1. You don’t get the car to New York by insisting that, although we’re heading west on I-10 and approaching the outskirts of El Paso, that everything’s fine and we’re on target for New York – although we may need to go even farther west to get there.

2. You also don’t get the car to New York by letting the guy who read the map wrong the first time continue to think that he read it correctly and should therefore continue to navigate. You give the map to the guy who said you’re supposed to be going northeast rather than west.

3. You also don’t get that car to your destination by downplaying how far off course you went, or you might end up out of gas before you even get back to square one (Austin).

4. Finally, you don’t get your goal by telling the people you’re meeting in New York that you’re still on schedule, even though you’re now, at best, going to be two days late.

(1 = more investment in the Red Line, 2 = not identifying that commuter rail is the problem rather than the solution, 3 = not identifying that commuter rail prevents the 2000 LRT plan from being built, 4 = downplaying obstacles to getting rail on Guadalupe in the real world now that it can’t continue northwest along 2000 alignment).

I don’t really give a crap who was wrong or right, let’s just do it right and leave the egos behind. This is what our community deserves from our leaders. (Yes, Mike, you are a leader.)

The only path forward is to get whole-heartedly behind the CAMPO TWG rail plan (which, again, appears to be foundering). This plan, at least, can get trains on Guadalupe in 20 years or so (if it turns out to be a raging success, we can build north up Guadalupe from it). I have said so on numerous occasions.

But in order to be effective at that task, one must understand precisely what we’ve already gotten ourselves into rather than mocking those who were right all along. Otherwise, we’ll waste our energy like Tri-Rail did, spending all our time double-tracking a rail line from nowhere to nowhere (see Note), rather than figuring out how to make the trains actually go _some_where.

You can’t get to (rail on Guadalupe) from (expand and extend commuter rail). It’s like trying to get to New York by first driving to El Paso. You, first, have to admit that you’re going the wrong direction, and turn around.

Note: This is not hypothetical. Capital Metro is actually trying to do this. One of their stimulus proposals is for the Feds to kick in money to double-track the Red Line, as if that somehow makes it magically go to UT or the Capitol or even most of downtown. And Capital Metro’s SECOND priority right now is the Green Line – a commuter line from Elgin to the Convention Center. Their third priority, apparently, is Rapid Bus, which should have a [sic] after the Rapid, since it’s completely useless.

It’s not just political will – it’s the fact that the Feds won’t kick in for a project without very good bang-for-the-buck (which we now can’t get on the #1 route for a variety of reasons related to commuter rail). It’s the fact that nobody with any political instincts at all will support giving up automobile lanes on Guadalupe for a mere 10-15,000 riders per day (it was hard enough to get people on board when it was going to be the full 46,000 per day; you won’t get anywhere near that many riders when there’s a transfer involved). It’s the fact that Capital Metro has wasted a ton of energy and money on Rapid Bus (inertia which will be hard to overcome).

http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000558.html

Links from here are good jumping-off points.