Is Mass Transit Dead? Other Than Airlines, Of Course, And Perhaps Light Rail Along The Northeast Corridor -- July 19, 2021

Link here.

This story is no longer a story. 

Anyone with an open mind can see it.

Here in north Texas the light rail from Ft Worth to DFW -- designed to bring DFW employees who live in Ft Worth to work -- runs practically empty. The system is only a couple of years old; the cars are sleek and brand new; it runs very, very quietly. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work but if it served a need, then I certainly was not against it. But it certainly appears it's a debacle.

From Powerline today, a similar story (at the link above). 

I would argue the US Postal Service and Amtrak are necessary national assets and needed to be financed as such. Light rail in communities across the country? Not so much. 

From the linked article:

Where I live, the Twin Cities metro area, transit ridership peaked 100 years ago and has progressively declined ever since. Nevertheless, liberal planners have spent billions on light-rail trains that hardly anyone rides. And here, as nationally, transit ridership has fallen off a cliff post-covid. So why are vast amounts of money still being pumped into obsolete mass transit schemes?

Demands for more subsidies, however, are a dead end for transit. We have already reached the point where the main constituencies for transit subsidies are union transit workers and transit contractors, not transit riders. At some point, people are going to realize that hardly anyone outside of New York City needs transit anymore, and taxpayers and voters will demand an end to those subsidies.

And, then again, we have the Proterra story. 

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Beautiful Sight

Yesterday, late afternoon. 90+ degrees. Somewhat cloudy. Five hundred units in this apartment. One large pool and one smaller pool. This is the smaller pool and I had it all to myself.