Found by Zamir Humud.
Meanwhile the video below is what the idealists are pushing.
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Bleeech.
This is an example of people refusing to do the hard things because they are hard, and instead building their careers on a pile of worthless shit.
If you are in government, be a leader, do the hard task and lift the community from where it is to where it should be. Or quit you job god damn it.
You will notice they got one thing right!
There is nobody riding the trains!
Nobody on the platform, and Johnny-Doo-Wop is sitting in an empty train car.
Har!
This coming from the city whose primary industry once bought out street car companies across the country in order to shut them down and create a new market for their buses and motor coaches?
No way.
This is Buffalo NY’s transit line story 25 years ago, except Detroit’s much bigger. Our rail line was not really finished – it goes essentially nowhere – and is crumbling as no one has the money to keep it in good shape. The downtown core it was promised to revitalize was hastened to its death during truction of the rail line. It has never came back, not even a little. Projected ridership has never been met. There are no commuting problems in an area with declining population.
Despite the obvious parallels, this will be built because huge construction projects get people elected.
Typical green cap and trade solar power ….
These types live high on the hog in upscale locations and are going to tell us what to do ?
Obama get off your 747 joyrides and save us all fuel
I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but why is it every time you see something about the revitalization of Detroit it can basically be summed up thusly: Get white people to move back! I am sorry I am being overly simplistic, sometimes they also throw in: Get the black people to act more white! The story of Detroit is basically the story of modern racism in America played out on a grand scale. If you watch the video proposed light rail does nothing for the people of the city, it only makes it easier for the White suburbanites to go see a sporting event (where the majority of the players are non-white) and then get the heck out of town as quickly as possible. When are we going to get real about Detroit and admit that race is and always has been the issue?
#12, I think you are partially right, though I need to change one thing. I don’t think the problem is black people in Detroit, its modern black culture, a union controlled workforce, as well as a very liberal city that killed Detroit.
In order for detroit to be revitalized major things need to change, and a light rail will not change it.
You need to have a climate that middle class and upper middle class feel safe being in, and to bring their family up in, right now that does not exist in Detroit. The problem with Detroit I hate to say, is the people living in the city.
Sorry I meant #9 not #12
I live in Michigan and the People Mover actually does get used a lot during sporting events (baseball, football, hockey games) and other convention events at Cobo Center.
so in the 2nd video, it took this man 3 hours to get from home to a baseball game. When he could have drove there in about 25 minutes, and probably consumed maybe $2 in gasoline consumption. And didn’t have to use his $600 “smartphone” to PAY for a rental car, train ticket, and a connecting light rail.
And who bothers to see the sox anymore, when Detroit has a small population?
#10 People did not move out to South Lyon, Brighton, and beyond to get away from the union workforce and liberal government, they did it to get away from the black people. Every 10 years they move another 5 miles out to get away from the black person that moved into their neighborhood and abandon another ring of suburbs and keeping a buffer from the city.
I loved how the woman shoehorns in the “Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture” – textbook rhetoric of a clueless city bureaucrat. Even after this boondoggle is a total failure she’ll list it at the top of her resume.
I live in the Detroit area of Michigan, and I’m saddened by what happened courtesy of the politicians in the city of Detroit. Detroit is a fine example of reverse racism. When Mayor Coleman Young took office, he made it his task to chase the white man out of the city of Detroit in subtle and not so subtle ways. With the cronyism and corruption that took place within his administration, the continued downfall of Detroit was played out. Almost all of the white folks moved out of Detroit, and all of the decent black folks did too. Those that are left are the ones that could not afford to leave, did not want to leave out of pride for their home and city, or the criminals who took over the city streets.
This dream that light rail will bring jobs and people back to the city is just that – a dream. There are few jobs in the city, and those that work them will never take the rail, as it will take too long to get to downtown compared to driving by car and will be cheaper to drive by car. (It is the “motor city” after all.) I have driven from Pontiac to Ferndale down Woodward Ave, and when it is not under construction or during the dream cruise, it takes less than 20 minutes to get from one end to the other. A light rail with several stops will not be as swift or as economical. Also, I-75 runs near that stretch, and unless it is rush hour, you can go from M-59 to I-375 (downtown) in 25 minutes. Light rail will not beat that.
The parts where it shows the people mover as mostly empty are quite accurate. Unless there is a special event in town, the people mover is almost always empty.
Marie Donagan is the Nancy (San Fran Nan) Pelosi of Detroit. Wow this is the best they can do…
Alfred, your simplistic and uninformed opinion of what happened to Detroit is asinine. Stick to subjects you know….religion, apparently.
Too little, too late. They should have put in light rail twenty years ago, maybe then the urban infrastructure would have grown into it and made it useful when it was actually needed.
if you give a city a good internal infrastructure it develops additional internal markets that give the city resilience instead of despair.
40 years of democrat rule has killed detroit and they think that business won’t come back because there isn’t an expensive slow rail system? no wonder they’re about to lose their asses in the next election. light rail is stupid unless your workforce stays in the exact same place all day. Real jobs don’t always work that way. A LOT of people need their cars to go to meetings, to go to lunch, Dr. appt’s, etc.
promote business get the people back there and when it gets crowded again, THEN worry about light rail.
smartalix…the problem with mass transit in Detroit is the auto industry. Nearly the entire area is or was dependent on cars. Mass transit has no appeal…that area reveres its cars like no other, it’s part of the culture.
The suburbs need an extensive rail system, that’s where all the action is.
#21 Let’s not kid ourselves. The democrats didn’t kill Detroit. It was the fact that we all started buying Toyotas and Hondas.
This video is pretty silly.
Was his train ticket $72? Little pricey. I’m not a big fan of light rail. It’s like a subway that has to stop at traffic lights.=) It works in some places but its pretty slow.
$72 just to get downtown to see a baseball game!?!
Maybe it’s too late for Detroit, but light rail has been a huge success in Minneapolis. Use has far exceeded predictions. Prior to it’s being built we heard a lot of the same arguments against it.
1. Too Expensive
2. Poor route choice
3. Won’t be any faster
4. Won’t get used.
It would have been a lot cheaper if it had been done 20 years ago when first proposed.
The argument has changed from: “Should we put in a light rail system” to “Where should the next line go”.
Hmmm… Lets see… Why did we start buying Toyotas and Hondas…
If the odds are that not enough traffic will occur to recover costs and pay for upkeep then don’t do it. It is rather obvious that traffic congestion isn’t a major problem this rail system can help solve.
When you are looking at major spending projects like this that don’t seem to serve a real need and lack broad based community support you need to follow the money because you can bet your bottom dollar somebody is going to make a lot of money off this project just as somebody is going to make a staggering amount of money of cap and trade which I expect to be passed after the election and I expect the taxes to go back up after the election.
That is pretty much the way I’ve come to see big government. It is a mechanism for deciding winners and losers and who ever bought the law making body last or has friends and relatives in the right place is going to make a bundle and the public gets left with the bills while the local economy goes to bleep because local business is being bleed to support the non productive.
While this is a problem with all governments this sort of thinking is a pillar of progessivism. They honestly believe that it is wrong for people in business to prosper to much so they prevent it. They feel that they have the obligation to redistribute the wealth so they do so normally in a way that benefits them personally. They also want to regulate and control everything right down to the tiniest detail and charge for the service.
That is absolutely guaranteed to dry up wealth creation and the economy grinds to a stop so progressives decide the answer is for the government to run/regulate/tax everything even more only they don’t know how to create wealth because all they are good at is regulating and confiscating and spreading the loot so the location turns into a poverty pocket.
Both the EU and the US are now turning into poverty pockets starting in the US with what were once our most prosperous states.
I think John noted that half of all private sector jobs created in the last 8 years in the US were created in Texas. There has to be a reason for that and I think its that there aren’t that many progressives in Texas.
What ever else may or may not be true it appears that the more progressive a state has the worse shape the state is in financially and that includes the local economy.
History demonstrates that the only way for most people to prosper is with a vibrant economy and progressives with their thirst for ever more money to spend and redistribute and ever more regulations to control everybody are devastating to any economy.
Love the vintage clips of how amazing Detroit’s economic planning was going to be. Economic central planning did what it usually does – fail, because it doesn’t account for the spontaneity of individuals reacting to ever changing information and circumstances. This hasn’t changed since Hayak wrote against it 65 years ago.
…this sort of thinking is a pillar of progessivism. They honestly believe that it is wrong for people in business to prosper to much so they prevent it.
You’ve been watching too much Glenn Beckk.
lets spend all this $$$ so i can drink at a ball game. fuck sports,religion and politicians
Bad idea Detroit rail. Now here on Long Island rail is great. You can ride from Montauk to Penn station for 12 dollars round trip. NYC has one of the best mass transit systems around.
Every major city in this country need a decent mass transit system.