Long post, but by now it's expected of me...
Texas Bill said:
Nals---AGAIN, you beg the issue...
When will you admit the fact that THIS project is "off the cuff" insofar as any reasonable planning, environmental study, OR WHATEVER is concerned.
leonel's cronies were so anxious to get the thing underway that they forgot to do any planning at all.
Santo Domingo sits on the alluvial deposition of THOUSANDS OF YEARS and it will be virtually impossible to construct any underground facility without building MILES & MILES of coffer dams to prevent the incursion of underground water into the construction site. One doesn't need to be an engineer to see that. The problem lies with the people who want to have a modern transportation AT ANY PRICE! And I'm convinced that price will be in the BILLIONS of US$s.
What do you REALLY THINK. And don't give me any of your SPIN DOCTOR rhetoric?
Texas Bill
I don't remember supporting the Metro project. I do remember supporting the island project, but never the metro.
I was interested in knowing if her boyfriend is an engineer or architect or if he knows some one who has inspected the site and such.
But, if we must have a debate (which has been long over due, I might add
), take a look at other metro projects that have been created in many cities around the world. Were these projects welcomed with open arms prior and during construction or were they criticized beyond belief?
Let's put it this way, if most metro projects would have gone by the desires of the critics, many cities that owes much of their growth and economic activity to such mass transit system would never had developed as such.
Does this mean I support the Metro? No.
Does this mean that simply because it worked/failed elsewhere that it will in SD? No.
What all of this does says is that all these criticisms are a normal part of developing such large scale projects, at least this is the case when we compare to similar projects created in other places whenever they were created.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Let's take a quick look into other examples:
London's Underground :
"In 1852, the City Terminus Company was formed, and the proposal was again placed in front of Parliament. Once again, it failed because of a lack of support."
"One very critical editorial in the The London Times likened the map of the Metropolitan railways to "an anatomical drawing with endless filaments of blue and red veins running from one blotchy centre to another." In this article we are told that no space is safe from the intrusion of the "iron monsters.""
Source:
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1989-0/ladart.htm
Would modern Londoners appreciate their capital city and its development if the underground would have never been created? Such project was a life saver, particularly and literally during WW2.
New York City's Subway (early 1900):
"So inbred has become this idea of "Commercialism in Politics" and public life that every office-holder, be he honest or dishonest, is certain that his public acts are being watched by the two "R's"- reporters and reformers. When a contract involving the expenditure of thirty-five millions of public money has been carried out to the letter and practically on time, the wonderment of the public is so great as to excite general curiosity."
"The then masters of the transit situation in New York, led by the late William C. Whitney, declined to undertake the contract except on the basis of a franchise in perpetuity. Public disapproval prevented such a contract from being made. It seemed as if New York was doomed to another disappointment and that the old slogan, "Battery to Harlem in Fifteen Minutes," would be shouted for many years to come without a spadeful of earth being turned."
Source:
http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/undergroundworld.html
Would modern day New Yorkers appreciate their metropolis if it was not for the subway? Would there be a modern New York if it was not for such project?
In this link we can see how people viewed the Washington DC metro:
http://www.alexmarshall.org/index.php?pageId=139
Then comes the issue of increasing traffic problems which a mass transit system could help solve:
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu23me/uu23me0g.htm
And then the issue of lives lost due to car accidents alone, which if a mass transit system becomes successful, could lower those numbers:
http://www.iadb.org/idbamerica/archive/stories/2000/eng/jan00e/e200i.htm
And then we got the ecological effects roads have on the environment, which a mass transit system underground could help relieve the stress on the current grid and reduce the demand for more roads:
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/roads.html
The list goes on and on and on.
In the end my point is made: What is different about the Santo Domingo metro from other metros around the world? They all got criticisms of all sorts before and during their construction and afterward, people cannot imagine their lives without them! Not only that, but the economic and infrastructural development those cities experienced is greatly due to their metro mass transit system!
Every single one of those systems encountered difficulties and new problems and all of them got criticized and guess what? Evidence shows that those projects continued full fledge and damned be the person who proposes removing them today.
Santo Domingo has been growing at an astronomical rate since the 1970s. The city is growing and will continue to grow, considering that half the country's population still lives in the countryside and will, sooner or later opt for city living.
Does anyone have an idea of what this means for traffic in that city and the stress it will put on the current road grid?
-NALs
BTW, for those of you who don't like to read long posts, at the very least look into this web site link. It's The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Very interesting.
http://www.itdp.org/