The never ending story....

"This contagion of rail apathy does not only apply to LRT. The Northstar is also a ghost train."

Yawn... I was hesitant to write about this today, but I guess I need to. It is about the train most of us love to hate. The train which typifies the total entropy and mismanagement of Minnesota state government. In the real world, where things operate under a P+L statement, this train would have been dropped like a hot potato, many, many years ago. But in La La Land, (Minnesota government), where the crazies think that money grows on trees, wasting good money after bad is the name of the game.

During the past few days, the cat really came out of the bag. Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows when this thing will be completed, or how much it will cost. It is already double what the "experts" thought it would cost, and millions more is needed. And the exact estimate to complete? Your guess is as good as mine.

But there are other things to consider. The entire LRT system is now showing its true colors. Like, nobody wants to ride them anymore. Why not? They are magnets for crime, to start with. The LRT stations have been used for druggies to shoot up in, for the homeless to use as a bathrooms, and feral youth to act like idiots. It is so bad, that one of the uptown LRT stations just got partially shut down. Why? For reasons I just pointed out. The Met Council does not have enough cops to keep the children under control. So, they shut it down.

This contagion of rail apathy does not only apply to LRT. The Northstar is also a ghost train. Many times the Northstar is seen going by an intersection, headed downtown. And it is empty. The very expensive transit hubs, built to accommodate the hoards of people expected to take the Northstar - now also sit empty.

This experiment to build Euro style of trains, crisscrossing the Twin Cities has been a failure. A very, very expensive failure. So, will we stop building these things? Na. In state government, we love spending other people's money. We love it, no matter how bad of an "investment" it is.