Wednesday, March 16, 2005

The Disaster that is Light Rail

Ann Althouse has a great post today on what is either being contemplated or is already coming to Austin, featuring another P.J. O'Rourke column (yes, he has been around here a lot lately) where he figures that you can either ride the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" line to work, or for the same amount of money, lease a BMW X5.

My brother works for the ABC affiliate in Houston and has a number of fun stories about the Houston light rail project, which ends short of the sports stadiums and other large venues, requiring a bus or cab ride to complete those journeys, and has done a wonderful job of endangering the lives of drivers. It's been called, variously, "the train to nowhere," "Danger Train," the "Wham Bam Tram" and "A Streetcar Named Disaster."

I can't wait until Austin tries to alleviate traffic by bringing this nonsense to town, thereby allowing Capitol Metro to further fleece taxpayers. Part of their plan is to close lanes on North Lamar so they can lay tracks, which should do a fine job of making traffic worse. Brilliant . . .

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the Houston Light Rail, It's only problem is that as the first line it dosen't connect to much, but 2 more lines and it will be pretty useful in Houston. I use it quite a bit going downtown for lunch from the medical center, and a lot of commuters use it on metro as parking in the med center is such a joke, and commuting in Houston is also less than desirable.
But the accidents are due to one problem, Texans seem to think they have the right of way - even on the train tracks, which are ridiculously over signposted. For some reason nothing but physical barriers will do in Texas.

fringy

Anonymous said...

subaru sti is another subaru sti place to check out.