Team owners: "We're just humble billionaires and we care so much about your state. The team is part of the community... Now subsidize our massively profitable business or we'll move the team."

I'll never understand why fans are die hard loyal to franchises that screw them at every possible opportunity. Insane ticket prices, seat license fees (which are somehow different than tickets?), insane concession prices, ads on everything- it hurts my brain.

But the stadium will bring so much economic benefit to the city! Well get at least 4 new fast food restaurants hiring only minimum wage workers, and a small boost in hotel revenue!

Transit won't bring any return on investment. Only poor people use transit and they don't have any money. And if someone who has a car does use transit that's hurting the economy! Think of the poor gas station owners and car dealers!

/S /S /S /S /S

The Cincinnati streetcar cost almost exactly $150m and it serves like 0.5% of the metro population. It runs a 3.6 mile loop, that's just over a 1.5 mile walk from one end to the other. I can walk it in 20 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment of the post. We need to invest in public transit. Where I live there are zero non-car options. But don't pretend you're building comprehensive public transit for $150m.

Okay but their friends don't profit off public transportation so checkmate liberal

I agree with the sentiment of this post, but these numbers are silly.

$150m would barely build a bus fleet transit system, nevermind the maintenance, operating, and personnel costs for the fleet (and completely forget about actual long term transit solutions like rail at that cost figure).

And $1b stadiums are outliers -- our city got into controversy over our stadium which costed around $250m. Not many municipalities are loaded enough to be getting into billion dollar capital expenditure decisions.

City: spends 100k out of $1B of transit budget on installing barriers for separated bike lanes.

My car-dependant city: tHeY sPeNt ToO mUcH oN bIkE lAnEs

People have no idea what things cost. Stadiums are cheap.

150 million dollars in a major city might be enough to open a new Walmart. Forget about a comprehensive transit system.

"Oh BTW, we gave the stadium to some wealthy dude, and he'll keep all of the money the stadium makes. Don't worry though, your tax dollars will pay for the upkeep.

Owners pockets only have an in door, no out door.

Your money becomes their money.

What city size can justify a $1 billion stadium and pull off comprehensive public transit for $150M?

Do you live in orbanistan (hungary) here we have 2 big stadiums 200m away from each other, and having 10000 person stadiuma in a village where 1800 people lives...

And, they act like stadiums are going to"drive economic" activity instead of creating dead zones in cities.
You know what would guarantee increased economic activity?
People being able to easily get to jobs and shops.

$150 mill for, say, light rail? LOL

Oh, someone lives in Québec city lmao!!

150M isn't even close to covering a functioning public transit system in any major US city. Expansions of the subway in New York routinely run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's just expansions. Even if you're looking at buses only, if you start with the assumption that each bus runs about $100k, that's a mere 1500 buses. The CTA in Chicago uses over 1800 buses--that only counts the ones currently in operation--so you're still short on building bus stops, bus lanes, any kind of light rail system, and so on. Oh, and lots of the bus lines in Chicago stop running after a certain time; I couldn't take the buses to go to any concerts, since nothing operated in my area between midnight and 5am.

Plus, you have ongoing operating expenses. Once a stadium is built, it's usually operated by someone other than the city.

I'm not saying I'm in favor of stadiums, but whoever costed this needs to consult with a civil engineer to come up with a more realistic figure for comprehensive public transit for major cities.

In London, Ontario, the city gave the transit commission $350M to spend on a new transit overhaul called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). It was the best plan possible for our city as our streets are too narrow to accommodate light rail and we sit on swampland at a low altitude above sea level which prevents a subway from being built. All the commission had to do was pour concrete for new bus pads and widen a couple of streets to add in a dedicated bus lane.

They blew half the money on consultations, construction fuck ups, and removal of fuck ups in 2022. They never finished BRT, bought themselves a brand new HQ at a cost of $120M, and now in 2023, they're saying they're $175M overbudget on BRT.

No one in our city is talking about this.

The problem in my town is the homeless people ruining the trails and parks. I feel bad for them but they will fill a park with tents and shit on the pavement