Getting The Talking Points Wrong

As I've written before, I don't know Phoenix and don't know if the light rail system is a good use of public funds or if it's a "boondoggle." When I've written about it before, readers have written to complain that I'm wrong to support the project. I don't have any idea! I've just mocked some of the arguments against it. In general I think that transit sytems can work in places like Phoenix if land use patterns around the system are allowed to change pretty drastically, but that's not an argument for or against any particular project. Rail haters amuse me, as do city haters generally. It's just sport.

And here we have another.

Wow 1980's technology has come to the valley let me run down to the nearest light rail station with my camera!!! comical f'ing comical.

The real talking point, used by light rail-haters for a long time, is that it's "19th century" technology, not so dissimilar to the internal combustion or the automobile, but nonetheless a supposedly damning factoid.

The anti-light rail lobby has long dangled shiny "new" technology, like absurd Personal Rapid Transit vehicle systems, which miss the point of "mass" transit entirely, as a never-to-be-achieved alternative to light rail as a way of derailing projects.