Scott Schwebke adds more grist to the Emerald City public transit discussion mill this morning, with a Standard-Examiner Top of Utah section article which loosely describes several transit proposals which Boss Godfrey intends to present to the city council at Thursday's council work session. We incorporate Mr. Schwebke's lead paragraphs below:
OGDEN — The city council will unveil a priority list of top potential transit corridors within Ogden during a work session Thursday night.In addition to a list of proposed corridors, this morning's story also again mentions Godfrey's intention to recommend study of a tantalizing alternate transit mode:
Thirteen potential transit scenarios have been considered as part of the prioritization process, the council said in a prepared statement issued Tuesday night.
Specific details regarding the scenarios developed through discussions between the council, the city’s administration and the Ogden Planning Commission were unavailable.
"However, he has said he intends to present the council with a proposal to study the feasibility of an affordable streetcar system."
Yesiree, Boss Godfrey is at least giving lip service to streetcars, although he's still keeping the details under wraps.
In the past week we've of course speculated here on Weber County Forum about this mysterious "affordable streetcar system" technology which Godfrey will unveil on Thursday. Gentle reader Dan S. has already opined in an earlier comments section that he believes Godfrey is thinking about something like this:
A streetcar named SWIMO; battery-powered tram in Japan
We heard similar speculation from gentle reader disgusted on May 13.
Whatever Godfrey has in mind, we confess we're sitting on the edges of our seats. How nice it would be however, we'll tentatively observe, if the lumpencitizens and their "visionary" mayor could find themselves marching in the same direction, at least once.
Before turning the floor over to our readers, we'll lodge a couple of our own lingering questions:
1) Why are we still studying alternate "preferred" transit corridors? We thought that issue was resolved by the Baker Study (at no small taxpayer expense) clear back in 2005.
2) If indeed it's to be the battery-powered SWIMO technology, we'll note that the whole thing looks entirely "experimental" to us. Though relatively cheap it may be, we wonder whether an unproven technology like SWIMO is something that could realistically become the backbone of our Ogden City public transit infrastructure.
So many questions; so few answers.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
