Problem with Research: Nobody Cares

We as civil engineers, city planners, transit enthusiasts, and normal everyday people care a bit about about public transit. Whether that is because they have been personally impacted by transit in some way, or it is the bases for your business. The problem is that city mayors do not care about transit. They may read the studies that get produced indicating the viability of a route extending the RTA Red-line into Lake County.  That was 7 years ago and guess what baybee, there has been no movement on getting it done!

The executive summary concludes some basics we are exploring:

We can only drum up support from the locals and really what does that mean? A collection of signatures? The GCRTA is not going to be moved by that. They will claim funding issues should they be pressed about this study. Alternative B would get electrified rails concurrent with freight. Why are we putting the cost anywhere but on the billion dollar company that OWNS those rails? They can either figure out how they want to re-organize their right of ways to accommodate electric units or they lose access to those right of ways. What are they going to do? Come and rip up the rail?

If those right of ways get hit with eminent domain, the city could either re-sell them to another servicer for pennies on the dollar after they enter a contract for the upgrades or keep them and lease them back to the former owners.

Why do we care about people who have benefited from the works of literal rail barons? Fuck 'em.