroit's two expensive bus systems also have low riderships, 
except for those few hours for commuting. Many go around nearly empty 
otherwise, even after three major route or service cutbacks the past decade.

Gary

-- 

Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...