By Ted Rall, December 18, 2014
No one likes mass transit more than me, and trains are my favorite form of it.
They're good for the environment, they are fun to ride, and you zip right past all the planet-killing motorists sitting in traffic. But urban planners often fall short when it comes to making train systems as useful as they could be, which sets the stage for critics who call every idea that doesn't involve more cars a boondoggle.
Here in Los Angeles, getting Metro to LAX seems like job one, but not something we are likely to see in our lifetimes. In New York, direct train connections between LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports remain as elusive as a World Series win by the Chicago Cubs. Idiotic worries about terrorism added a long walk from BART train stations at San Francisco International Airport to the terminals.
Well, not exactly to L.A.
First it goes to Burbank.
It's hard to imagine anyone other than hardcore rail geeks wanting to do that.
Alas: "Metrolink officials have been cool to the idea, citing, among other things, the cost and complexity of overlapping operations."
One strongly suspects that the bureaucrats who refuse to roll up their sleeves and get this done plan to spend the rest of their lives behind the wheels of their cars rather than schlepping up and down the stairs at some future Burbank transfer station in 2028.
We drive on freeways that past generations conceived and paid for not only with their tax dollars, but with years and years of loud, dirty construction. This is the part where we repay our debt to the social contract.