Coast Mass Transit

Improved public transportation and more "walkable" communities are critical to solving some future problems for South Mississippi, but a light rail system is likely out of reach for many years, planners said Monday.

At a summit on smart growth, Kevin Coggin, executive director of the Coast Transit Authority, said plans call for a trolley system that would run along the beach. Itwould be easy, as the government already owns the beach, he said.

But a light rail system, an idea that came out of the post-Katrina charrettes, is still not cost-effective for a market the size of South Mississippi. It takes a high passenger load to support light rail and the Coast could still be about 30 years from that. But Coggin said officials are pursuing a bus that functions much like a light rail system, with a higher passenger load than a traditional bus.

The shame is that most residents are so addicted to their $ gallon to the mile SUVs that this will not be a reality in my lifetime. Sad.