Some Follow-up on the 2035 Plan

In my haste last night I forgot to look at the previous 2030 Plan for what it said on the subject of passenger rail.

Well, there it was, on page 28 of Chapter 3 under the topic of RAILROADS. the section on passenger rail is an exact duplicate. Or should I say that all they did was cut and paste from the old plan into the new, without changing(or apparently checking) anything. Even with that, the study for the 2030 Plan would have been done in 2004 when the Kentucky Cardinal service from Louisville had already been discontinued.

What really grabs for your attention is the next section which is a discussion of Light Rail. This is another of my great passions. Here is some of what they wrote:

...Light Rail is and has been area of interest for the Lexington Area MPO for many years.

...This started the MPO Staff to begin light rail research and to work light rail visioning into the Lexington Area MPO transportation planning process.

... While currently economically unfeasible, this plan and subsequent plans should continue to investigate/examine the potential role and the feasibility of light rail in the future transportation system of the Lexington Area.

Now here we are five years later, and not only is there no further planning for Light Rail, but even the topic has been stricken from the document. With three of our surrounding, major cities clamoring for light rail and the rest of the nation beginning to develop and install such light rail, Lexington's commitment, so prevalent in the last plan, has vanished.

If only there was some investigative group dedicated to getting the information to the people, but I guess they have all been laid off over budget cuts or some such nonsense.