The photo at the right illustrates my wife sitting in what could be her preferred alternative to light rail.  In fact, if we could work out a deal with the government, it might tempt us to go back to work.   Between the two of us, we averaged more than 500 annual round trips to the downtown area.  That is 1000 annual passenger trips.  With the $15 per passenger trip Federal subsidy, the cost for us to use light rail would be $15,000 in federal funds (your tax dollars) each year.  At this rate the Feds could buy this beauty for us   and pay it off in a couple of years. With only 4000 miles a year being driven, it should last the estimated 20 years*  for completion of the light rail system, thereby  saving taxpayers  over $250,000. 18 years X $15,000 = $270,000.

Vintage car, a 1931 Ford, courtesy of a friend. Vintage wife, a 19_ _  Hoosier, courtesy of her parents.

OK, we admit that some modes of public transit are slower than LRT

Photos / Humor

Technology comes full circle

Been there. Done that. Light Rail ended in Cincinnati 62 years ago. This is a Cincinnati & Lake Erie (C&LE) interurban car, one of the "Red Devil" fleet.  It was a different breed than the old orange streetcars. Trains consisted of one to three cars. The sign appears to read "College Hill Special", so it may be one that ran from a terminal in Northside, through College Hill, and then to Hamilton and Middletown.  There were several routes, one of them running to Dayton Toledo & Detroit. Others ran from here to such cities as Hamilton, Xenia, Columbus, etc.  The cars were built in Cincinnati and were quite versatile in that they could run at high speeds (over 90MPH) on the main tracks and also run at low speeds on the streetcar tracks in smaller cities. They were abandoned in 1940, primarily because of low ridership and the fact that cars and buses did a better job of getting people to their destinations.  After disposing of its rail rolling stock, C&LE became The Ohio Bus Line, which later became a part of the Greyhound System.  Will we choose to learn from the past, or will we choose to repeat it?

*According to an October, 2002 newspaper article quoting governor Taft, State money may not be fortcoming for quite some time.  In consideration of this fact, a MetroMoves spokesperson stated that 30 years construction time is more realistic.  If the time estimate has already gone up 50% at this very early stage, what will happen during the next thirty years to time and also to COST?

CRUNCH TIME! According to newspaper reports, the half percent sales tax is not sufficient to pay the stadium costs of one billion dollars.  What sort of voodoo number crunching concludes that the exact same amount of tax will produce enough money to pay our share of a far more expensive rail system, especially in light of highly probable State and Federal cutbacks.(or even complete denial) of funds? St. Louis will be forced to issue taxpayer financed bonds in order to finish a rail line after three taxpayer rejections of additional sales taxes and the fact that sufficient Federal funding is not available.