To draw an analogy, let's say I have custom built for me a $100,000 motorhome. It started out as a $50,000 motorhome but I had so many custom features added that it cost twice as much. I finance this $100,000 motorhome at a favorable rate of 5% with nothing down for 10 years because I had good credit at the time. I thusly have to pay around $1,000 a month for the motorhome whether I use it or not.
The motorhome turns out to be a lemon and It only gets 5 miles per gallon and I decide I Iike sports cars better anyway. So the motorhome sits in my driveway costing $1000 a month in just interest while I spend my retirement racing from casino to casino in a sports car thats costing me another $1000 a month. Instead of staying in the motorhome, I'm spending another $1000 a month on motels. I don't even know how much I'm losing at the casino. (This is turning out to be a pretty good analogy to republican budgeting, no?)
After a year of parking my lemon motorhome in the driveway while making $1000 a month payments on it I decide to get it fixed. But the warranty was for only one year so the dealer refuses to fix it for free. I check the used motorhome price book and find that my motorhome will be worth $30,000 after I spend $10,000 on a new engine that I'd have gotten for free if I hadn't been to cheap to buy the gas to drive it to the dealership while it was under warranty.
I get mad and let the motorhome sit in the driveway 4 more years. 5 years old it's worth $15,000 after I get the new engine that will cost $12,000. The tires are and upholstery are starting to crack and the gas in the tank smells awful. I swear in disgust at the price of repairs as my lender autodeducts the $1000 a month from my account. I park it back by the fence so I can at least get into my garage.
After 10 years, in celebration of my last payment on the motorhome, I cut a path through the brush to take it for a spin. I spend an hour with WD 40 getting a door to unlock. With the tires all flat it sits a bit lower and is easier to climb into. The upholstery is all cracked and yellowed foam is popping out. The headliner is drooping to the floor. I climb into the split and dusting drivers seat and turn the key... not even a click. I push on the gas pedal hoping to pump it a bit, and it goes straight to the floor... oops, that was the brake pedal. Undaunted, I decide I'm going to get at least some use out of this thing. I hook up the garden hose to the motorhome and turn on the spigot.. water spurts out of everywhere because I was saving money by not draining the pipes for winter.
Covered in mud, foam rubber dust, and brake fluid I sneak in the back way and make use of the basement shower. I get cleaned up just in time for family dinner and brag about how much I'd saved by not putting that overpriced gas in that motorhome we'd been paying $1000 a month for over the last 10 years. They give me that look of disbelief...
Republicans meddling in transit have done stuff every bit as stupid before- remember the short busses they bought for Metro Mobility a couple decades back? The Quie administration "saved" money privatizing Metro Mobility, and the near new busses rotted away on Metro Transit parking lots for over a decade before being near given away.
from just up the block from Twin City Lines North Side Station in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
On Saturday, April 3, 2004, at 09:12 AM, Bruce Gaarder wrote:
Dyna trots out calculations of interest on the capital cost of building the
lrt line and alleges that those costs are affected by not running the
trains.
Those costs are wasted anyway because nothing repays those costs. Ever.
That money is gone.
The train fares will only cover 1/3 of the operating and maintenance costs, so
if the annual cost is "only" $9 million, that means that fares would be
only $3 million and not operating it saves up to $6 million. Not that
much because of met council and metro transit overhead, but still most of
that.
Visit www.EffectiveTransit.org
The Independent Unsubsidized Voice of Citizens for Effective Transit in the Twin Cities (no lrt)
* lrt isn't a potato chip, you can stop at just one *
Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul MN [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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