Light rail opportunity left idling on the track

[MHTransport]

Apparently Seattle is also having an internal argument over light rail.

http://www.horsesass.org/?p=3705

Light rail will dramatically increase the capacity of the I-90 bridge. When the East Link line opens, we’re going to see a 50 percent increase in peak-hour transit use for the corridor. In plain English, the increase in transit use will be huge between Seattle and the Eastside. A Seattle Times/Ron Sims/Kemper Freeman Jr. bus plan doesn’t come close. Not by a longshot.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/e ... eed01.html

With the Seattle times editorial team being widely criticized for protesting light rail because of personal opinion and desires.

[Parkey]

That's brilliant! I'll have to copy those.

Ah yes indeed, I do enjoy my rants.

As for making services "profitable" whilst I appreciate that wasting money on subsidising services that are of little benefit is bad I do take issue with the "bottom line" approach that Thatcher started being applied to things like transport. Transport isn't there to make a profit for UK PLC, it's there to enable UK PLC to make a profit. I'm not saying it should be free at the point of use, and yes it has to run efficiently, but what I'm getting at is that it's a national overhead. If you applied the same model to a small business you'd have no R&D, PA, or HR departments, no cleaners, and no receptionist, because only the sales department were "making a profit".

At present the average UK taxpayer has £25 per year of their tax money put into the railways. I'm willing to bet that £25 enables a much larger number in national wealth to be generated. There are certainly a lot of jobs and businesses in this country that wouldn't exist if the railways weren't there.

[Kevo00]

Of course, the bottom line approach to transport actually started with Beeching, and as far as rail was concerned was enshrined by Labour Transport Minister Barbara Castle in the 1968 Transport Act when it was made clear that the remains of BR had to be self supporting.

[Parkey]

Heh, maybe my horrific ordeal just gives me an anti-Thatcher bias.