The View Through The Windshield writes about cars, current events, business and life. The entry from July 10th in part:
Last year, James Lileks has bemoaned the return of the trolley to Minneapolis: "Heading into the office today I was startled to see the poles - ten per block, tall and gray, ugly lumps hanging from the wires that laced the poles together. ... And so the intersections now have these latticework constructs, these anal-retentive dreamcatchers, these tic-tac-toe puzzles pasted over your view of the sky." He added recently that "the operating budget requires an $11K subsidy per passenger per year." Ouch!Posted by Simon at July 12, 2004 02:20 AMThe 'romance' of trolleys blinds people to their disadvantages - expensive to build or modify a line or route, inflexible, unable pull to side of the road for passengers to embark/disembark, the overhead wires, the nightmare when one breaks down and on and on. When it used to cost a few hundred thou to construct a line, they were called 'trolleys.' Now that the cost is in the billions, they are referred to as 'light rail vehicles' or 'LRVs.' Sounds more sophisticated and NASA-like. I guess bureaucrats think that fancy names and acronyms helps justify the outrageous price. Better and smarter to use low-emission buses, in my opinion. They're cheaper (both capital investment and operating costs) and more flexible.