Mass Transit Rail Line

I've been thinking about how you get development back into the core of the city. I have been increasingly concerned that the rising cost of energy will make those with financial means to gravitate towards the two employment poles, downtown and the Germantown Pkwy/Hwy 64 Corridor. People with less means will be forced to commute longer distances and fall further down the economic ladder. Data shows that commutes to work for people living in Frayser, Whitehaven and most of the city inside 240 have doubled since 1990. This is eroding the tax base and decimating these areas.

So how do we get development back into the city. I have recently heard about the light rail system in Charlotte. They have completed the first 9.6 mile stretch of the line in November 2007. So far it has exceeded ridership projections, but more importantly, it has raised the values of properties along the line and encourages new retail and residential development. This first 9 mile stretch cost $463 million. I believe a mass transit rail line could be done here for much less.

If you look at the orange line on the map above, that is an old abandoned rail line that still has tracks for most of its length. It runs from east side of Binghampton north and then west all the way to Second Street. It goes by neighborhoods such as Hollywood-Springdale, Hyde Park, and New Chicago. These neighborhoods have seen better days and lost significant populations over the past 20 years. There is also substantial open space along the line for development. An express bus line could run from downtown to the Second Street Station.

Take a look at the blue line. That runs from the Dupoint plant out by Fite Rd just off of Hwy 51. This train line is currently used and links to the main rail line by the Dupoint Plant running north. I'm not sure how much traffic it has, but I don't think it is so much that a communter train couldn't run on this line. There is plenty of open space to build links of parallel tracks so that traffic wouldn't be delayed. There are a couple of nice resources already along this line. One is the Nike Plant and the other is Davey Crockett Golf Course. If you could get commuters from Millington and Tipton county to park their cars at the Fite Road Station and ride the train into the city, make a connection and go on to downtown, I believe that would be a benefit to the city and the commuters. The train line would also great assist people in Raleigh and Frayser who work at Fed Ex. Hope on the train and then catch an express bus from Central Station to the airport.

The last line is the purple line. I believe this is a high used rail line, but I think there is enough space to build a parallel commuter rail. This line could run straight out towards Bartlett. A Station could be built by Covington Pike. People could get from Bartlett to downtown quickly for work or leisure without need of their car for less than the cost of parking your car. This line would cost the most but have a lot of potential, especially since it would provide high speed public transport to large neighborhoods south of Jackson Avenue.

You may be asking what about South Memphis. Unfortunately, I couldn't find too many unused or low use train lines with much open space around them for development. Perhaps, bus service could be shifted to the southern part of city. But we’ve got to do something and I believe the return on a relatively small investment would be great for these areas and city as a whole. Basically, build a transit skeleton and the city grow around it. It worked with all those roads to nowhere in the county a generation ago.

Cheney is a "Barnicle"- Legen......dary!

Steve Cohen rocks-
The video shows Addington reading a 1961 memo describing the OVP as belonging "neither to the executive nor to the legislative branch." Addington refused to go into any additional detail, saying only that Cheney is "attached" to the legislative branch. When Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) suggested that would make the Vice President a "barnacle," Addington, disgusted, said he didn't "consider the Constitution a barnacle."

Maybe Section 8 People Are Just Evil or Perhaps Living in the "C" Sucks in Multiple Ways

Well the “C” is back in the news with the Atlantic article, American Murder Mystery. Basically the article states there is a correlation between Section 8 housing and crime, especially violent crime. While I’m about as far from being a sociologist or urban anthropologist as you can get, I have been writing a lot about the conditions in the “C”. What I have been trying to do is illustrate how complex the problems that plague the “C” are. What I worry about with this article is that people are going to scape-goat Section 8 housing for the crime happening all over the city. The maps that Dr. Betts and Dr. Janikowski have made most certainly do show violent crime happening near section 8 housing. Yet there are a whole lot of over things that are around where violent crime is happening.

I’m going to list previous posts I have written about various problems in the “C”. I don’t provide links to take you directly there, but just go to the archive month to find them if you want. (Sorry for the colorful language too. I was young and immature in 2006 and 2007.)

Let’s start with things that have a strong correlation with areas with high rates of violent crime.

1) Low Income-

A. Thursday, August 17, 2006

Welcome to the "C"

B. Thursday, July 13, 2006

How Much of Memphis Lives in Poverty?

2) Financial strip mining by predatory lenders

A. Thursday, November 08, 2007

Financial Strip Mining Here in Memphis

B. Friday, September 29, 2006

Check Cashing/Predatory Lenders and Hispanics

3) Lack of legitimate financial institutions

Friday, August 25, 2006

The "C", Banks, and the African American Community

4) You live near a church or a liquor store

Friday, June 01, 2007

Liquor and God in the "C"

5) Black folks moved there over the past 25 years

Thursday, July 12, 2007

"Pride is Fucking with Your Head" or "How Learned to Love Demopublicans"

6) You are a Democrat

Friday, December 29, 2006

Race and Partisanship in Shelby County-Part II

7) You’ve got a pretty good chance of having lead poisoning

Thursday, August 23, 2007

We Were Lead Poisoning Our Kids Before Mattel.

8) You’re house is getting foreclosed

Monday, February 25, 2008

Subprime Loans Should Be Classified as Economic Meth

9) Influential people want to keep putting resources in places that already have resources

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Zipper Zone Translated-Fuck You Poor, Non-White People

10) Places where people moved away from

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Welcome to Memphis' Green Zone

11) Throw in areas with blight, low educational attainment, high number of single parent families, other environmental contaminations, Red Cross assisted victims of residential fires, etc

So there is a list of more than 11 other things which correlate with the areas of high rates of violent crime. Is Section 8 housing a more valid cause of violent crime than low income? This is the passage of the article that caught my attention the most.-

“Studies show that recipients of Section8 vouchers have tended to choose moderately poor neighborhoods that were already on the decline, not low-poverty neighborhoods. One recent study publicized by HUD warned that policy makers should lower their expectations, because voucher recipients seemed not to be spreading out, as they had hoped, but clustering together.”

In the end, all the problems that I have listed above are linked to inequality. Unless you invest in your citizens and provide adequate resources, you will have all these interrelated problems. Picking one issue out of many over simplifies the situation and creates an environment for demagogic politicizing.

Quiz Time

Which city council member hasn't made it to a single budget hearing?
A) Reid Hedgepeth
B) Reid Hedgepeth
C) Reid Hedgepeth
D) All of the above

If you said A, B, C, or D, you would be correct. Certainly, the real estate market isn't that good, so selling condos may be tough now. But if you are in a financial situation where you have to spend all your time building some rich guy's house in Arkansas rather than attend City council meetings perhaps you shouldn't be on the City Council. Budget hearings are about the most important meetings the city council has. If you aren't there for them, I don't think you really know what is happening in city government.

Interesting Day for an Engagement Party and other Random Thoughts

A friend and I were talking about what an interesting day it was in Memphis on April 4, 2008.

*Let's say I'm a Harold Ford Jr. I'm going to be marrying a white woman from New York and I've been getting slammed by the local media about it. I have to have an engagement party in Memphis my whole family is here, but I want as little media coverage as possible. What day would I chose? Perhaps, the 40th anniversary of MLK assasination when two presidential candidates, and every news agency in the world is here to cover it.

Smart choice to hide in the middle of a media frenzy. Jr's engagement party got zero coverage.


*Could John McCain have a worse day than yesterday. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time to come to Memphis and speak at the Lorraine Motel. But whoops, everyone their remembered he didn't support the MLK holiday and he got rightly booed. So the booing causes the story to get picked up by major media and it reminds everyone that although the vote was several years ago you didn't support MLK's Holiday. McCain realizing it is a disaster does a live interview on NBC to try to mitigate the damage. Unfortanately, Brian WIlliams brings up the vote again and nobody can hear a word McCain is saying because the current speaker at the Lorraine is talking over him. So all a viewer sees is an old man being aksed about his seemingly racist vote, unable to answer because the only thing the viewer can hear is a speech about equality and social justice by some guy off camera.

So let's recap, the republican nominee is an old guy who was once one of the Keating Five, who voted against the MLK Holiday, opposes assistance to people getting foreclosed but supports Wall Street bailouts, sings about bombing Iran, and wants to stay in Iraq 100 years. How are we going to lose to him?

If You Build Shake Joint Village They Will Come and Pay Taxes

One of the most maddening things for me currently in local politics is the obsession with shake joints. This city and county are seriously screwed up, from crime to a collapsing tax base, yet some puritans seem to think shake joints are our most pressing issue. A couple of elected officials seem to be reasonable, James Harvey on the Commission and Shea Flynn on the Council. They are open to the idea to put all the shake joints in one area. I have no problem with this since I like both tax revenues and naked women. There are several locations in and Memphis that fit the bill. If you put all the shake joints in one location with a single road entrance, it seems as though they could be well regulated and keep criminal activities from overflowing into the community.

Just through my brief examination of the city, I think there could be four different locations for Shake Joint Village. The first is in southwest Memphis on Paul R Lowry road. There’s a lot of empty land out there and it is zoned industrial. The next location is by the Covington Pike and I-240 behind all the car lots. It is zoned industrial as well. The next two locations are not in the City limits but they are in Memphis’ growth zones. Let’s be honest about the Memphis growth zones. Nobody is going to build subdivisions in these areas because they’ll be annexed by the city. The zones are going to remain empty because no one wants to live in the city. So why not put something out there that will generate taxes and can be annexed. There is a place south of Forest Hill-Irene and Holmes by the Mississippi border. It’s zoned for agriculture and vacant. The final spot is on the east side of Watkins north of Highway 51, just past the police training center. This is vacant farmland as well.

If one of these sights get selected it seems as though almost everyone can walk away happy, aside from the puritans. The business folks around the airport will get the area nice and civilized for their, soon to be obsolete because of Peak Oil, aerotropolis. Shake Joint patrons will be able to enjoy beer and nudity without harming the surrounding community and local government will get their much needed tax revenues. So why not build Shake Joint Village and end this waste of time. We’ll make more money off of it than the four ride amusement park in the Pyramid.

Carol Chill Out

Ok, Herenton resigning is a big deal, but it doesn't happen until July 31st. There is plenty of time to comment. With that being said, I'm watching the 6 o'clock news and one of things mentioned is Carol Chumney has gone down to city hall. What did she think, he was leaving office right then and would turn the keys of the city over to her? We all know you came in second last October, therefore the news media would be coming to you for comment. You showing up to City Hall made you look like you are obsessed with being mayor.

Then this morning, I look at the Commercial Appeal and see these quotes from Chumney. "Memphis deserves better." and "We have high taxes, high crime and corruption". Thanks Captain Obvious. What did these quotes and the parachuting into City Hall accomplish besides making you look petty and obsessed? Damn, just chill out and take some time to think about what is coming up. There is going to be a special election in several months and you will not be able to run against Herenton anymore. You're going have to go from rock thrower, to someone who looks like they can lead the city. You aren't any closer to that now than you were at 3 pm Thursday. In fact you maybe further away.