Quote:
Originally Posted by JMVC
Careful there, MIEK. Sounds a lot like you are calling me a liar. You do not know anything about me or my interests, nor what I know and do not know. My interest is the same as yours - a better transit system. Although I am indeed a Cap Metro employee, they do not pay me to mislead people. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I am misleading anyone. I imagine the real difference between our positions on things is that you read about things that are happening in Wear's column and on a few blogs, jump to conclusions and then go rant about it....and I am actually involved in many of the things you read about and privy to the discussions and context that Wear does not write about, I ask questions of the people involved to ensure I understand why decisions are made and their implications, AND THEN I go talk about it...that is my job.
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JMVC's job, for those who don't know here, is basically PR for Capital Metro. Thus, obviously, his incentive is quite often going to be to take their pronouncements somewhat less critically and more optimistically than the average observer might consider warranted. It's his job. My job is to write software; the only reason I write so much about transit is that there's nobody else out there who knows anything about it who is willing to do it who isn't a completely anti-transit Neanderthal like Skaggs and company (a crackplog on this subject forthcoming) or completely in CM's pocket. Back to this issue, though:
For instance, in this specific case being discussed, we have a Rapid Bus plan that the Feds just funded that will make urban rail virtually impossible on Guadalupe while doing almost nothing to improve bus operations, and we have more spending on commuter rail being planned which will make funding urban rail anywhere else virtually impossible (very limited local rail dollars; somewhat limited federal rail dollars; funding NOT from completely separate places).
Because of JMVC's job, he can't say this, whether or not he believes it. He has to, in fact, say that CM's efforts don't affect the city's urban rail plans at all, and don't create any non-trivial obstacles to getting rail where we all know it needs to go (Guadalupe, as even he has said in the past).
Now, is he lying? No. He's a PR guy. He can rest on the small difference between "virtually impossible" and "completely impossible". That's his job. He can reply to the proverbial "one in a million" with, as a wise man once said,
"so you're telling me there's a chance".