As much as I kind of wish the country had not destroyed its streetcar and rail systems, this is just obscene.
$243 million to rebuild the train station in Minneapolis St Paul
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/05/photos-st-paul-union-depot-reopens
Dude, Denver Union Station got $300 million from the gov for rebuilding.
But it will be the heart and soul of a rhythm & blues, I mean transportation hub that will serve 100,000 passengers a day.
must be light rail passengers cause I think it only see’s one Amtrak train (two at the most) a day.
I saw that info in Railfan and Railroad magazine.
parrott
That is $3,000.00 subsidy per passenger. I bet there are additional subsidies for operational costs of the station, and for the tickets themselves.
Light rail causes car accidents, slows traffic and causes additional greenhouse gas releases from the slowed traffic.
Why do all this then? Because it is an opportunity to let more government contracts… spending your money so you don’t have to. How does it work? How about this as an example:
http://avidinvestorgroup.com/2013/04/fish-in-a-barrel/
Yes. People have voted that they don’t want to go to work through hubs. Replacing a traffic light at a crowded intersection with a bridge would have been a rational choice to spend the 1/2 billion dollars that is being wasted on Denver and Minneapolis.
Do you expect the light rail travelers will pay enough for their tickets for pay back the 1/2 billion dollars? My experience is that the money would have been better spent for the government to loan or gift cab fare to people starting a first job until they earn enough to buy a used car so they can to to and from work on their own.
I have an opinion that about 90% of all traffic signals are completely unneeded and counter productive. But they employ traffic consultants and repairman and make little old ladies happy.
In Michigan, we had an extended power outage due to an overloaded transformer. The traffic lights were probably out for a week. Typical mile square section roads. Mostly 2 lanes each way at the intersections.
With lights, there was a 50/50 chance you would have on average a 15 second wait. With a four way stop, you had a close to 100% chance of a 1 second stop. Dwell time was vastly reduced. Admittedly you would have gotten through some times without stopping. On the other hand, with a fixed stop, you can create an efficient stop. If the light turns yellow, you’ll make a much harder stop with an increased risk of being rear ended.
You’re absolutely right. Unless there is a lot of traffic, they should flash yellow for the main road and red for the side roads.
I am most surprised that the liberal green movement isn’t all over this with its waste of electricity. In most cases, you could remove the traffic light completely by widening the interchange to have a lane for left turns, a lane for going straight, and a lane for right turns. If traffic is an issue, then two lanes for going straight that merge back to 1 lane 0.1 miles past the intersection – for the streets with the stop sign. The issue time to accelerate is from a stop is the issue.