Hearing Beyond the Door

Sometimes you never want to face up to someone’s argument when you are on the opposite side of the door of an issue when it’s full of bullshit speculation. At least that’s how I am feeling right now. I do not want to put up with someone trying to argue for an outlandish plane system in order to save Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Petersburg and at the same time the guy keeps sending out his opinions to me (his desires) as facts. His bending of the facts to give people the idea that they very much should support his effort.

He wants to piggy-back a space-age-plane-transit idea on the Florida amendment for High Speed Rail. An amendment that is already neglected, maligned and considered a waste due to lack of support from the government.

He’s a pilot that doesn’t want his airport (personal airport) in downtown St. Petersburg closed. He wants political support to save the airport… Yet the airport isn’t anything grand. In fact I learned to detest it when I went to the Tall Ships festival last year (and got buzzed over and over again by private planes)….

The city of St. Petersburg is losing tons of money with this airport and if they need / want to close it – so be it.

Yet my new “friend” wants not only the airport to stay open but a new “Mega Airport” to open in Florida to FURTHER support air transit.

Right…

In a state that’s already bowed to too much development and has not centralized it’s cities, air transit and complex air plans are only going to further encourage sprawl by letting distant places seem closer. That’s the last thing I want. I’d like to see city centers become just that with RAIL connections to the suburbs. Not distant suburbs several dozen-to-hundred miles away get connected by a plane-taxi like service.

It’s groovy, it’s space age, it’s a plan that everyone would have wanted for the 2000’s to be — easy travel by air — but it’s not plausible. Not now. Not in this state. Not in this ms-developed county.