If you build it, they will come

One of the efforts being pushed by urban "progressives" are these mammoth Thomas the Tank Engine projects in most of our cities.

This morning I happened to run into this blog pushing the plan for Cincinnati.

It appears that everyone wants to use the Portland rail as the model for theirs. But watch this video of the Portland rail. As you watch the cars go by, do me a favor, look inside the cars and see the number of passengers actually on the car.

You have to believe that when the Portland folks put together the video, they probably did most of the shots during rush hour to show the great demand for the rail system. But most of the footage shows the cars less than half full.

This is the best case for one of these deals? It seems to me that Portland might have been able to turn this into a tourist attraction because these things are so rare and the fact that all these city leaders are taking junkets to Portland to "investigate" their system. Kind of like the first commercial aquariums and IMAX's were popular until every city had one.




My suggestion to these fantasies for street cars. Lets buy Thomas the Tank Engine DVD's for all the proponents.

Hopefully, they'll sit in front of the TV memorized by the Alec Baldwin narration and at least won't be in public blowing billions of dollars on these white elephants.