Back in 2007 or so, James Lileks stopped by the NARN broadcast at Back to the Fifties – the classic-car show at the State Fairgrounds that used to be such a vibrant focus of life in the Midway before the same people that brought us Tony Soprano-style trash collection badgered the cruising hot rods out of existence.

Because “vibrancy”, to the new Urbanites, must exclude those who actually vibrate.

Anyway – while on the air, Lileks pointed to a 1967 Mustang Fastback, and proclaimed that “the electric car will never succeed until Detroit builds one that looks like that“.

Was Detroit tuned in that day?

I’ll just assume they were; Ford’s new battery car is going to be an electric version of the car that, along with the Model T and the F150, may be the marque’s most iconic vehicle – the Mustang:

Originally Ford was working on what it openly described as “a compliance car,” one built simply to meet incoming emissions rules in the US and Europe. But in 2017 it threw out those plans, putting together an internal skunk works called Team Edison with a brief to reimagine the project. Its goal was to design a BEV that could only be a Ford, and there’s little that’s more iconically Ford than the galloping pony.

Five models are on the way:

Between late 2020 and spring 2021, Ford will bring out a mix of rear- and all-wheel drive Mach-Es with either standard- or extended-range battery packs. The cheapest of these is the Select; $43,895 buys you a rear-driving one of these with the smaller pack, but you’ll have to wait until early 2021 to get one of those. That also applies to the $52,400 California Route 1, a RWD version with lower-drag 18-inch wheels and the long-range battery pack. All prices are before the IRS tax credit is taken into account; this will be $7,500 until Ford joins Tesla and General Motors in having sold 200,000 plug-ins, at which point it will begin to sunset. Ford expects this to happen at some point in 2021.

Maybe there’s hope? 

The nation’s political class is currently paralyzed with rage over people dying of vaping.

Ignoring the fact that vaping has likely saved thousands of lives by helping people stop smoking, and more people never start – never mind! A death toll in single digits, almost entirely from using home-made vaping fluids or the occasional extremely rare lung condition, and Big Government, Big Left and, presumably, Big Tobacco are on the warpath against legal vaping.

Over less than ten deaths out of 320 million people in a decade.

And our political class is beating the whole world over the head with climate change – a crisis that has killed nobody, but has terrorized hundreds of thousands of school kids into turning into protest droogs on command. .

So I got to looking at the records for the Twin Cities’ three rail lines – the Blue and Green (“Vomit Comet”) light rail lines and the North Star heavy commuter line.

Now, I expected these deeply dim-witted projects to rack up a death toll.

I wasn’t ready for what I found.

Currently, the lines have claimed 26 lives in fifteen years.

I’m adtually a bit surprised that the death toll on the North Star is as high as it is; the intersections tend to be pretty well-controlled, and the trains run on existing right of way.

On the other hand? The death toll on the Green Line astounds me – and the number for the Blue Lline kinda snuck into double digits when I wasn’t looking too.

That’s 26 people dead. 26 families forever altered. 26 Transit employees scarred.

Something has to be done.

June 23, 2020. That’s the 16th anniversary of the start of regular Blue Line service. And I’m going to observe it as Transit Memorial Day. A day of solemn rememrance of the 26 people (so far) whose lives have been sacrificed…

…for what?

To support the Met Council and the Political class’s urge to feel like a real big city? To build a monument to the government’s power?

Yeah, totally worth it.

See you June 23.

I just finished spending a year and a half riding the Vomit Comet (aka “the Green Line”) to work and back most days.

At its best, it was a serviceable ride.

At its most middling, it was crowded with free-loading University kids and, early on cold mornings, homeless people curled up sleeping on the chairs.

At its worst? I navigated between puddles of vomit, stepped in a pool of urine, and was to the point of intervening as a man attacked a woman.

You can almost sense the defeat in the Met Council’s latest release:

Metro Transit is ending 24/7 service on the Green Line between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis.
The change, which is scheduled to take effect in August, comes amid concerns about drug use, assaults and other misconduct on the trains.
Under the plan, the light rail trains will not run between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. weekdays.
General Manager Wes Kooistra said the trains will be replaced with buses that will stop near each Green Line station.
Kooistra said the two-hour shutdown will also give crews more time to clean train cars and repair tracks

Emphasis on “clean the cars”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I can’t believe how self-centered and thoughtless Christmas shoppers are.

I’m trying to back out of my parking space and pedestrians walk right behind me! Don’t they see me backing up?

They’re as bad as the drivers who back out of their parking spot when I’m trying to walk to the store. Don’t they see me walking here?

Joe Doakes

If only there were…pedestrian lanes!

The most powerful word in the free market is “no”.

With the simple word “no”, each individual consumer votes every day on the products and services they do or, vastly more often, don’t want to spend their scarce, precious resources on.

Were it not for the word “no”, cell phones would still weigh 2 pounds and cost $10 a minute; cars would still have two wheel drum brakes; VHS tapes would still rule the home-video market.

The lack of the term “no” – or, at least, it’s complete on importance to central planners, who are all about their various pet “yeses”,- is one of the great flies, if not the fatal weakness, and socialism.

Without the word “no”, there would be no free market. Also, no improvement in goods, services or, really, the entire human condition.

With that in mind – people are saying “no” in record numbers to government subsidized mass transit.

The Federal Transit Administration released June 2018 data revealing that the transit industry has now experienced four straight years of ridership losses. June 30 was the end of the fiscal year for most transit agencies, and ridership has fallen in every fiscal year since 2014.

Nationwide, the total decline since 2014 was 7 percent, but declines in many urban areas were much larger:

• 29 percent in Memphis;

• 27 percent in Charlotte;

• 26 percent in Miami;

• 25 percent in Albuquerque;

• 24 percent in Cleveland;

• 22 percent in St. Louis;

• 21 percent in Milwaukee, Sacramento, and Virginia Beach; and

• 20 percent in Los Angeles.

The article Dash by the excellent Randall O’Toole – notes that the feds are blaming a lot of factors for this tree fall Dash ride healing services for the middle class, and the simple fact that most poor people own cars, and most people can reach more better paying jobs in 10 minutes by car than an hour by transit.

But they all boiled down to one thing – people everywhere, nationwide, of all economic groups (except for a tiny fringe of “car free” middle class trend follower is) are saying “no” to being jammed into trains to go with the government has deemed they need to be.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a21272157/aerodynamics-car-science/

 

The reason all cars look the same is aerodynamics, which matter to fuel efficiency, which is mandated by the government.

I’d gladly give up a few miles per gallon if I could have my ’67 Mustang back, only with less rust and a modern reliable engine.

Give me a Mustang body sitting on a Hyundai Sonata powertrain and we’re golden.

Let’s see:

Yeah, that’d work.

Question: which is longer – the last four minutes of an NBA playoff game, or four minutes of Metro Transit time?

Answer: yes.

Green Line train derailed yesterday.

While rolling down a flat street with a midday-sized cargo of passengers.

How do you even do that?

Hey, good luck, Super Bowl fans! You’ll have this turkey on wheels all to yourself.

One of the reasons that Black Lives Matter gives to justify their tactic of blocking freeways is that the inconvenience suffered by the “white” (?) motorists shoiuld put them in mind of the inconveniences suffered by black people.

Fair enough!

The Met Council is making it incredibly difficult to be a commuter in the Twin Cities – to get from where one lives to where one works, and back.  Commuting is the norm, not the exception.  The Met Council’s mania for building trains (from where people largely aren’t, to where they largely don’t want to be) at the expense of roads has made that task even more onerous.

So let’s borrow – dare I say, “appropriate” – an idea from BLM?

Let’s gather outside the Met Council’s next meeting.

And block the hallway to the bathroom.  While waving signs telling them to imagine they were trying to get to the next exit to get to a bathroom?

Can you smell the victory?

…is about ten years behind us.

And it’s government’s fault.  As usual.

Ten years ago, the transit-happy left pointed to the DC Metro as an example of how urban mass transit could be done.

In particular, they said?  It was less of a money pit than anticipated.

Unmentioned (except from the right):  they shaved money by deferring maintenance.  Equipment and facilities that were supposed to have a thirty-year service life has been soldiering on, deferring maintance, for forty years.

And it’s starting to cause problems; a series of public meltdowns including a train that spent an hour stuck under the Potomac river yesterday:

A female passenger on the disabled train told us she will no longer use Metro after this incident.

“Say no to Metro,” she said. “I haven’t done it in a while and to be on a brand new car – no … I got better ways to go. I’ve got two feet. I trust those better than I do Metro.”

Mass transit.  It’s great, provided you actually believe those who claim to know better than you actually know better than you do.