Still, it leaves a lot to be desired. Texas has terrible sprawl, and so getting buses/ trains that really service all neighborhoods will take a long time. The whole idea of living close to where you work is still very foreign and exotic to people here…but new apartments are being built in the local downtowns.

One of the big problems is that one of the largest suburbs, Arlington, refuses to build any mass transit; in fact, it’s the largest town in the US without mass transit. And the clogged highways show it. There’s a lot of residual racism in this; people without cars are (in Texas) generally poor and nonwhite; not having transit means they are less likely to move into your area.

Come to Denver, where the electorate has voted to raise sales taxes to fund a massive expansion of light-rail!

http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/main_1

Marvel at the newly opened extension which runs for 20-odd miles into the south-east suburbs!

http://www.rockymountainnews.c…..06,00.html

Shame nobody’s going to read this.

In the 70s I lived in Oakland CA where (20 years earlier) you could ride trolleys from San Jose to the Sacramento River and beyond.

The auto industry was behind the original destruction of railed mass transit (above). These days, mass transit is seen as socialism (as in “I own a Beamer and a Caddie, why should I pay for someone else to get around?”). Which explains why in the 80s, Dallas’s bus system ran from poor neighborhoods to rich neighborhoods (deliver the maids) and nowhere else.

100% true, a deliberate and successful campaign.” (Brendan at 44 with links).

PBS did a special investigative documentary on this several years ago. And the kicker was that the companies responsible for destroying our nation’s post-WWII mass transit system were fined $5,000 each with the guilty CEOs each fined a dollar, following congressional investigations into what they had been doing. Whoopee. Compared to the obscene profits they expected to get from destroying mass transit, these fines in themselves were obscene.

Face it. Patriotic and loyal U.S. citizens have to be on watch each generation for these crooked conservative businessmen and politicians, whose ultimate fealty is to money, money, money and not necessarily the best interests of our country and all American citizens.

Hey, just look at the crooked Bush administration for a prime example. They don’t give a damn for our democracy, and strangely enough have done everything they can to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Subverting our Constitution. Subverting our nation’s fiscal health. Subverting our basic freedoms. And all in pursuit of short-term ravenous greed and to hell with the rest of us, including many of their fellow Republicans.

This is why what certain corrupt post-WWII businessmen did is so important to learn about, because it is symptomatic of how the nefarious schemes by certain greedy individuals can adversely affect all the rest of us, whether 55 years ago involving the destruction of mass transit or what the Bush cabal is doing today.

I, too, am a SEPTA rider, and have a serious love-hate relationship with the service, the conductors, etc. (I ride the R-3 line and live too close in to be able to ride any of the express trains with the better equipment.)

Still, I did leave work a bit earlier than usual on Friday, in order to catch an earlier train home (regional rail), before the rush-hour madness could set in and delay the trains, too. And the train I caught (4:42) was on time.

From what I’ve heard… “back in the day” everyone used to ride SEPTA, especially the trolleys that ran through nearly every neighborhood. My guess is that as the middle-class fled the city for the suburbs, the pressure to keep the system up to snuff lessened.

My biggest complaint: the conversion of so many lines to diesel buses, which are miserable if you’re behind them, and can be just as miserable if you’re on one, and the air filtration is not working well, or if there is one of those loud humming noises that can really give you a head-ache, especially combined with diesel fumes.

And yet, I was able to attend a funeral on Thursday in another part of the city, with an easy transfer at 30th street to the R8 line, and then return to work in University City, without having to worry about where to park a car. A real pain, especially mid-day, if you don’t have a paid monthly spot.

Regarding election strategies around these issues, it’s certainly true that Dingell, and to maybe a less obvious or long-standing degree many other members of the Michigan delegation have put up roadblocks(!) to reform—but it ought to be just as clear by now that Michigan is going to have to move in some other directions on its economic base and its own infrastructure. Those facts might make it easier to organize voters, at least within a few electoral cycles if not quite this one yet.

Early in the Reagan years, Free Market economists proposed many schemes to bring market discipline to government operations. Some were good, some were bad but showed an active mind seeking the limits of a new paradigm. Their proposal here was Transit Stamps. Did they really think that a project with such a name will get middle class commuters to reevaluate their need to drive to work against society’s need for energy conservation and independence, pollution control and sprawl reduction? Either they see transit users as losers or they put the oil industry’s fortune ahead of the country’s.

I lived in an outlying neighborhood of Philadelphia (Chestnut Hill, for the locals, on the cheap side of the trolley tracks) for 18 years, during which I owned a car for about 10 hours (brought it home and parked it at 9 p.m., by 7 a.m. it had been stolen – all too true story). I commuted to work in Center City on one of two available regional rail lines, and did all local travel by rail, very occasionally by bus, and on my own two little feet.

These days I live in central Illinois, where I occasionally find myself talking to college classes and community groups about transportation issues. I tell them about my carless 18 years, and they look at me in disbelief mixed with suspicion. The notion that transit can be a matter of choice is a really tough sell here, despite the fact the there are pretty good small-city transit systems all over this region.

Locally, auto ownership is higher than 90% of households, 3-car garages are standard on new houses, and most parking is free, which is to say subsidized. It’s going to take a serious energy shock to turn attitudes in this neck of the woods.