How I totally forgot about this development is a testament of how pre-occupied I was with a couple other things because last year CAMPO (Austin’s mass transit organization) finished constructing the Howard Lane stop around this time. I’ve been pretty excited to take a trip downtown with it since it’s fairly close to my house, I would say around three miles.
I already knew about its downsides:
- It only runs Monday thru Friday.
- It only runs seven sessions in the morning and another seven in the afternoon for the commuters, namely people who live in the Northwest (Leander, Cedar Park) and work downtown: lobbyists, bankers, lawyers and the few gov’t employees that actually own houses. Personally, I have rarely met anyone with a job near downtown unless it was with UT.
- It can handle just a mere couple thousand people.
- It’s probably cheaper to just drive into the city. I think a pass one way is over a couple bucks plus CAMPO has been cutting back and raising rates thanks to the (Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush) economy. Yet I won’t have to deal with parking!
There are plans to have it expanded to have a line to the airport. At the rate everything happens in America, I will be nearing retirement when it’s completed.
Which leads to me to this little tirade so forgive me now.
Of all the editorialists in the New York Times, the one I can’t stand is Thomas Friedman. He is one of the biggest corporate apologists (The Earth is Flat my ass) but I agree with him (and oddly so does his more liberal counterpart Bob Herbert) on America’s crumbling/lagging infrastructure. This tiny stretch of light rail took practically a decade to happen and it was built on existing rail lines, aka MoPac. Over 2000 years ago, the Romans built a ramp to attack Masada in six months without the aid of dump trucks, earthmovers or any heavy machinery; yes, I know the enslaved people to do it. My point is that the Romans didn’t sit around bickering for several years with committees, lobbyists and studies about population growth forecasts. Hell, many of the institutionalized systems in New York, Paris, London, Boston and Chicago were built faster than the debacle ours has been.
I hope to ride it soon and post my experience about it.