Short takes

These are just a few stories that I have comments about but don't warrant a full article.

Norfolk VA - I'd love to know how much it actually cost to choose a name for Norfolk's proposed LRT system.

NYC NY - Mayor Bloomberg not only wants to tax people coming into the city, he's going to tax them to leave the city as well. Talk about wanting to make your city visitor unfreindly. All it will do is raise costs for everyone and won't reduce congestion one bit.

San Francisco CA - Clueless Mayor Gavin Newsom, the same one that wants to make MUNI a fare free system and won't increase funding to cover the fare loss, was beseiged at a meeting where he hoped to plug his Central Subway Plan. Instead he fielded complaints about MUNI's problems. Newsom is the last person I'd trust to solve MUNI's problems as he's been out to make more problems for them.

Washington DC - APTA's press release about how 48% of the people want to take public transit when visiting another city has more spin than an amusement park ride. Even though the poll results had environmentalism low on the list, the rest of the press release goes into the long failed marketing effort of pushing transit as the environmental choice. The vast majority of people riding transit don't give a rat's rear end about "green" choices, they just want to get where they're going.