Raise the Hammer

Brandon, thank you for asking these questions. Quite simply there are two policies that have been addressed in my various comments here.

One is the lack of Design foresight. And the other is lack of Economic foresight.(in ref to LRT & WH).

To put is simply -- the untenable issues in design thinking spring from a lack of foresight in seeing how things would evolve over time -- (a case in point being, this blog - not to be overtly critical here, but if we continue to engage here - very soon you will find that our conversation will be reduce to a thin vertical strip - rendering normal reading insanely difficult - which is the inherent and fatal flaw of design, and its designer's lack of foresight which I mention) -- viz. LRT & WH the way it was planned, our city patterns are/were also in grave danger of such similar unintended consequences.

The untenable issues in Economic thinking around LRT primarily spring from a lack of foresight in seeing how the global economy has been operating -- ever since our long-term transportation strategy got naively hitched to a sporting event.

I have already commented many times, earlier on this blog - on the untenable issues in economic and design thinking around the WH.

With such economic thinking or lack of it -- both, the design of the LRT tracks suffered as there was an undue rush to grab money (which was never guaranteed); and the very future of alternate inner-city transportation itself suffered - as our transportation issues got all mixed up with the WH and the Games.

The state of the economy is highlighted neatly in the Spec today:

"President Barack Obama’s jobs plan announced last week yielded little reaction in global markets. Neither did recent talks among the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank governors, who ignored calls for a stronger unified response to Europe’s debt crisis. Instead, they insisted that each country should tread its own path back to growth amid concerns of a global slowdown."

Now in this scenario - would you go ahead and pick a fight (and with whom?) to spend a billion+ dollars on a poorly designed LRT plan?

On the issue of "questioning" and "abuse" of politicians -- there is a very thin line between Journalism and Foxism - most on either side of this 'ism don't know which side they are on from one day to other.

I personally do not subscribe to the theory of: "Our fathers abused their politicians - so we shall abuse ours".

Yours, ought to be the generation that breaks this cycle of abuse, no?

I would love to give you specific examples of the abuses - but I can assure you that they will be faded to light grey in five minutes.

If you do insist on examples of abuse, I would however give it as a separate comment - so at least one of these comments has a chance of being readable for a bit longer.

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2011-09-12 12:26:46