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originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: Fools
Do you have any stats to back up your claims? I'm asking because I have my own gripes against a lot of light rail proposals. But those gripes have nothing to do with what you're saying. Then there's this:
Hey, guess what? Some of the poor are poor because they don't want to work.
"Some" is less than half. By your own words, your accusation applies to less than half of the poor in these cities, which implies that more than half of the poor in these cities are indeed looking for work. So how is it a bad thing to implement a program that will help more than half of a city's poor residents get cheaper and easier transportation to potential jobs?
Your response also ignores the reality that some cities with light rail proposals also have sales taxes. This means that the poor citizens in those cities would still be contributing to the funding of the light rail projects every time they pay sales tax on a purchase. So what sense does it make to have poor residents pay taxes towards a program that they can't use?
And of course, you're making the weird assumption that light rail networks only go through poor areas. Where is the proof of that? From my experience, these networks go through a lot of areas in the cities, including the tourist friendly areas. That means that they also help outsiders navigate the city, which makes it easier for them to spend money in the city. They also typically go through business friendly areas so that tourists who come to the city for conventions and meetings can have an easier time navigating the city (meaning that they can also easily get from one place to spend money to another place to spend money).
originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: Fools
But light rail isn't generally funded by any specific neighborhoods. It's funded by the entire city or county as a whole. In fact, usually the city or county will pay for the project by issuing bonds. The subsequent taxes and fares are then used to pay off the bonds (interest payments and then eventually the principle). It's never intended to put all of the financial burden on any specific neighborhood.
Of course, there are plenty of different existing and proposed light rail projects. So perhaps I'm wrong in regards to some specific projects. But if so, I'd like to see some data proving it because I clearly haven't seen any that supports that view yet.
I generally don't support light rail projects because they're overly expensive and I'd prefer the money go directly to the supposed problem. As in, why spend $30 billion on that rail project in order to supposedly help the poor when we can instead spend that money more efficiently on social services that directly help the poor?
(For what it's worth, those deals are really meant to help the contractors and to boost the values of specific businesses that lobby for them. The "help the poor" argument is just a potential secondary benefit that's used as a pretext to get more public support for the project. That's why I don't understand why you're focusing your criticisms of light rail on the poor while completely absolving the primary beneficiaries of those projects.)