Yeah? Well, according to one of the area’s representatives to the US House of Representatives, MY home city can never, ever, EVER get light rail because the Canada geese will POOP on the TRACKS.
If I may be permitted to gloat:
Hollywood/Vine now has a subway station, as does Hollywood/Highland, where the Kodak Theatre stands.
matt, I promise that if you ever come out this way, I’ll show you around.
Sublight, that is impressive. I wish we had such an extensive system in L.A. Damn cheap gas! Damn Henry Ford and the Model T!!
There is nothing quite like a subway, and I have at times gone out of my way just to be able to use the one here. The way everything seems to work so smoothly and quickly is awesome. No fumbling for change to give the bus driver. No asking for transfers, since you have to do all that before you reach the platform. The rush of cool air pushed from the tunnel as your train approaches.
It still has a lot of novelty value to me since I rarely use it.
I vote for matt for president so he can give us engineers a squillion $$$$$ to build a bunch of fine infrastructure !!
Hail matt!
Take it from a Boston native. I’ve been living in Madrid for 10 years and public transportation here is the best.
The new line 12 opened without much fanfare and it’s an amazing accomplishment.
Matt’s right about the metro to the airport. In the new part of the financial district train station (Nuevos Ministerios) you can check in your luggage on your way to the airport and forget about it until you land.
Spain has it’s faults (eg. noise, smokers, rigid labor market), but cheap shots with reference to the siesta reflect the point of view of a person that’s really old or just hasn’t been here.
As BART’s general manager said on TV today: Hal-le-looya!
Revenue service (ie: carrying fare-paying members of the public) to SFO will begin on June 22, 2003.
I can top that. I live in Marin. If I want to take a train, I have to take a %&^* bus to get to it. :mad: Lousy goddam suburban crypto-racism that keeps the closest BART station all the way out in Richmond.
I want our Key Line back.
As a frequent visitor to Madrid, I’m delighted to hear about the new expansion. I never understood why they built a Metro station at the airport and put it on a line that didn’t go anywhere.
And Miller? I can top that. I live in Dublin (Ireland, not East Bay), and there is NO metro. At all.
There’s a pdf here advertising a book called ‘Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition’. I read about it in an interesting article in The Times (a search for book public projects at thetimes.co.uk brings it up as second hit, registration may be required).
Could anyone disagree?
From the article
It’s laughable. If it weren’t costing me so much in tax.
So the thrust is that if the figures weren’t massaged, nothing would ever get built…
And…the men who built it were all union men with full benefits and pensions and owned homes in San Francisco and most of their wives were at home. Today’s workers make much less.
So Matt…
Did you get this way when Washington DC opened the Green Line a few years ago?
Tell you what…
I’ll trade you our metro system (and throw in the buses, too) for the Expos.
Straight up.
How 'bout it?
Well, I think Clemenceau said, “Engineering is too important to be left to the Engineers…”
When we moved to suburban Maryland in August ‘98, we received the original builders’ materials for our townhouse which bragged about it being “close to the soon-to-be-opening Glenmont Metro station.” The materials were dated '83.
The station had just opened a month before we moved in. Fifteen years. Riiiight.
Admittedly, in DC at least you can get to all the airports by public transportation (albeit a couple of changes here and there). But it can be a hassle.