American Dream

Hey, I don't like to bash the idea of public transit, but the anti-auto people want everyone to sell their cars (or at least some of them) and become transit dependent. So far in the last few years we have seen New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis transit systems go on strike, to name a few, stranding numerous transit-dependent people.

Let's say Portland and other cities convince 10 percent of their suburban commuters to ride transit (unlikely, since the only urban transit system that has that kind of market share is New York's, and no where else in the U.S. has Manhattan's job concentrations), and stop building roads for auto drivers. Then the transit systems go on strike. If everyone has a spare car, they will jam the roads as badly as the people trying to escape from Hurricane Rita.

It makes more sense to build enough roads for the cars people are going to inevitably drive and design our transit systems to serve people who are truly transit dependent and people who would prefer transit and are willing to live in dense inner cities to enjoy that preference. That means lots of inner-city buses and a few suburban bus routes, not expensive rail transit lines that will run empty most of the day.