Comments on: Philly Receives Millions In Stimulus Funds For Bike Trails

By: jburnside

jburnside — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:21:40 +0000

expat earns his living serving Arthur Kade as his fluffer

By: bmurray

bmurray — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:59:26 +0000

I like Black Bolsheviks as a band name, good call.

By: expat attack

expat attack — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:41:22 +0000

I’ve finally become convinced that jburnside is a Colombian drug mule. How else to explain both how insanely high he appears to be and that his head is perpetually up his own ass?

By: LB

LB — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:37:19 +0000

Will someone please tell me why anything bike related is an invitation to the cold war trolls to rant against pinkos, commies, atheists, and all other unholy unpatriot unamerican activities? Is Pete Seeger singing bikes will overcome now? Are bikes busting scabs down in the orchards of sunny californ? ‘In Dubious Pedal’ sweeping the nation?

Oh, and dibs on Black Bolsheviks as a band name. We’ll be playing at Tritone before you know it.

By: jburnside

jburnside — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:58:47 +0000

Oh Wow, like cool man, bike trails, yeah…

Awash in deficit spending, this scumbag in the White House wants to piss away our children’s future building what???

Bike Trails, that’s right, destroying the economy for generations to come, tripling the national debt to pay off Democrat cities with half ass FDR copied busy work jobs that create no sustainable employment.What is funny is you socialist poisoned assholes think it’s a great idea.

THINK, YOU STUPID MOTHER FUCKERS

The purpose of all this spending is to destroy the American economy so that Black Bolshevik can replace capitalism with a government run economy.

You want to fix the economy and get people back to work?

Try huge tax cuts for businesses and individuals , accelerated depreciation on commercial property and a flat 50% reduction in every federal program.

This country would be rolling again in record time

By: amc4232

amc4232 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:47:38 +0000

@worldb: SEPTA actually got a large grant for signal and other infrastructure improvements (i.e. stations) in another part of the stimulus bill last year. If they needed more for other projects, they were welcome to submit an application for the TIGER grant, which to my knowledge, at least, they didn’t. As for the non-Democratic (with a capital D) parts of Pennsylvania, the state benefited from two grants. The other was much larger (almost $100 million) and was focused on freight rail infrastructure in the rural part of the state, which is decidedly un-Democratic. Of course, it would be naive to say there were absolutely no political considerations taken in this federal granting process. But I think that the $23 million meets the goals of both the stimulus bill and the TIGER program and will have a very real benefit to Philadelphia and Camden.

By: worldb

worldb — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:13:48 +0000

@ amc4232: Phoenix and Houston don’t tend to vote democrat, and are large, fast-growing metro areas, and didn’t get any grants. The Philly suburbs don’t consistently vote democrat, and were in the application, and didn’t get any of the funding. I don’t think that former Chicago area earmarker Ray LaHood only considered economic competitiveness and “livability” in the grants. I understand you do. Ok.

@ julie.t: if you actually looked at the list, the grants don’t fund the full project for any of the awards. Do you know how much Moynihan Station is supposed to cost? That didn’t stop them from awarding $93 million for a piece of it. $23 million could have secured additional state or local or bond funding for station improvements, track and signal improvements to reduce delays and accidents (SEPTA or AMTRAK or freight), better signage and real-time schedule updates, having a real fare card system like every other big city. And I haven’t said there is anything wrong with commuting by bike or feet. The question is per dollar what has the most impact, and the most volume, and generates the greatest improvements or behavioral changes. Will a bike lane along Delaware Ave create that much additional commuting? Will extending the lanes from Locust to the South Street bridge incentivize that many more people to commute by bike when they could just get off the bike lanes, cross the tracks and ride down a few blocks to the bridge approach? Or does it all just sound really cool and allow the mayor to take all the credit as his idea, instead of sharing with SEPTA and their suburban directors?

By: LB

LB — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:38:10 +0000

@AFecRain – oh, right. Well, I suppose it will be nice to zip right down to Florida from 7th and Lombard.

By: amc4232

amc4232 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:35:32 +0000

@worldb: I was looking only at states for my quick snapshot, but this TIGER grant program is designed for transportation infrastructure needs. And the greatest transportation infrastructure needs (railroads, mass transit, highways, ports, and yes, bike paths) are in densely packed metropolitan areas. And metropolitan areas tend to vote heavily democrat. It’s not about politics, it’s about spending transportation money wisely.

By: A Feculent Rainbow

A Feculent Rainbow — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:31:21 +0000

We should all be careful to distinguish bike ‘lanes’ from bike “trails.”