Quote:
Originally Posted by SecretAgentMan
First of all, my name is not Lyndon Henry. As much as I respect Mr. Henry, I take that as an insult. I thought you had been warned about calling people names.
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Well, you won't identify yourself, and yet you keep attacking my credibility. It's left to me and the rest of us to guess who you are. My next guess would be Dave Dobbs, since those two are the originators of the "doubletrack the Red Line and run it more often and it's basically urban rail" meme.
As for the rest of your argument, it ignores the fact that people who drive to work today will be spectacularly UNwilling to accept a switch to a transit commute that requires a transfer (a 3-seat ride), even if the last portion of the ride is rail, even IF we can ever extend urban rail further up north, which, as shown in previous discussions, we can't - unless conditions change radically, and in most of those scenarios we wouldn't be able to afford the bill. This is the reason I suspect you're one of those insiders - because nobody who works in the private sector would think a plan which requires transfers from an infrequently running Red Line to a slow but possibly frequent urban rail line would be attractive to drivers.
But the real key, and this is important in identifying who the hell you really are, is that
spending more money on the Red Line means the city's urban rail line will go wanting for local dollars - and probably even federal dollars. It's difficult to envision, even under an Obama DOT, a scenario in which both are fully funded - so at this point,
anybody advocating further investment in the Red Line is, de facto, arguing against the city's urban rail plan.
Your 1/4 cent argument is also a misrepresentation - CM had to cut into bus operations because they are still giving back the 1/4 cent money
and because they spent north of $130M on commuter rail, in the process lying about seeking federal funding for the commuter rail line. If commuter rail had lost in 2004, obviously they wouldn't have spent that money. It's also interesting to hear you so credulous now about them not seeking local funds for Red Line expansion (and the Elgin Green Line service) given this past history. Maybe I'll change my guess to John-Michael.
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