“Light rail costly and nonsensical” would have been an accurate headline. I’m a rail buff. I saw Los Angeles get billions of dollars of light and heavy rail. I was jazzed. But guess what? L.A.’s traffic congestion now is even worse than before the new rail because it’s hardly accessible.
The Colwood Crawl can be ended in much less time than it took to build the wasteful McTavish Interchange with a cheap McKenzie-Island Highway Interchange roundabout. But that doesn’t require as much cement or steel. Hmmm.
Your editorial “Light rail costly but sernsible” (April 29) said, “a fully realized light rail would help grow new neighbourhood centres as stations are built out to Langford.” In other words the taxpayers are going to subsidize new condominium highrises around the stations for well-heeled customers by building them a gold-plated rail system. They’re not all going to stop driving cars.
Rail gets nine times more subsidy than buses according to the Bus Riders Union. But the roads are already built. Buses could displace half the cars in less than a year while including dramatic fare reductions – if they got the funding now heading for the rails.
Larry Wartel
Victoria
