[reason180]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Studies have shown that this line would be very expensive to build and would not have the ridership necessary to support it.

Almost 40% of all households in Hartford DON'T have access to a vehicle yet a large portion of downtown is a sea of imposing parking lots. Strange isn’t it? ConnDOT better wake up before Hartford losses all of it’s major employers to corporate parks in the ‘burbs.

A look at the history of CT tells us that all major cities in the state were connected via rail and they all had trolley systems as a form of mass transit. The state needs to take an honest look at how much they spend/subsidize automobile use and start making some investments in mass transit/transit oriented development if we are ever going to be competitive.

[sun]

Originally Posted by reason180

Almost 40% of all households in Hartford DON'T have access to a vehicle yet a large portion of downtown is a sea of imposing parking lots. Strange isn’t it? ConnDOT better wake up before Hartford losses all of it’s major employers to corporate parks in the ‘burbs.

A look at the history of CT tells us that all major cities in the state were connected via rail and they all had trolley systems as a form of mass transit. The state needs to take an honest look at how much they spend/subsidize automobile use and start making some investments in mass transit/transit oriented development if we are ever going to be competitive.

The city (or should I say cities) already has lost employers and will continue to do so. There's been just too much of an investment in the interstate and roadway networks to justify light rail in this region.
The future is going to rely on more fuel efficient vehicles, and when the need for light rails becomes so great, then some of the exodus away from the cities will turn around and the "professional" workforce can move back into the cities.
The suburban corporations can only grow as large as the available workforce and the transportation network that can easily commute there.
The cities were planned out too long ago, and once the rail/trolly system was lost, it was essentially lost forever. Well at least for the forseeable future.
It's not too unlike the 1 dollar coin or the 2 dollar bill. If people won't use them, then why make them and try to market them? Just to justify making them?
Even some of the current bus routes have a tough time breaking even and require subsidies, and certainly more routes could be put into use to accomodate people. So why even try to build a much more expensive rail network instead when more bus routes could suffice?
In short, the decision was made a very long time ago to abandon the rail networks.
There's plenty of workers living in the cities, it's the corporations that are leaving the cities, and the state, usually for tax reasons. So what's the need for the light rail to feed into the cities? Because the middle class abandoned the cities first? The middle class can very well continue to commute, and historically they don't want to pay higher taxes for light rail either. And "smarter" industries can always move back into the city if they really want to where the blue collar workforce is waiting for jobs.