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Location: Earth, a nice neighborhood in the Milky Way
3,793 posts, read 2,696,474 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by neguy99
By the way, in terms of making sense of the "jobs created" or "development created" figures, I actually did some work on such analysis for Portland's first light rail (MAX) line for the city government. In doing so, we simply tallied up every single real estate development since construction on the line started to the then-present day that took place within 1/2 mile of the line east of the river, or within 1/4 mile of the line downtown (almost certainly _way_ too wide, since that captures most of the downtown core). We made zero effort, none, to determine what would have happened had the line not been built, nor did we compare development along the route to comparable streets without the line. We just tallied up everything, and reported it as the official number -- despite being completely and totally bogus social science. PDX city govt has a pretty good rep for honesty and competence, justifyably -- that very same department could and did do cutting-edge traffic network modelling when designing road projects or prioritizing maintenance work, for example. So make what you will of Providence city hall forecasts....
I get your point, and it isn't too surprising. I imagine there is a lot of freedom to interpret the numbers.
How Prov. city hall does it, I can only imagine. I am trying to give them more credit than they tend to get, because all I have is hearsay to go on to form my judgment at present.
Location: Earth, a nice neighborhood in the Milky Way
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hollytree
Is anyone seriously proposing that Prov & RI undertake such an expensive initiative given our current deficits? Are you so dazzled by the idea of "retro rail" that cost is irrelevant?
I'm surprised there were so few calls for walking or free drop off bicycles, etc. No one even commented on my JWU shuttle idea which seems to me to be a potentially cheap way to add short downtown routes.
How's this idea: Why not talk to J&W about having the city work out a deal with them to expand their student shuttles and make them available to the general public? J&W is very big on public service and they would listen to a reasonable proposal. You read it here first.
Who pays for it? I don't think JWU is going to want to subsidize transportation for the general public.
Who pays for it? I don't think JWU is going to want to subsidize transportation for the general public.
Did you read what they are proposing spending for an antiquated looking overhead wired trolley? A fraction of that could be negotiated with J&W. May or may not work, but at least it's an alternative to be explored.
Either JWU opens its shuttles to all and pays for the extra equipment, drivers, maintenance, storage space, fuel, etc. themselves (not going to happen), or either the city or state gives them a subsidy to run a public transit system, in which case JWU, a private enterprise, would be getting corporate welfare to be RIPTA's competition, and would be subject to a whole new world of regulatory issues (also not going to happen).
Good Scott McKay commentary on this today, basically the same stance as me: trolleys are great in the abstract, but given the reality of what Providence needs and its dire financial and tax situation, this would be a huge mistake for this city at this time.
Location: Earth, a nice neighborhood in the Milky Way
3,793 posts, read 2,696,474 times
Reputation: 1609
^ an interesting, if poorly edited, read.
I agree our resources are tight. But, when our two big ideas are either handing over money to wealthy businessmen to build them a baseball stadium or investing in our infrastructure and simultaneously accepting a little help from the Feds to build the public a streetcar, well, the latter idea has the potential to do more public good.
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