>I've lived in this state my entire life, and it utterly sucks that working class citizens are getting priced out of the area; we're either forced to live in cramped, overpriced apartments, or have at least 3 to 4 different incomes to help afford all of the expenses of owning your own home, and neither of those is conducive to what the "American Dream," is supposed to be.

I can see only two other options.. make the state undesirable so people leave or embrace sprawl into towns that are underbuilt.

>This would allow people currently living in the city to stay in the city that they enjoy

Although many might appreciate a sharp rise in the value of their home due to scarcity.

If you're not building the super large buildings, the tax rate may need to go up to build or expand the schools, fire depts, police, etc.

Your opinion is that our cities and towns should be building vertical, high-density housing boxes. Boston has that. Yet you're saying it's even worse there? How can that be? Doesn't it stand to reason that doing the same thing here will produce the same result?

This is that other meme about insanity, doing the same thing repeatedly yet expecting different results each time.

>To really make a dent, these cities and towns need be building vertical, high density, multi-story/multi-family housing.

Why not cede the southern half of the state to Boston then? Boston has housing like that, many people that can't afford it or don't want it move here. Time for them to uproot again?

Bonus points for it needing a plunger even though there's never a plunger in the room. Then the impatient continue to use it anyway.

Not sure the last time I saw a row of urinals that didn't have dividers between them. What are you doing, dropping your pants instead of using the fly?

https://www.reddit.com/r/newhampshire/comments/10w3xgc/dover_builds_tiny_home_neighborhood/

It costs time and money to keep it going. If you can't make your case, it gets set aside. Much like this discussion here is about to.

There's been 50+ years of debate. How much more do you want?

Like I said, there's no consensus. There's been countless studies and pitches over the years. None of them were compelling enough to rally enough support to get it approved.

The government shouldn't discuss topics endlessly. There are other topics that are not getting the attention they deserve by doing so. If a consensus can't be reached, it should be shelved for a while and everyone should move on. Revisit it at a later date after the interested parties have had time to come up with a more compelling pitch. I don't see an issue with that. A lot of people are in favor, a lot of against. There's no consensus.

I don't see the use in stopping at the Pheasant. Malls are dead. Amazon has taken over. The only reason to put a stop there would be to service the residential units that will eventually replace a lot of the retail sprawl that exists in that area. That's a stop that should probably only occur outside of commute hours.

What's the second stop in south Nashua? The Pheasant is south Nashua.

Fifth and sixth stops should probably be combined. That's way too many stops for a very long rail service. The longer it takes to get from one end to the other, the less useful it is. Commuters won't use something that takes significantly longer than if they just drove.

That's been part of the problem. Other towns along the line also want in, but there's a tipping point where there are so many stops that you can't actually get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. The strongest proposal, IMO, was Manchester, Nashua, Lowell, North Station. Four stops. It's short enough to beat a commuter's drive time, includes the most important cities.

It's not a tactic to kill debate, it's a tactic to stop the state and the cities of Nashua and Manchester from dumping money into something that has failed to get off the ground in the ~50+ years that it's been under discussion. How much longer would you like to drag this out for? There's no use in keeping a project in the discussion phase for that long. It's either viable or it's not.

Would you be happier if this bill proposed shelving the project for a decade and then calling for it to be returned to the table for discussion then to see if conditions have changed enough to warrant further discussion?

I've watched it play out and added my $0.02 in some of the public feedback over the decades that this has been under discussion. That's pretty far from an automatic red light.

That's why there's a proposal to kill the thing. It's dragged on long enough. We need to either build it, or end it. We're wasting time and money letting this proposal drag on forever.

>You realize people can use it come into the state right?

Ever use the Lowell line? The trains fill up in the morning heading into Boston. They fill up in the evening heading back from Boston. The trains tend to be sparsely populated outside of that. There's not much reason to think that NH would see anything different.

You might get some traffic to MHT depending on how difficult it is to get from the train to the airport. But what else is going to draw people in?

It goes back further than that, the trial run in the 80s didn't materialize from nothing. That's how long this project has been under discussion, and how long the taxpayers have been paying for studies and for debates and so on. I'd love to see the actual dollar amount that's already been spent without any actual construction being done, or without any concrete plans materializing. That's why this bill is happening, people want to put a cork in this thing before we spend another half century paying for more studies.

No. Not every project is worthy of funding. What kind of argument is that? If someone doesn't see a need for commuter rail, that doesn't make them any less of a "patriot" than someone that does see a need. That's such a disgusting way of debating a topic. Some people want commuter rail, they need to make a compelling argument to convince enough of the voters and their representatives to push the project through. That hasn't happened so far. Expensive projects like this should never get an automatic green light.

You made a sweeping statement that patriots and "true Americans" love paying taxes. That's like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. You might love it, plenty of people don't. There are whole businesses devoted to helping people pay the least amount of taxes possible. Does that make them less patriotic or less of an American? That's a slippery slope. If you're not making six figures, you're practically a terrorist?

>You're just blindly giving money to government without participating in the process.

Make assumptions much?

The funny thing is that some of them will inevitably figure it out over time and become the same people they see today as obstructionists. The cycle of life.

No sane person "loves" paying taxes. It goes to a finding a corrupt system that gets more corrupt the further you get from where you live. By the time it reaches DC, there's very little chance that any of the money you paid goes to anything that benefits you or your community.

MA is much more liberal than NH, and they have the option to pay a higher tax rate if they want to. Hardly anyone ever does. That's how much they love paying taxes.

It's a nice paradox. People move here because the higher density cities they work in aren't good to live in. But then they want the same services here so that our cities can grow to become the same thing they left because it was unlivable. It's really twisted.

>There has been exactly like two studies on this thing, and they just kill the last one before it was even complete.

There have been continuous studies all the way back to the trial run in the 80's.

> The rail link will be profitable once we cut the dead weight by banning cars.

Not happening in our lifetimes. The rail service serves a very narrow corridor. It's not going to replace private vehicle use in any significant way. You can add in bus lines to service the stations, but that's making a train trip that's already too long even longer. And it's still a fairly narrow service corridor.

>Patriots and true Americans love to pay taxes

Well there's some 100% grade A bullshit.

Yes, all the studies are the last ones to be made. That's before the next additional study is launched. You're naïve if you can't see that. Obstructionism is part of our system. You admit things never get off the ground, so it sounds like you agree with me.

Saying there are "indirect benefits" isn't a convincing argument. It will be a money pit, and will only be used by a small number of people that already have a way of commuting.

You're using stops in Manchester as a plural, as in multiple stops? That's even worse. Each additional stop makes it that much longer to get from NH to Boston. Even just the earlier proposals of one station in Manchester, one in Nashua, one stop in Lowell, and then Boston was enough to make a rather long total commute. That further reduces the usability of the service.