
How Light Rail Has Transformed Ethiopian Capital Addis Ababa - molteanu
http://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/addis-ababa-how-light-rail-has-changed-ethiopian-capital-a-1206837.html
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oblio
The bit about the government dislocating people without any regard for their
well-being is quite disturbing, I agree.

And if you're on the receiving end, it must definitely be horrible.

However, putting myself in the shoes of an Ethiopian administrator, I'm not
entirely convinced I'd make another decision. For a country as poor as
Ethiopia IMHO growth should be priority #1, #2 and #3, as long as I'm not
literally killing my compatriots.

Also, people should keep in mind the great African collapse of the 70's (a lot
of African countries borrowed money after their independence and they were
hard hit after 1973, because of the oil crisis). It it entirely possible that
the window for growth might be closing if another big crisis hits.

Once Ethiopia moves above the current poverty levels it can start
redistributing wealth. But for now it needs something resembling a middle
class if it is ever to escape poverty.

My 2 cents, from what I've seen and read about Ethiopia across the years.

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parvenu74
I didn't watch the video but I couldn't help but thinking there are going to
be people in Kansas City who might point to a city in Africa with 10x the
population density and far lower car ownership per capita as some kind of case
study for why we should expand our $150,000,000/mile light rail system.
Outside of super-dense cities with well-defined urban and business cores light
rail is a complete waste of money.

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peterwwillis
Kenosha, Wisconsin has a population of less than 100,000. They rolled out a
new street car line in 2000 at a cost of $3 million per mile.

[http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_ken_2005-01.htm](http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_ken_2005-01.htm)

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Agustus
And it points out that bus would have been only a quarter of cost.

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peterwwillis
Can the mods put [annoying video web app with almost no text] in the title?
[avwawant]?

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abrowne
I'm more annoyed by the anti-adblock thing that covers the page after ba few
seconds. I got it when using the default option to enable tracking protection
in a Firefox private window. It's in German despite this being an English
article (I do realize only a small fraction of the site is in English), and
while they show a guide to disabling common adblocking extensions, there's
nothing about Firefox's built-in feature.

