Quote:
Originally Posted by sakyle04
I would SHOUT "no".
working LRT requires density or park and ride. you're crazy if you think jane-soccer-mom is going to drive her mercedes to a LRT station, park, unload the kids, and then pay to ride to the Rim.
or utsa.
or la cantera.
i am not even convinced that the Rim/La Cantera area is dense enough for LRT to be useful there. i really think the purpose of it there will be to pick up folks to go downtown. for example, if i want to go to DICK's and Target and Gap, I would either have to walk 8 miles in the blazing sun or have some sort of annoying intra-shopping center conveyance (that happens to cross under I-10).
LRT in stone oak? only as a connector to the med center there and only after a thousand other corridors have been served.
rich people don't get out of their cars. not even for the most convenient rail-system. ask new yorkers.
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I think you're exactly right. Suburban patterns are simply incompatible with mass transit. Once people get in their cars for a trip, they won't get out.
This city/county should focus 100% of its very-limited transportation resources on mass transit. But we also need to have the discipline to dedicate those resources to areas where they can have the greatest practical impact, meaning the pre-suburban neighborhoods in or near downtown.
People in suburbia have made a choice to live in an auto-centric, auto-dependant environment. I don't begrudge them that (though I will gladly ridicule them), but we need to have the collective confidence as a city to realize how foolish and wasteful it would be to try build infrastructure "out there".
And SKW, per your original post on the proposed thoroughfare: no matter your opinion on the project (and I think it's a terrible idea) there are a number of vehicles to privately finance the construction of this highway. But a TIF is a terrible idea, and the city & county already know that it won't fly.
I don't expect this to move forward. Hopefully, the days of building auto-dependent sprawl are coming to a close.
Chad.