This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Stefan Sharkansky derides the mortgage analogy:
The analogy to a home mortgage is absurd. Owning a home is a voluntary proposition and you can sell the home when you choose to. With the Sound Transit boondoggle, many of the people who vote for it won’t be paying for it and vice versa. And if it doesn’t suit our needs? Then it’s a moneypit, from which there’s no escape.
Mr. Sharkansky seems to take the analogy too far. Of course financing a light rail system is not at all like owning a home. The point of the analogy is simply to put the numbers in perspective. Most all major purchases in life –from trains to cars to houses to big-screen TVs — require some form of credit. But rarely do we include the finance charges when we talk about the overall costs.
Sound Politics being a conservative blog, the conservative case for transit is worth repeating in this context.