On Train to Meadowlands, View of Wasted Money

[marmar]

from the NY Times:




EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It wasn’t a pretty view on the 13-minute train ride Sunday from Secaucus to New Meadowlands Stadium — old landfills, mud flats, the garish bulk of the stalled Xanadu project. But it might as well have been paved with money.

The 2.3-mile train line to the Meadowlands, opened last year, offers a unique tour of inflated and deflated dreams, poor decision-making and, most of all, enormous spending — a fair amount of it from taxpayers, and a fair amount that will never be recouped — in the inimitable New Jersey style. So did the green-clad Jets fans riding to the game gaze out the window at what were supposed to be golf courses, housing, hotels and malls, and sing a lament for the long-suffering New Jerseyan?

Some wearily accept the excess as an inevitable part of life in this state, but most give it little thought.

“If I think about it, I know some of it is crazy,” said Mike McBride, a computer scientist from Boonton. “But when I think about taxes and spending, I tend to think about my local government.”

As the train crosses the Hackensack River, to the left lies what was supposed to be the EnCap project. Once frequent headline news, to judge by the game-day passengers, it has largely vanished from public memory. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/nyregion/22train.html?_r=1&em

[no_hypocrisy]

1. They must have been thinking irony when they named this project "Xanadu".

It's really much uglier than the photo in the Times.

[marmar]

5. Ick.....that is hideous.

nt

[xchrom]

2. i think the New American Dream is 'incompetence'. nt

[marmar]

3. And that one we actually seem to be fulfilling.

nt

[xchrom]

4. it's just so sad marmar. nt

[DonCoquixote]

6. and Christie

is eager to slash the public services that made Jersey livable, but shovel money to this thing in the swamp.