Quote:
Originally Posted by Fritzdude
Can someone help me settle a heated political discussion that I just had with a buddy of mine. He is strictly anti-rail and says all the money that we're pouring into FastTracks is a waste of tax payer's money. He says RTD is losing money big time and we'll never recoup our investments on the lines to Golden and to DIA. It's all a waste of money (and then somehow blames Obama... fwiw.) Anyway, I think he's been slurping the Glenn Beck juice too much and want to counter his argument with facts.
Can someone tell me the pros and cons of FastTracks and whether it's a "sound" investment?
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It is indeed a "sound investment" while new urban roads and highways often are not. The hardest thing for conservatives to understand regarding rail is that the majority of it's benefits fit within a long-term cost/benefit analysis. Roads/highways are opposite - they cost much less in the short term but cost more in the long term.
Roads: comparatively little cost up front
accumulating costs over time - maintenance, widening to accomodate congestion, environmental costs, moving roads to deal with urban growth and highway-as-barrier issues (e.g. I-70 west of the mousetrap, Big Dig in Boston), aesthetic degradation, health costs including pollution and obesity, increasing reliance on fossil fuels/foreign oil
Rail: huge up-front cost
accumulating benefits over time - encourages density and all benefits associated with density, creates nodes of activity that lead to economic growth, reorients urban growth around said nodes reducing sprawl, reduces traffic thereby reducing costs for road maintenance, new roads, congestion and associated economic losses, etc. (see above), more trains are significantly cheaper than new or widened roads i.e. sustainable means of accommodating growing population, much better for the environment, health benefits associated with increased walking and biking, reduced dependance on fossil fuels/foreign oil
In cities with even moderate existing density, rail is all but guaranteed to eventually pay itself off and much more. Roads are all but guaranteed to increase the cost to taxpayers. Granted, it may take a generation or two to fully appreciate the savings and economic growth afforded by rail, but isn't that the sort of sacrifice that this country was built on? Most people would say that they are working so that their kids will be better off than they are. Rail fits within that goal while catering to the auto does not.
Final thought; I heard a conservative talk show host once say that maturity is defined as delaying immediate gratification for the purpose of ultimate gain. I have found that my conservative friends understand this principle well (and unfortunately don't see that many of the conservative tenets are ultimately market-driven and necessarily immature, by that definition). Those that are critical thinkers usually change their mind regarding rail when the true nature of the debate is revealed to them.
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