Frank Smith Says NB: The Republican-American Busway project sheer madness

Monday, April 11, 2011

The Republican-American Busway project sheer madness

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: lunacy would be a good way to describe it!; April 11, 2011 at 4:27 PM
Anonymous said...: Gov. Rowland calls this the "magic bus" I think because you have to be strung out on magic mushrooms to think it is a good deal.; April 11, 2011 at 4:47 PM
Anonymous said...: let see gas is at 4 dollars and the President want to tax milage.
Who will be able to travel from here to Hartford daily. you will need approx. $50-100 per week.; April 11, 2011 at 4:53 PM
Anonymous said...: After 2 weeks, Rowland has yet to be able to find one person who will admit they would ride this silly bus!

I guess you could call it the empty magic bus.; April 11, 2011 at 5:22 PM
Anonymous said...: anonymous said... let see gas is at 4 dollars and the President want to tax milage.
Who will be able to travel from here to Hartford daily. you will need approx. $50-100 per week.

This argument relies on the belief that enough people live in New Britain and work in downtown Hartford. Last time I looked, most downtown office buildings were empty. Travelers just sold 2 high rise buildings for $1 a square foot just to get out from under the taxes. There are empty buildings everywhere as employers flee Hartford, and even more importantly flee Connecticut completely.; April 11, 2011 at 6:22 PM
Anonymous said...: Hartford is still the #1 employer in the state with 120,000 jobs, far ahead of towns like West Hartford (25,000) or even New Haven (60,000).

This busway is not just about people who currently ride the bus or the way our towns are now. This busway will create millions of dollars in new investment with 1/4-1/2 mile of each of the 11 stations along its path. It will create new housing within walking distance of the busway, creating more ridership, as well as hundreds of new jobs, both in services and offices around each station.

Cities like New Britain were built around mass transit, and need it to come back. There isn't enough parking with all of our multi-family homes, and never will be unless you knock them all down... then we don't have a city, we have a suburb!

We have invested TRILLIONS of dollars in highways in the last decade alone, and we still have congestion in Hartford that threatens our economy. Widening I-84 to lessen congestion would have cost well over $1B (imagine acquiring all the land that homes sit on in West Hartford) and we'd still end up with congestion within a few short years.

Read about what the potential is for the region. If you're still not convinced, that's fine. But people like Rowland (and I agree with him most of the time) are uneducated about transportation issues.

http://www.crcog.org/publications/TransportationDocs/NBHBusway/2010/BRT-TOD-Report.pdf; April 12, 2011 at 12:02 AM
Anonymous said...: The ironic thing about Rowland's continued bashing of this project is that it originated under his watch back in the late 90's. This fact he routinelu forgets along with so many other facts about his tenure in Hartford.
The state subsidies for busses is far less than that for trains or even highways for that matter. This week gas will hit $4/gallon and more and more people will start to look for alternate means of travel. Busses especially state of the art high tech models will become more and more viable to people in the cities as this project gets built. In order to create a new urban environment in cities like NB students and young professionals need to look towards living in the central cities and mass transit is the only way to augment residential development there.; April 12, 2011 at 11:46 AM
Anonymous said...: Governor Rowland's Short memory or memory loss that this issue started when he was the governor.; April 16, 2011 at 1:19 PM

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