This is another city run by idiotic managers who thought “Light Rail” was a realistic mass transit system.
Imagine buses on rails that move at about 20 miles/hour because they travel mainly on (not below or above) city streets.
The monthly pass is $65
*ouch*
It takes me 15 minutes to DRIVE the same route the Light Rail takes an HOUR to complete. “Gosh, let’s see, should I rise an HOUR earlier each morning to ride Snail Rail and save the environment, OR should I sleep in another 45 min and drive my SUV to work?” Tough choice.
An hour for “Snail Rail” to travel 13 miles!
What a joke.
Oh, user studies show the actual total system cost translates into about $100 PER RIDE. What a money saver for the city 🙂 Of course Snail Rail also completely screws up traffic as trains lock up all stop lights for miles ahead as they come lumbering through each intersection.
I grew up in Minneapolis, another city with an underutilized “Snail Rail” that takes over an hour to get people to the city center from the airport (about a 20-min car ride)
Face it, most major cities in the United States are decades behind Europe and Asia on mass transit. Americans will discover this when oil reaches $200/bbl and our economy (and transportation system) collapses.
What should G. Bush be focused on intead of his hobby of starting expensive wars his competing in the competition for World’s Biggest (sanctioned) Terrorist? How about our government going city-by-city and ripping in new highly efficient rapid subway systems AND creating HIGH-speed city-to-city supertrains.
(Those will be systems that almost nobody will use in the next few years, but 10 or 15 years from now it will be standing room only on those subways and high-speed trains.)