Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
Yes you can plan for more distant, less certain things by say, reserving land in case of future need. But that's different than actually spending hundreds of millions on physical infrastructure. Not only because of the risk that the use case will never materialize, but also that there's an opportunity cost for funds that could be used elsewhere in the meantime. $1.1 billion is a lot and could provide a lot of say, improved local an regional bus service. Spending it in a particular place and waiting for a return means lost interest in the form of what the money could be doing while one waits.
|
Most of the funding is coming from federal funding sources. So it's not a matter of if this is the appropriate area for spending that amount of money right now, it's a matter of either spending this money on light rail, or at the very least some kind of transit, or it gets spent in an entirely different region instead and risking the window for such funding closes in the future. Could they spend it on decreasing headways for buses? Sure, but is that going to foster much redevelopment? I don't believe so.
Keep in mind, this is not a lone strategy for helping to rejuvenate this part of the north side, there are other strategies at play, the light rail expansion just happens to be the most publicized at the moment.