According to this article (registration required), Durham is thinking of copying Chapel Hill by providing "free" (read: fully tax-subsidized) bus transit. Now, notice that Chapel Hill’s massively increased bus ridership has been used to justify building light rail. Notice also that Durham is slated to get part of the light rail line that planners hope to build in the Triangle – despite myriad problems, low density, exorbitant costs, etc. etc. I wonder: is this sudden spell of generosity to Durham denizens merely a pretext to set up the argument to justify the construction of light rail in the Triangle? I’m just asking.
It also leads me to ask a fairly obvious question: why can’t all these yuppies that the taxpayers of N.C. are going to be subsidizing to take rail transit ride a bus? Surely it costs less by about a factor of 20-or-30.
-Max Borders
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