Vote NO on Prop 104: It’s a boondoggle

I was on the Citizens Commission of the Future of Phoenix Transportation. I voted NO on the Commission recommendation for allocating 30 billion dollars to a wasteful shopping list of transportation schemes. The most wasteful is the $160 million per mile that the Commission voted to extend light rail. Passenger rail is a 19th Century solution to a 21st Century problem. The future of transportation is NOT mass transit but rather individual transit. This includes small automobiles, autonomous vehicles, on-demand services such as Uber or Lyft, and a number of other transportation innovations. These ideas received little attention in our committee. How did this happen? The chair of our committee essentially let the City of Phoenix transportation staff run the meetings. Their presentations of various spending needs took up most of every meeting. There was very little time for discussion and no overall plan to vote on until the last meeting. As a matter of fact, there was not a single vote taken by the whole commission on anything until the end. There is no way that such a process could have produced anything resembling a comprehensive, long-term plan. And, consequently, there wasn’t one; just the 30 billion dollar shopping list that was hurriedly rushed to voters. Influential big spenders wanted an off-election year vote and the election held at an odd time because that is how the special interests gain the upper hand. The special interests are the ones who will be at the receiving end of the 30 billion dollars. I suggest that you vote NO and decide for yourself how to so spend those dollars.