Light Rail - the amazing government kluge

Only my own political naïveté led me to ever think that the insane idea of "light rail transit" would not be implemented in the Twin Cities. It was a joke, I thought... that resurrection of an antiquated mode of transportation was even being proposed. Insane, I thought, that we might return to the past... to times of lines of cars waiting at railroad crossings, and to glossing over inevitable and crushing collisions. How could we be so addled as to again travel (by other modes) to wait at a few rail stations that led to a few limited destinations? Could cities that junked elaborate streetcar systems, return, not to that workable system, but to an LRT system that doesn't even come close to the utility of streetcars?

I've been amazed to watch the powers that be actually foist that pinnacle of inutility, LRT, onto the citizenry of the Twin Cities. The federal government, whose insanity answers to nobody, made it possible, and massive lobbying and promotion by governmental agencies and labor unions made it happen. No, the taxpayers weren't consulted; it was pushed down our throats. It has been an idea that, even by government boondoggle standards, sets a new standard for unbelievable. It is the transportation equivalent of communicating by string stretched between cans (even if the cans and strings have been modernized).

Even before the orginal line was completed, from downtown to the Mall of America, the promotion of more lines began. Like all railroad lines, they are virtually worthless unless the network is widespread. Billions of dollars in constuction still only serves a few people to a few destinations, in a straight line. The latest promotion is to "rail" University avenue between Minneapolis and St. Paul. What makes University avenue
perfect for a light rail project?

• University is a broad boulevard that was once a grand thoroughfare... until freeways sucked business away.
• University isn't a very busy street, so LRT can carve out the center section.
• University is home to a burgeoning immigrant business community, with no political clout and easy to push around.

Will LRT "revitalize" University avenue? Not for the current residents, but It damned sure will for someone. Even though talk has only recently appeared about the University LRT, city politicians are planning the future of the area. One might think that a mode of transportation should service the people who are paying for it... that a system on University avenue should improve life for those around there. Quite the opposite will be true, and we're already seeing how that will happen. Here's a quote from the St. Paul mayor's office:

"...higher-density development is a better match for a future mass-transit line than big-box retail stores."

That quote was on the occasion of approving construction of a Super Target "big-box" store on University (which has others), but with the warning that other big stores will be discouraged. Makes sense. If you go to a big store to buy a bunch of stuff, you sure can't haul it home on LRT. Can't haul much of anything on LRT, can you? The University LRT is already dictating the future of the area it will infest. The area will have to change to fit light rail. That is, of course, the secret to any sort of success for light rail... that government will force the area along the rails into something that "fits" light rail. They'll force out unacceptable residents and businesses, and lure others in with subsidies.

Mayor Coleman: "the city will work "aggressively" to encourage transit-oriented development there "

More from the mayor... St. Paul would move to protect small businesses and workers and to make the city's main commercial corridor home to living-wage jobs and small businesses.

If you think for a minute that he's talking about the current small businesses and workers, then you've been sucked in precisely as he wanted. LRT doesn't match the needs of the current small businesses along University, and many won't be able to remain there. Some will move or be destroyed just during the construction upheaval. Others on streets that cross University will find their traffic destroyed.

LRT along University will be a major upheaval... an even bigger boondoggle than the current line. University crosses major north/south streets... Snelling, Lexington, and Dale. Will the heavy traffic on those streets stop for the trains? Or will more massive overpasses be built, like the convoluted one where LRT crosses Lake street?

Light Rail Transit is all about FORCE. It's a transportation system that would never be CHOSEN, because it's antiquated, intrustive, inconvenient, expensive, and destructive. Only a government would even consider light rail for urban use. LRT is a KLUGE (kludge, bodge, boat anchor, etc.). Back in the old inelegant days of early computers, we often programmed innovative kluges, to get things done that computers weren't designed to do. Our kluges were valuable only because there were no alternatives, and they soon became obsolete as the industry understood more about what was needed, and built solutions in.

In naval parlance, a kludge is equipment which worked ashore, but never aboard a ship. It hence came to refer to clutter, especially that which may impede shipboard operations. In naval usage the name comes from the sound a substantial kludge makes hitting the water when tossed overboard.

In the not-too-distant future, the University Avenue Light Rail Transit will be built, fail miserably, be propped up several times with more force and more taxpayer money, and then be unceremoniously ripped up and paved over... and we won't even get to hear the giant "KLUGE" sound of it hitting the water. The saddest remaining trace will be all of the thousands of people whose lives were turned upside down for the biggest boondoggle in Twin Cities history. Mayors Coleman and Ryback will be gone. There will be nobody to point a finger at, except that amorphous "government".

Our day of national mourning

Today, our national holiday is to memorialize those who have given their lives in military service to their nation. Often the phrase "in defense of our freedoms" is tossed in.

I have no problem honoring the dead. I am an admirer of many people who have now passed on, including many of those who, by living hard working productive lives of normalcy received little admiration while alive. We tend to take for granted the quiet folks who, day after day, decade after decade, just earn their living and try to create a nice living style for their families. We might classify them as our responsible, productive citizens. During their lifetimes, they faced a thousand crises, made untold difficult choices, took frightening risks, and faced the results of those choices. Millions of Americans have struggled through such lives, often facing the same difficulties day after day, finding joy when they could, but knuckling back down to the routine chores, often until death took them.

These are our American heroes and heroines. Few of them escaped days when they questioned whether living was worth all the pain it could entail. Few of them avoided the grief of losing friends and family members to death. Few escaped their own personal judgment that life didn't turn out as they had, as young people, hoped. All of them suffered through the almost constantly annoying decline of their own bodies. Yet, most of these Americans lived productive lives in peaceful interaction and trade with all the other people around them. Most tried hard to be personally responsible, hating to ask others for help, yet being so willing to help others when the need arose. As Henry David Thoreau said: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

In my mind, our traditional Memorial Day holiday is a day of national shame... a day on which we remember the millions of young lives wasted in military actions that should never have occurred. Not one of those honored today was a life given in defense of our nation from invaders. Not one was truly lost in defense of our freedoms. Those phrases, those descriptions are no more than the lies we tell in a feeble attempt to make the tremendous loss of our young people seem righteous, worthwhile, or meaningful. Lies. Aside from those who died in our own Civil War, our young men and women were all killed in foreign lands. Worse still, most died in foreign wars the American public opposed becoming involved in. Most died in foreign wars we never should have participated in, or instigated. Most died in foreign wars that solved nothing... and that actually created more conflict.

There is no way to avoid the damning conclusion that the individuals we honor on this holiday were wasted as "cannon fodder" by our power-mongering governmental leaders. Most of those killed were young... too young to resist the guilt-laden calls for "patriotism" and "duty", and too young to resist the lure of becoming part of our tough, macho, dominant military forces. Perhaps even worse is the damage to the psyches of those not killed... the injured, mutilated individuals and those who return with no visible injuries, feeling lucky and a little guilty that they survived intact, many of whom faced intolerable choices they will never resolve within themselves.

By our participation in Memorial Day, and Veterans Day, and frequent other ceremonial events honoring those who have fought or died in military action, we are coercing a new generation of our young people into future insane slaughters. Can we as a nation admit that is what we are doing to our children? Is it any wonder that our children unquestioningly respond to a call to arms, even when the need seems false to most of us?

We as a people, by permitting our government to glorify war through carefully crafted advertising and political manipulation, shame generation after generation of our young people into this despicable waste of young lives. Then we feel so bad about it that we continue it by glorifying the losses as sacrifices made for the rest of us. It is an unthinkable sham we're caught up in, unable to openly admit the truth, and unwilling to face the shame that we have institutionalized the unnecessary slaughter of so many of America's youth.

I urge us to certainly remember those who are gone, but to remember and honor them best by committing ourselves to ending the shameful slaughter. We need to resent the aggrandizement of our military. We need to stop participating in glorification of war. We need to stop our government from tossing our young people into harms way for reasons that make no sense to anyone... and we need to make it clear to our children that we oppose the aggressive, belligerent policies that have deliberately created conflicts where none need to have existed.

If, as adult American citizens, we can have the courage to stand up to the insanity and glorification of war, we can put an end to the disastrous policies of our government, and stop forcing our youth to pay the price for our neglect and meek obedience.