Informed but opinionated commentary and analysis on urban transportation topics from the Secret Worldwide Transit Cabal. Names have been omitted to protect the guilty.

Our Mission: Monkeywrench the Anti-Transit Forces

 
ANOTHER SAEPT AWARD

"It is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous to be subject to ridicule."
James Howard Kunstler

From the Cabalmaster:

ANOTHER SAEPT AWARD

The Secret Worldwide Transit Cabal is pleased to award a lifetime membership in the Society for the Abolition of Effective Public Transport. Vreeland, 53, an Austin (TX) fire dispatcher (users3.ev1.net/~vicjudi/vicjudi),
www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue30/pols.councilraces.html (scroll down), thus joins an illustrious group of Saps(tm), including Dennis "Ozone" Polhill and USC Professor Peter "The world would be better off without the [Los Angeles] Blue Line" Gordon.

In some quarters, Vreeland seems to have the image of an archetypal "Angry White Male" (don't take our word for it; click the second link above). Too bad, because his "Railroading America website" www.railroadingamerica.com/rrainfo.html, is, in a word, hilarious.

"RRA Information . . . A collection of web sites telling you the other side of rail and more . . . . Who is going to pay the tab for this national outrage - $500 billion and growing?"

500 BILLION? AS IN 500,000,000,000???*
WOW! WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO GET A "PIECE" OF THAT "ACTION???"
(Guess we'd have to quit our day jobs and become light rail consultants.)

(* Win a complementary lifetime membership in the Secret Worldwide Transit Cabal! Just send an e-mail to transitcabal@yahoo.com and tell us how many times that sum of cash would circle the earth if laid end to end!)

"Buses are cheaper and better than rail - break out your Acrobat Reader"

Cheaper and better . . . reminds us of various US Postal Service flyers regarding mail fraud: IF SOMETHING SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS.

"Critical of all socialist [sic] Austin City Council."

QUICK! REPORT THIS IMMINENT THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY TO . . . WELL, SOMEBODY! NONE OF THE AUSTIN CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS LIST A "SOCIALIST" PARTY AFFILIATION, SO THIS MUST BE A CLANDESTINE THING . . .

(Yeah, you're right, we really should quit while we're ahead on some of our gag lines . . .)

"Brookings Institute" . . . "Privatizing Urban Transportation" . . . sounds suspiciously like "Highway Communism."

"Naaaaaaaaaaa light rail couldn't be govt. waste?? [sic]"

Evidently not, Vic; we clicked the flying pig and searched the "Citizens Against Government Waste" website using "light rail" as a keyword. About all we found was the following, under "Quotes"

"I THINK FEW PEOPLE IN UTAH WOULD SAY THAT FUNDING FOR LIGHT RAIL IS A WASTE OF MONEY"

(Mary Jane Collinpriest, Press Secretary for Senator Robert Bennett, (R-Utah), March 15, 2001, Deseret News.)

The remarkable thing, Vic, judging from newspaper coverage -- and we're just as amazed as you'll be disgusted -- is that this is not only true, it's an understatement.

"Web site of Rails [sic] worst nightmare -- Wendell Cox" (www.publicpurpose.com)

HEY WENDELL! YOU'VE IMPRESSED AT LEAST ONE PERSON, BUT DON'T LET IT GO TO YOUR HEAD!!

The Wonderful Wizard of Fudge has pointedly declined (albeit tacitly) to respond to ANY of the criticisms we've raised about his "Demographia" sites, his "Lexus Line," and so forth. (You'd think he didn't like us, or something . . .)

"Independence Institute" . . . "Colorado" . . . "Denver's failed rail experiment and more" . . . WARNING! DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK UNLESS PROPERLY VENTILATED AGAINST OZONE BUILDUP! (Actually, we suspect a higher risk of encountering another, more fragrant substance.)

"Toll Roads" . . . "Ways of the Future" . . . "Building Roads without Resorting to Tax Dollars" . . . MORE HIGHWAY COMMUNISM! HASN'T THIS IDEA BEEN CONSIGNED TO THE ASH HEAP OF HISTORY?

When the laughter died down (and we made sure that we hadn't revealed the location of "Line's End," the highly secret hidden retreat of the Secret Worldwide Transit Cabal), we hung our heads in disappointment. The site has little, if anything, new.

"Suggest a web site to add to "RailRoadingAmerica.com" - People get railroaded for lack of knowledge - this is a huge corporate/ government/ environmentalist scam to fleece the American Taxpayer. Know the other side of rail, before you vote!"

Oh, yeah. The monorail in downtown Jacksonville is NOT a light rail system! It is a "gadgetbahn" people-mover. And yes, we agree with you that it is a boondoggle that never should have been built...

Oh, come on, Vic, enough with the tiresome rhetoric, already.

"The success of this web site depends on you, the ordinary taxpayer who is going to pay the tab. Is your city is on the drawing board for light rail. Put up you own local site (I can show you how to do it) email to "vrv@railroadingamerica.com."

"Railroading America." It sounded so promising. We hoped against hope that we'd found another site worth lambasting; another anti-transit orator worth lampooning (look at how much fun we have lampooning Wendell!). But, alas, there is no THERE there.

You let us down, Vic. You really did.

posted by The Cabalmaster, Master of All Transit-dom 10/28/2002 06:06:00 PM