Columnist Carl Nolte is one of the last remaining vestiges of the SF Chronicle before it transformed into the SF Comicle. His Sunday column (front section, page 2) is always worth the read and he mixes nostalgia for the lost Bagdad by the Bay with keen observations and, in this week's piece, actual letter grades for the City on a number of aspects. One snippet caught my attention because it is symptomatic of other screw-ups. Nolte notes:
I rode the 30-Stockton bus into Chinatown on the first day of summer, a shopping day. It was packed, standing room only. I rode the subway back. It was nearly empty, plenty of seats. Why did the taxpayers pay $2 billion for a subway when the customers clearly prefer the bus? Good question for the urban planners. It will be on the next test.
Don't expect those urban planners to pass. The greenwashers keep trying to get people to abandon how they want to travel in favor of how a "planner" wants them to travel. Look no further than our high-cost rail boondoggle. Forget $2 billion, think $200 billion and still not "complete" per the promised route. We'll have electric commercial flights to LA before we have an HSR trip that will take three times as long. Will Caltrain avoid the fiscal cliff? I hope so, but it's looking perilous--and expensive for the Bay Area taxpayers.
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