Bloggylicious


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Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Idiotic Nature of Commuter Rail

For this post, I've decided to comment on how stupid Raleigh is for building a regional rail system through ONE route in the triangle. Let's begin by looking at the facts. The Triangle Transit Authority (TTA) wants to create a single, 28 mile railway that begins in Downtown Raleigh and goes west to Cary before heading north to Downtown Durham. OK, so maybe they do cover a FEW of the popular areas in the triangle. So, lets say I live in Cary and want to go to Downtown Durham to see a Bulls game. Right now, I jump in my car and head up 55 til I hit 40 and head into Durham. Once we get this wonderful train, I'll be able to jump in my car, head to the nearest train stop (10 miles away or so), park, buy a train ticket, wait for the train to come, ride to the nearest stop to the ballpark (at a blazing 34 MPH), wait for a bus to take me from the train station to the ballpark, and ride it to my stop. Of course, this all assumes I delicately planned out my trip beforehand, being sure to carefully plan what routes take me where and at what time. I for one welcome the opportunity to diversify my commutes in such a fashion. What used to be a boring trip in a boring car on a boring highway is now a wonderful adventure through all that modern transportation has to offer. I get to explore a diverse culture of interesting people on my train ride, I get to brush up on my street smarts to avoid muggings on the bus, and most importantly, my knowledge of the triangle will increase significantly because of the necessity to make sure I don't end up on a bus to nowhere.

What is the cost for this wonderful opportunity, you ask? Well, conservative estimates have pegged it at $631 million, a small price to pay for such a wonderful experience.

For those of you who may prefer the boring trip along the highway(don't know why), consider another option. Instead of spending $600 million plus on a train/bus combination system that won't even take us directly from our starting point to our ending point, lets invest that money into improving an already excellent system of transporting people to their destination. Its a wonderful system that can take you from your home garage to the mall garage without ever walking in the rain. It allows you to go from school to dinner to the grocery store without ever showing a ticket stub, waiting in line, or transferring from one method of travel to another. For those of you on the edge of your seat as to what magical system I could be talking about, its called roads. That's right, roads. They're everywhere. There's some in your neighborhood, they have them in every city in this country, and they even have to between cities! And best yet, they're all connected!

So here's my point; $600 million is a whole lot of money to pay for a giant headache. We all have cars and we all prefer using our cars over other slower, stinkier, more expensive methods of travel. Instead of spending all that money on some stupid rail system, maybe we should funnel that money into completing I-540 or investing in other road projects. There's only one reason to EVER build a rail/subway system in a city. When you don't have enough room to build another road, you can build a train. Any other reason will result in catstrophic failure.

The idea that investing money in regional rail will even remotely help the state of transportation in the triangle is perposterous. Lets rid ourselves of this idea before its too late.