DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
oh i agree. time and time again in Atlanta I saw as the expansion of the local public train system was voted down, so that the affluent suburbs would not be accessible to "urban elements" they said indicated crime, poverty, etc. they did not want homeless people to take the trains to the suburbs. they did not want to spend money on the inner city poor & lower class. this is one of the reasons Atlanta does not have a public train you can take to Macon, Athens or Savannah (can you imagine how amazing that would be?). they don't want to spend money on poor rural counties either. they don't like spending money to help poor people (cars are expensive luxuries most in the global 1% don't even think about), they want to hoard it in the cities instead.
there is a lot of straight up neoliberal greed driving these systems. they want to keep the money in their own districts and counties, focusing it on the profit drivers, the cities, the financial centers, while ignoring rural areas. spending it on rail would mean you would have to spend money in rural areas and a lot of people in the bigger cities in the US look down on the rural areas and say "fuck those poor people too". so the money goes to highways and interstate expansions. additional lanes and toll roads, so that city dwellers can drive fast on the highway to their job. personally i am and have always been in favor of public transportation. i haven't owned a car in 10 years and use it constantly myself. the US would be a far better place to live and get around (far better for the climate as well) if we seriously pursued more public transit systems.
Living in Atlanta, this is so true. I love you, man!