It does my heart good to stir thigs up a little. Fact is, I've been playing with my computer on RyPN all day because the snow is too deep to go anywhere. That ain't the only thing getting deep today, either. What's really scary is that I agree with all you guys, PLEASE DON'T GET ME STARTED.

The only other thing I'm going to set out before I tie up, is that CHINA has one Hell of a rail system, too. When I see some of the new parts of it, I think of what this country could have if we got our heads out of our ..... And when I see some of the older parts of China Rail and those dirty old politicly incorrect ungreen heavy industries, I think of what this country once had.

What struck me about this "addition" is how architecturally this monstrosity is totally mismatched it is to what is already there, which on the whole, any knucklehead can see this graft job stands out like a sore thumb. It's analogous to a globulus "modern" tumor grafted onto the body of grandeur and history. A casebook example of bad architecture that has absolutely no respect at all for it's environment or historic context. A wag once commented on another example of this sort of crass oversight when he said, "The only taste they have is in their mouth." Approved by a bunch of clueless provincial rubes who are candidates to buy swampland for a parking lot. It makes my stomach churn. Gives me a headache. It's best to look away.

If we ran enough trains to need the tracks we'd have the tracks.......and with downtown real estate at a premium, land not needed for tracks gets used for other things, like retail. The irony is that this need evolves as we return to the city from the sprawl (not fast enough) and in the process create the density necessary for working rail...........

Meanwhile, the accessable airport was closed and the new Denver Outback Airport erected in its place.....way out in nowhere.....about 20 years ago. Why do we want to fly out into nowhere?

So long as the Tattered Cover and the brewery are close by, I'll find something worthwhile to do down there.

dave

Having been to Denver several times after living there, I was struck by how short sighted and ad hoc city \ urban planning really is in terms of faddist trends driven by commercial interests that tear down supposedly outmoded infrastructure just to rebuild it all later at an astonishingly inflated replacement cost. Not that Denver is any exception to this random mix and match lottery that passes for urban planning. Just as the interurban era could not see the writing on the wall with the onset of paved roads, the same myopia leads to tracks being pulled up only to be relaid in a matter of a few decades. I can think of many a "improvement" that turned out to be colossal errors in retrospect. It reminds me of sort of a group think that resembles ADD. A kind of herd instinct for the latest and greatest that turn out to be short lived white elephants. The removal of trackage in an age of increasing need for rail passenger capacity and the simultaneous defacing of a landmark is business as usual.

It's not just here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34643

Another irksome trendy mismatch in urban and intercity planning was the brilliant concept of removing rail for the sake of highly efficient 18th Century foot powered bicycles that have a carrying capacity of one and cannot be used in inclement weather which another trend seems to be the unpredictability of weather itself.
And of course, all of this is based on recreational, sole use. The only advantage of this is cost as a transport alternative and yet you get what you pay for in terms of a bigger picture utility of use. Except on perfect summer or fall days, you do not see a flood of citizens along bike trails. You could probably take a Jeep and drive 90 MPH down a bike path that replaced rail and not being in danger of hitting anything but perhaps a stray squirrel on the majority of time in any year you care to chose. Progress and retrogression and the difference between the two seem to be in the hands of a small very vocal sort of narcissism, the NIMBY navel gazers who ignore the greater public good in favor of pretending our population is not proliferating like a hutch of mobile rabbit's while we tear out the landscape in search of oil shale for private transportation.

Since we're already off track........and I'm finding it wonderful to hear from Bruce, who I now know shares two cities of residence with me........

but the entire idea of investment for the public good is one that is ever less popular politically now. The New Deal at least provided many things that enriched all citizens, such as widespread electricity and roads into areas that lacked the density of population to create their own. Sure there developed other hidden costs, but the overall was a generally positive universal benefit.

Now, we only make public investments that benefit the business cronies of the politicians more than the public at large. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (wherever else) movements aren't opposed: they just think they are. Both actually object to the mutual intrusion of big business and big government into each other to the detriment of the average guy........imagine if they could get together and fight both fronts at once?

I don't see any likelyhood of improvement so long as we're happy to keep ourselves disenfranchised by being manipulated into fighting a false enemy among ourselves. Can't we get "NONE OF THE ABOVE" as a choice in our elections?

dave

I look at these comments, and I can't help but think again of the generational shift that started to happen back around 1950 or so and which is changing back again right about now. This has to do with when you come of age and your views of you and the world about you, including its future, crystallize. For most people this happens when they are about 20 or so, give or take a few years.

I saw this when trying to promote a light rail line as an alternative to a highway in the area where I live. (I've had this up before, you may want to skip the next few paragraphs if you've already seen it.) People who liked the idea a bit over 20 years ago were either under 40 or over 70, while those who hated it (and said I was a Communist trying to take away their cars!) were mostly between 40 and 70. Since then everyone got older and now the break points are a bit over 60 and a bit over 90.

What I think I've been seeing (and others involved in things like the California high speed project and various light rail projects say they've seen this too) is that the older crowd--over 70 before and now over 90--grew up and came of age in a pre-Interstate highway America, and trains for them were like running water in your faucet. The younger crowd, the Millenials and the latter part of the Baby Boomers, have grown up with cars as the dominant transportation mode and maybe take them for granted, and at the same time also see a lot of handicaps in driving everywhere for everything, among them environmental issues, the high cost of gasoline and insurance, and the inability to text and drive, and they are looking for alternatives. The group in the middle--Depression Babies, War Babies, and the first third or so of the Baby Boomers-- grew up to Dinah Shore singing "See the USA in your Chevrolet" and to the Beach Boys harmonizing with "Little Deuce Coupe," and the corollary that trains were from the horse-and-buggy and Toonerville era. Even Walt Disney, great rail enthusiast he, was sort of in this as well, as seen in this 1958 edition of his Sunday night television program. There are some great jokes and period auto footage in this, but check out the last 10 minutes or so for a real hoot (and it wasn't intended to be that!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7icGIHPOviQ

One fellow looking at those last 10 minute's from today's perspective said it was like watching an LSD trip. Whooee!!

How this ties in, at least in my opinion, is that the "powers that be" in Denver and most other places are "successful" businessmen who have made a lot of money in property development under the conditions that prevailed until relatively recently. I would guess the real authority figures in finance and development are at least in their late 50s, and are still doing what they did when they started their careers in these fields up to 40 years ago, or even more. They haven't seen that the world is changing, perhaps can't see it from the perspective of too many years of being successful in an auto-dominated business environment. Indeed, I see this as still being sort of nascent in generational terms; we are going to have to go from the tail end of a hostile, anti-rail generation through a don't-mind-rail generation to a pro-rail generation in terms of business attitudes.

I think this has also tied in with NIMBY opposition to heritage railroads, and I am strongly suspecting this may have had something to do with the demise of the Kettle Moraine Railroad. In that case, it's notable that the complaints at the time of closure supposedly revolved around a rail facility that looked like a "junk yard," but photos and videos of the railroad in that time reveal a pretty good looking property in the station area. Today there are a lot of weeds there from the recent photos, there's more equipment stored outside than was visible in the period stuff, and no one is apparently complaining now--but the rail line is gone beyond a certain point, and houses now occupy the right of way. Who do you think really called the shots there--the "yuppies" who moved into the houses, or the developers who lusted for the property?

Not everybody will fit this profile of course (one who posts here who is such an exception is none other than Ross Rowland), but I've observed that most do fit this pattern. I honestly don't know what to do about it, or even wonder if anything can be done except "wait for some first-class funerals," but I think this is much of what we are seeing, along with Dave's comments above about what might be called "crony capitalism" or what may be more properly referred to as "corporatism."

Now, one thing we do have or could have in our favor is that younger people do like trains, they do like not having to drive (partially because driving is no fun anymore), and maybe they can be a source of young blood for us. . .but that's the subject of another thread!

In terms of preservation and the fabric of rail history as well as the economic forces that drive them, I think it could be boiled down to short term immediate convenience versus long term coherence toward not making the same later regrettable myopic errors by blithely ignoring the past. Damn the torpedo's and full speed ahead.
A lot of this also has to do with the increased velocity in the pace of life wherein the faddist hive mentality of cookie cutter solutions don't allow for any continuity in the whole. One thing that is no surprise is that one of the major recognized draws of historic rail journeys (regardless of their length) is to slow that same pace, to take a deep breath and see where we have been and what we have gained as well as lost. The slowing down of information overload and frantic decision making.
I think what we have lost is the reality of being a community, not a collection of independent drones who do not have the luxury of critical thinking beyond immediate needs, fooling themselves into thinking none of this matters.
As a contrast there is community in historic preservation whether it is rail or something else altogether. I think a good example is the age disparity between my wife and myself. Being older I am retired while she continues to work. When a real news story is covered in ten seconds or less between lifestyle stories, I fill her in on the back story and context and as she said, "Who has the time to dig into this on their own time?"
Indeed.
I think sometimes the preservation community loses sight of the positive social aspects of living history in the bigger picture which is understandable when you are fighting upstream the sort of relentless amnesia that "progress" at any cost promotes. There is more to profitability than the monetary aspects in the quality of life, but this lesson always seems to fall on deaf ears in the corporate and governmental mindset of more of this or that is better..( sigh) based on personal, immediate gratification. Whether it's congressional narcissism or bulldozing past respect for our previous generations, it's all the rage these days as the actual time to think significantly shrinks to ten minutes or less.

We're not entirely alone, but alas, we are still in the wilderness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

And something else from there that might be a little controversial here; viewer discretion advised for a somewhat iconoclastic view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

I guess we are lucky they didn't just tear the station down!
Dave Huffman

Very lucky indeed.

Don't think for even a minute that the developers didn't want to do just that.

I love how Amtrak sends you to their main 800 number, where you'll be 20 minutes navigating phone trees before you can get to any information actually about the station move.

I have this up in another thread, but I think it's worth having here, too:

http://www2.mccombs.utexas.edu/faculty/ ... %20GNP.htm

I hope others don't mind seeing this, especially as it comes from one fat guy who has never had to wear the uniform--partially because of those who have and do.