Saturday, May 16, 2009

Right Wing Anti-Transit Positions Harmful To Tax Payers

We all know how Charlie Sykes nearly pops a vein in his forehead when it comes to transit issues. Likewise, the paper version of Sykes, Preview McIlheran, also will try anything to spin things in an anti-transit way.

Greg Kowalski, of Metro Milwaukee Today fame, points out the fallacy of their position of looking out for the tax payer as he points out the flawed reasoning in a post written by Kevin Fischer State Senator Mary Lazich:

It goes to show that if there is a will, there certainly can be a way. State Senator Lazich refuses to acknowledge the will, and automatically goes to the claim that there will never be a way due to “few riders” and the “failure to reduce congestion and pollution”. Indeed, senator. So in the meantime, Lazich and her pals in the legislature enjoyed spending $1.9 billion of your tax dollars to reconstruct and add two additional lanes on I-94 from the I-894 interchange to the Illinois State Line. Furthermore, the state plans to spend upwards of $1.1 billion of your tax dollars on highway improvements in the Fox Cities, as well as upwards of $1 billion of your tax dollars to reconstruct the Zoo Interchange. Also, don’t forget the $810 million of your tax dollars already spent on reconstructing the Marquette Interchange downtown.

Add those numbers up, folks. $4.81 BILLION of your tax dollars spent on freeways, $3 BILLION of which is in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. In the meantime, Lazich is having a hoot over a regional transit authority collecting funds to construct a $300 million commuter rail line, and conservative talk radio hosts have a bird over a $50 million downtown streetcar system and $100 million in bus rapid transit ideas. If you put the KRM, the streetcar, and BOTH Walker’s and Barrett’s bus rapid transit ideas in action, it would be roughly $550 million - which would only be a little over 1/4 what the total cost is for the I-94 project currently underway.

That alone places doubt in Lazich’s anger and points, and raises questions as to the true motives of why other means of transportation aren’t wanted by some conservative leaders and talkers.

Remember this whenever the right wing says that they are looking for the tax payer, because they're not.

1 comment:

  1. How much you want to bet that the cost per car on the highway will be lower than the cost per train rider on the train?
    However, that being said, extra travel lanes to the FIB border is not neccessary. Not sure about the Fox Valley, you would be a better observer.
    So, how much is a reward to the road contruction companies that donated to Diamond Jim's and other legislator's campaigns? Remember, this is the Democrat's doing.

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