– Badtux the Former Houstonian Penguin
*For those not familiar with the industrial geography of Houston, between Pasadena and Baytown are where the majority of the chemical plants and oil refineries are located.

Our Houston MTA funds rail construction in Houston. Two… not one but two… popular votes authorized the taxes Houston Metro assesses to pay for it. As far as I can tell, one line is complete, three are under construction and two are on hold pending assurance of availability of funding. (Our Mayor used to be City Controller and is very prudent in financial matters. Just to annoy Duffy, she is also gay.)

Sooner or later, all the lines will be built. They have to be, because the air here is already damned nearly unbreathable, and despite the very pro-awl-bidness population here, everyone admits what the studies show: a majority of the air pollution is from auto exhaust. Mexico City is worse, but who wants black air?

– Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

Regarding Caltrain, it was built via bonds sold on Wall Street in the early 1870’s by the Western Pacific Railroad. It could not pay for itself, so the WP had to declare bankruptcy when they could not make payments on their debt, and the Southern Pacific bought the corpse of the WP for pennies on the dollars. In other words, it was basically built by defrauding bondholders who’d been assured that an intercontinental railroad was a “sure bet” when the WP knew up front that they likely would be unable to pay off the bonds needed to build the road. In other words, even before subsidized highways and airlines, the railroad that became Caltrain was unable to pay the full costs of its construction and operation out of user fees, just as no highway, anywhere, has ever been able to pay the full costs of its construction and operation out of user fees.

I am baffled as to why you believe that building a railroad via fraud is better than building a railroad via tax monies, but then, I suppose I should not be surprised. After all, Wall Street proves that there is nothing conservatives like better than fraud :twisted:.

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

oh, wait… you meant jobs, those things where you go to work every day, and get a paycheck every __ weeks. i think i remember what that was like.

If we are going to talk about subsidies and driving, let’s not leave out the traffic signs and lights, the people to enforce the traffic laws, the people to certify fuel pumps at gas stations, the costs of providing parking if you want to build something, processing the storm water runoff from the roads, and all of the other associated costs of private vehicles that are borne by everyone, whether they own a car or not.

That’s without considering the secondary costs of vehicle-based pollution.

All highways here in America are built and maintained with tax money, just in case the Duffer is confused on the subject. The cost of running Caltrain (which carries roughly 40,000 people per day) for a year is roughly the same as the cost of repaving eight miles of freeway (each of our freeways carry about 120,000 people per day). Yet spending over $2 BILLION per year repaving freeways is uncontroversial, while spending $30M/year running Caltrain is fiscally impossible? Baffling. Completely baffling.

I love our light rail. It is overwhelmingly the preferred way to go north and south through Downtown, the Texas Medical Center (think: Bethesda of Houston, with a dozen hospitals and other institutions), the convention center, Discovery Green for outdoor events, one of the two 1500+-acre parks, Rice University (ahem), the baseball stadium, the biggest football stadium, the basketball stadium, more than a dozen sets of apartments both upscale and ordinary, the major classical concert facility, the old concert facility, the primary resident company theater, the opera house, numerous clubs including jazz venues, one of the historical districts… Why would anyone want to try to find a parking place when one rail line goes all those places? Most Houstonians are inveterate drivers, but almost all of us take the rail when we go any of the listed places.

Oh, and this will especially annoy Duffy. The city couldn’t find an adequate manufacturer in the US, so the entire system, all the technology, is FRENCH!