The kiosk is fairly new, but the leaving of intelligence etc. outside has been mandatory for many, many years.

I noticed it a few days after I got here, more than 40 years ago, and I suspect the rule existed long before then.

As for the transit center. What the heck good is a transit center if you don’t have any transit? Aside from a few buses that run for a few hours on a few streets, there are taxis and private vehicles. Shouldn’t a transit center hook buses up with trolleys, subways, trams, els, … “something”???

Or is it just a way to close off a bit more of the street to give people a place to wait for a bus to come along — or for a new route to be assigned, so they can finally get where they want to go?
(Buses are great, but be sure you go home real early, don’t come into town on certain days, and don’t expect to catch or get off one near where you want to go.)

Oh great! As the ACHD insists that they listen to the public, now they tell us to shut up.

EDITOR NOTE–Well founded complaint. In defense of ACHD, there is a legal notice requirement for public hearings and they wouldn’t have been able to comply with the law for a hearing. This entire “trolley folly” is being foisted upon everyone and it is simply not being done right.

…Buses Were First Step to Ending Streetcar System

GM first replaced trolleys with free-roaming buses, eliminating the need for tracks embedded in the street and clearing the way for cars. As dramatized in a 1996 PBS docudrama, Taken for a Ride, Alfred P. Sloan, GM’s president at the time, said, “We’ve got 90 percent of the market out there that we can…turn into automobile users. If we can eliminate the rail alternatives, we will create a new market for our cars.” And they did just that, with the help of GM subsidiaries Yellow Coach and Greyhound Bus. Sloan predicted that the jolting rides of buses would soon lead people to not want them and to buy GM’s cars instead…

If you Google…
General Motors scraps trolley system Yellow Coach
…you can read about it from hundreds of sources.

EDITOR NOTE–This is the same GM the Feds are donating cash to so they will be able to continue making cars for Americans to purchase and “stimulate” the economy.

As far as rushing into this… We’ve been talking and planning and holding public meetings forever. For Team Dave to pull this is rediculous, unless he also believes Peak Oil will destroy our economy.

Cyclops: I was at the very first debate before Dave Bieter was elected, between him, Chuck Winder, and Vaughn Killeen. If anybody had taped that debate and shown it publicly, Bieter would have been made to drop out due to never-ending ridicule. He stammered, stuttered, and BS’d his way through, while sweating profusely. He couldn’t answer any of the questions intelligently, and acted like he didn’t know anything about our city. Dave Bieter is a fraud and it is a wonder most folks haven’t figured that out yet.

At the open house that was held last year to show off the idea of the transit station it was very clear that there were many more questions about this whole project than were answers. This is clearly a city council agenda that they want done regardsless of the thoughts of the people.

Besides that there is no more money to even cover the services that we already have. Budget cuts must come in 2010 and may go into 2013. If the city want to find new funding they could fire all the “pubic information” and “planning” people that serve as the inhouse marketing staff for this stuff.

All that is necessary to serve as an elected official is to be 18 years old, be a voter in good standing and get yourself elected. Pretty weak set of credentials to run a multi million dollar outfit like a city.

Professional management is the answer and it is high time taxpayers consider the concept of a city/county manager form of government. Good ones are not cheap but the mistakes and problems well meaning people are creating for taxpayers to clean up at great cost need to be openly discussed.

A good city manager will save cities and counties money.

When you consider how “they” are trying to fill every square inch of “downtown” (the boundaries of which continue to grow under the CCDC) with Convention Centers, Condos and other development, I can’t see the Red-Headed-Step-Child that is Mass Transit getting much of a voice at the table.

I either have to believe that, or that they are so very incompetent that they are incapable of building a simple Transit Mall.

This ain’t the Manned Mission to Mars folks!

Remember the mayor’s race? Remember when the big wigs came to town to “study” our inter-agency lack of cooperation? Didn’t they say “start talking to each other”?

Wasn’t there this grandiose “exchange of cell phone numbers” by the different agencies and valley leaders? Oh! I forgot! The election is over so it’s back to “business as usual”! Some fat cat developer says Not In My Back Yard! So city hall roles over like a 6 week old puppy urinating on itself because someone scratched it’s belly and says “You Bet! We were just kidding about the transit terminal! We will move it right away”! Now the VRT says they need to look at BOTH sites, the developer says it is a DONE DEAL to move the site to 10th.,and ACHD(who is primary decider on the roads) knows NOTHING about it!

These people shouldn’t be recalled or impeached. They should be euthanized!!! As a sidebar. Anyone catch the good mayor’s speech at the Special Olympics welcoming ceremony? Looks like he needs a “refresher course” from Andrus on public speaking! His speech was in a word, PATHETIC! A true embarrassment on an international stage!