I get so ****ing pissed off when the topic of Project Connect comes up.

So many of my neighbors are key absolute idiots voting for it. We are all paying $500-800 (or more) a year in city taxes for a rail system that is going to end up costing $5,000 a rider per year best case scenario.

We have the per capita density of Lincoln and Omaha Nebraska.



Even for the people who bought the lies, now we see Federal promises to kick in $4B plus in matching and whatever else is not happening, we won't have it underground as far as originally pitched.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/why-austins-project-connect-stands-to-benefit-from-biden-buttigieg-transportation-plans/amp/

"While Clarke feels confident about the CapMetro calculations that federal grants will cover 45% of Project Connect, he is hopeful there will be opportunities for the project to get even more support from the federal government than they had initially planned."

But yet these same individuals pay for some of my salary to keep surveying existing rails for Cap Metro rail service in the future. 25 years surveying abandoned rails from Austin to the airport to see what is viable. Pick a damn route. Lol

Rail is obsolete once we have enough electric infrastructure, self driving cars, subscription car services, and a reliable heavily automated bus network. Why be stuck to a fixed rail path when you can dynamically route vehicles on roads to meet demand? And put vehicles in service or taken them off for maintenance in accordance with actual demand? Why not leverage existing road infrastructure, instead of building an entirely new rail path? Why be stuck with trains that can only ever run at a certain fixed interval regardless of demand?

Commuter Rail is stupid and wasteful except in certain specific circumstances.

Downtown to the Airport is one of the only models that consistently works throughout the US. Looks like lunacy won out again, and we still won't get it. Who keeps voting for these moronic idiots?

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Downtown to the Airport is one of the only models that consistently works

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Why this wasn't the first option built is beyond me.
With one or two stops along the way at off site parking areas.

Apache said:

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Quote:

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Downtown to the Airport is one of the only models that consistently works

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Why this wasn't the first option built is beyond me.
With one or two stops along the way at off site parking areas.

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I would assume folks on the coordinating committee owned property not near the airport, that they needed it to go through? But I am jaded that way.....

I can't see any other reason why anyone would want to ride the damn thing except for maybe to avoid parking at an event, like soccer etc. We used to ride the one in Dallas to get to the hockey game and State fair. It was reliable enough for that use anyway, but nowhere near worth what we paid for it in taxes to ride it 1 or 2 times a month at best.

Before it's finished, this project will make Boston's Big Dig look penny ante,