How to Hoodwink the Public

Two years ago, Virginia Beach put a measure on the ballot to extend the Norfolk light rail (which stops at the border between the two cities) into Virginia Beach. All of the advertising for the measure said “Vote Yes to Study Light Rail.” But the actual measure read, “Should the City Council adopt an ordinance approving the use of all reasonable efforts to support the financing and development of The Tide light rail into Virginia Beach?” That’s a lot different than a study.

The measure passed. But it is entirely possible that voters would have been less enthused if they had known that the Norfolk light rail ended up carrying 58 percent fewer riders than projected in its first year. If you are satisfied with information mentioned for the medicine, visit “Cheapgeneric tadalafil tablets ” to explore further information associated with consumption. For all men suffering from impotence, Kamagra represents a cialis generic 10mg djpaulkom.tv significant advancement in the treatment of impotence.” Dr. Yes, for many oldsters, buy tadalafil without prescription it’d be a good trouble to drive their children to the school and find them once more. The medical representatives promote the djpaulkom.tv cialis for woman drug to the physicians. In any case, the Antiplanner’s presentation arguing that light rail makes no sense for Virginia Beach can now be downloaded. It’s a 33-megabyte PDF that includes my narrative in the notes but doesn’t include any of the videos.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

10 Responses to How to Hoodwink the Public

  1. gilfoil says:

    Where is the 58% below projected ridership figure coming from? How do we reconcile that with this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_Light_Rail#Ridership

    “Daily ridership in 2011 was projected at 2,900 passengers.[10] Actual daily ridership up to April 17, 2012 was approximately 4,900,[11] allowing the service to reach its goal of 1 million rides 150 days earlier than had been projected.”

    [10] Hixenbaugh, Mike (August 20, 2011). “Crowds continue lining up for a ride on light rail”. The Virginian-Pilot.
    [11] One Million Tide Rides”, Hampton Roads Transit April 16, 2012

  2. Frank says:

    You’re assuming those numbers are accurate: “During the first several years, the APC system must be checked against manual counts to verify the accuracy and precision of the data and validate the system, before it can be used for FTA purposes. The APC system is still undergoing the validation process and subject to change based on any validation findings at the end of this exercise.” Source.

    Also, are the free rides during the introductory period included in the average daily ridership? Seems like numbers have declined substantially since ’11.

  3. gilfoil,

    You have to verify everything transit agencies say. This 2003 FTA document shows that the original projection for opening year ridership was 10,400 per weekday. The agency lied when it said that the opening month ridership of 5,600 per weekday “exceeds expectations.” Then ridership fell and opening year ridership actually turned out to be less than 4,400 per weekday.

    The revised projection of 2,900 rides per weekday was made after construction began. Light rail is stupid enough; it would be especially stupid to build it expecting just 2,900 people to ride it per day. This same sort of revision has been made by transit agencies across the country so they can claim success while they hope no one remembers the original projections.

  4. Frank says:

    gilfoil replies with Wiki. The AP replies with primary source that refutes Wiki.

    Burn!

  5. gilfoil says:

    I guess we’ll never know what the daily ridership numbers are, since no one can provide accurate numbers. It’s definitely between 0 and 1 million.

  6. Frank says:

    poor sock puppet needs first aid for its third degree burn.

  7. gilfoil says:

    Think about it Frank. If they’ll lie about their planned riderships, can we trust their actual riderships? Maybe no one’s actually riding the darn things.

  8. Proplanner says:

    Hello gilfoil,

    You are correct to point out the discrepancy. And while I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Antiplanner for allowing me to participate in the conversation, there is very little we agree on. I have followed Mr. O’Toole for a number of years and am unsure if he is being dishonest at times or he doesn’t understand the nuances as well as he thinks he does.

    For example, his July 7th 2014 post titled “Funny, Funny Men,” serves as a perfect illustration of my meaning. In his post, he links to a Wall Street Journal article (which is also misleading) to debunk the myth that, to quote O’Toole directly, “Because President Obama told people that 97 percent of climate scientists believe in human-caused climate change–which turns out to be untrue.” Which, to give perfect clarification on the matter, is in actual fact, true: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ – 97% of climate scientist do (to be taken as the affirmative) believe humans are causing the climate to change. In addition, please observe that according to National Geographic, over 40% of the world’s forests are gone, not reforested, but gone. We have roughly 80 million lane miles of asphalt globally, enough to build a 3,600 lane-mile wide highway around the entire planet. Lastly, we have altered the atmospheric composition to some degree, with the often mentioned CO2, a known greenhouse gas @ 14.99 microns, being the main disruptive variable. Ask yourself, would these measures cause the planet to cool, stay the same, or warm to any degree, and why? When the worlds most powerful supercomputers are running at 33 thousand trillion calculations per second, a person with no grounding in physics should not be looked to for comment on the matter as an offering of an evenhanded discussion.

    To not be long-winded (too late), the 2003 FTA document he linked to says the following (in case you didn’t read it, please read this section carefully): “The project has not been rated. Although FTA is reporting HRT’s ridership forecasts above, FTA has concerns about their validity and is thus not evaluating the project’s justification criteria. The absence of a rating applies to this Annual Report on New Starts and reflects the information available as of November 2003. Project cost estimates and proposed New Starts share are developed by local project sponsors and are not FTA assumptions. Project evaluation is an ongoing process. As New Starts projects proceed through project development, estimates of cost, benefits, schedules and impacts are refined. FTA’s ratings and recommendation will be updated annually to reflect new information, changing conditions, and refined financing plans.”

    One of the updates years later was the ridership projection. There was no deception on the part of HRT in this respect. Again, it is here Mr. O’Toole is engaging in a hoodwinking of his own to quote Noam Chomsky, “to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority.”

    Frank Lineberger

  9. Frank says:

    Poor troll. He can’t even post real evidence. Occasionally he can Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Wikipedia URLs. When those are shown to be unreliable and are countered with actual evidence, he spews inanity.

  10. MJ says:

    I guess we’ll never know what the daily ridership numbers are, since no one can provide accurate numbers. It’s definitely between 0 and 1 million.

    More like 0 and 6,000 according to their ridership figures.

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