This is intended as a brief summary of Mass Transit, Where are you?, for sending as a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper as this issue has come up in a bigger way locally.
On the recently discussed plan to reroute I-64 out of downtown Louisville, it is great to hear someone thinking about something radical. The problem is that we are discussing the wrong radical plan. I-64 is not the cause of most of our Spaghetti Junction congestion. I-64 is not our most traveled downtown interstate. I-64 is not the reason for the proposed downtown bridge. If we want to talk about a radical plan to reroute an interstate, let's discuss rerouting I-65 out of central Louisville and into the west or east end! This isn't even a new radical plan, this is the plan suggested by Kentucky's own Interstate Commissioner in the 50s and 60s, where he said his biggest mistake was the current route of I-65 and even predicted this mess we find ourselves in.
Here's a less radical plan: Anyone remember the T2 project TARC was working on? A good mass transit system, whether light rail, monorail, or subway, could help alleviate most of the intra-city traffic that currently piggy-backs on I-65 (including Airport, University, Convention Center, and Churchill Downs traffic) and remove congestion from I-65. Perhaps we should reallocate bridge money back into this project that was originally meant to be completed by 2007, but cancelled due to lack of funds.