Editor’s note: This blog is not dedicated to a round-the-clock effort in finding fault with N&R editorials. But what can I say, they just provide me with so much material.
Today’s lead editorial supports the “far-sighted bill” sponsored by Triad legislators that would authorize local governments to seek a local option sales tax to fund mass transit:
….Possibilities in Guilford County are obvious. The Greensboro and High Point bus systems don’t currently cover their entire cities, with funding limitations preventing expansion of routes. Residents outside those cities don’t have service at all unless they have special needs. The Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, meanwhile, has nearly done all it can with available revenues, Executive Director Brent McKinney said last week.
Any hopes of developing more ambitious mass-transit systems — light rail, for example — clearly would demand additional sources of revenue.
……This proposal, whose supporters include Sens. Katie Dorsett, Don Vaughan and Stan Bingham and Reps. Alma Adams and Earl Jones, also establishes a state fund for further development of freight and passenger rail facilities and ports, and promotion of a “pedestrian and bike-friendly environment around and connected to transit stations.” The source of revenue for this fund isn’t stated.
Details are important. Without money — and that’s the story at the state level this year — plans are only pipe dreams. But standing still is only acceptable for so long. Getting ahead in the 21st century will depend on modern, efficient transportation systems. Nowhere, perhaps, will that be more critical than in the Triad.
Amazing that the N&R’s editorialists make their living indulging in pipe dreams. Then again, so do I —- the pipe dream that government will one day quit indulging in pipe dreams.