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January 29, 2012
Light Rail Money Pit
Jennifer asked me about the light rail project to connect Denver to Golden. She was like "when will they be finished with that, daddy?" I was like "well, I dunno, baby. Probably never. It's just a waste of taxpayer money to shuffle homeless people back and forth from the inner-city to the suburbs so that they can rob more people with cheap transportation."
"How much did it cost?" she asked.
"Take a guess."
"4 million dollars?"
"Ha!" I snorted. "I bet that it cost around $20 million dollars a mile. Probably more."
So when we got home I decided to look it up. The previous light-rail fiasco was called T-REX.
"Denver's T-REX (Transportation Expansion) project rebuilt interstate highways 25 and 225 and added a light-rail expansion for a total cost of $1.67 billion over five years. The cost of 17 miles of highway improvements and 19 miles of double-track light rail worked out to $19.3 million per highway lane-mile and $27.6 million per LRT track-mile."
"Costs of most LRT systems range from $15 million per mile to over $100 million per mile."
"The 12.1-mile West Rail Line light rail transit corridor will serve Denver, Lakewood, Golden and Jefferson County and is projected to be complete and ready for use by 2013."
"The cost to build the "West Corridor" light rail line is estimated to be $707 million."
So, doing the math, that's $707,000,000.00/12.1 miles = $58,429,752.06 a mile. Now, keep in mind that no one rides these things. Like, you'd be a moron to get on one of these space-age-rat-traps. They're full of homeless, drug addicts, drunks, retarded people, criminals, rapists, murderers, etc. If you ever thought, "Hmmmm. I wonder what it'd be like to ride next to people that can't afford transportation", I can tell you it's not fun.
So, they're going to spend $58 million a mile to shuttle homeless people from the inner-city ghettos of Denver to Golden. Now...keep in mind that there are gangs of blacks roaming Denver attacking people solely because they're white. And now we're going to steal seven hundred million dollars from hard working citizens so that we can spread these hate crimes from the inner-city into the suburbs? Insanity.
I explained this to Jennifer tonight, but I think it's hard for most of us to understand how much $700 million dollars is. But, it's .7 billion dollars, and I'd wager money it will be over budget, so it's probably safe to assume the final cost will be over a billion dollars. Here's a little youtube video that tries to help people understand just how much money a billion dollars truly is.
I promise you this...however many people are shuttled back and forth in that stupid light rail Rube Goldberg contraption...you could drive them back and forth in stretch limos for cheaper. I promise you that's the truth. But we'll have to wait to see how many people they're actually moving if they ever get it up and running.
Posted by Rob Kiser on January 29, 2012 at 8:16 PM
Comments
The southbound Light rails are packed in the morning and night. The majority of riders are college students going to the downtown campus. And, commuters like me that drive up from colorado Springs to work downtown.
And yes, lost of homeless and drunks. Ive seen fights, muggings, and lots of PDA...
Posted by: Rob on February 1, 2012 at 4:06 PM