The 1970s one looks like Ron Paul

Half a century and $20 billion. Jesus.

One day progressives will figure out that the conservative claim that government is awful derives a lot of its appeal to voters from the fact that government actually is crazy awful at a lot of stuff, and then maybe this kind of thing will end.

Mass transit systems in other countries are built much cheaper, maintained much cheaper and are much more modern while either being government owned and/or government financed.

I haven't read the article yet, but the problem with this line is generally that there's never a comparison with private industry. Any assumption that large private organizations are not full of waste, laziness, graft, politics, etc is unfounded imo.

Maybe that's why voters in other countries support higher taxes and bigger government.

Yeah, that's a weird take. Most civilized govts do mass transit fairly well.

Vox did an article over stuff like this over New York building a new tunnels to expand out the subway system. Ironically countries with higher union density and more "big government" have had much lower costs per mile building tunnels than New York, so it's not a matter of big wasteful government vs lean and streamlined private organizations, it's a matter of the nexus between the political environment and work in New York. It does have to be fixed though if people want to push unionism/ big government out beyond where it is now otherwise they'll be an easy target for being seen as just a corrupt grab bag.

Maybe we could take some lessons from a country like Japan which seems to have massively better public transit systems than we do. I'm not sure what they're doing differently but it seems to me that if we invested time and energy into the problem we could have similar successes.

Very true.

But NYC metro is extremely confusing and I used to live there. I found the public transport systems in China to be easier to understand and I don't speak Chinese.

Uhhh guys I think I may have found the problem:

A Tokyo metro control room looks like this:

http://www.gettyimages.com/event/wor...re-id476413686

A NYC subway control room looks like this:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201.../#.WQiPQMa1uUk

Whatever the root problem, I'm sure it's all the liberals fault.

or somewhat well at least. the us seems to be almost uniquely horrible at it though.

but it probably cuts both ways. the us seems a good deal worse at it than other countries which creates more hostility. and the hostility also makes governing worse.

some of it is probably also that the us is a little isolate from the rest of the world. a lot of places could use some inspiration/openness to new ideas.

I wonder what % of Americans have even experienced a decent or nice public transit system. Many cities in the U.S. do not invest heavily in their systems and you can really tell. So many people here may have the experience that public transit is just going to suck, and you might as well accept that.

In New York does the mafia still take a big cut of everything?

If making silly demands that won't get met actually drives people away, you should introduce me to President Clinton.

Most US cities are built around the car and aren't ideal for public transportation.

US cities conducive to public transportation largely have systems in place already though those do need to be updated and upkept as the quality is pretty far behind the rest of the world.

I am confident there are sincere and good criticisms of the intersection between wasteful, inefficient and corrupt public spending and public mass transit but I am equally confident some 80-90% of the populist backlash (aka "conservative claims the government is awful") is tied up entirely around the fact that right-wingers know blacks, browns, poors and other undesirables use public transportation and makes them very mobile, and they hate that. And that's at the core of most of the claims and public support for them.

We will never get whatever the public transportation equivalent of a "Donald Trump is now the GOP nominee" moment that proved correct the thesis tons of right-wingers who have formerly been preening about small government and efficient spending are actually just engaged in a moral cover for racist white backlash grievance politics. So I suppose this will have to remain but a theory. But I am absolutely confident a vast majority of right-wing criticisms of public transportation are simply reflexive lizard brain reactions about blacks-on-the-move.

Related, someone less lazy than I am should post research into the history behind public appetite for public mass transit spending and The Great Migration and black urbanization starting in the 1920s/1930s.

Related:

Yes, also partly (not wholly, but partly) a reaction to black migration into cities and white flight out of them.

tl;dr summary: the conservative claim that government and specifically public transportation is awful derives a lot of its appeal to voters from the fact that a lot of voters simply ****ing hate black people and want them locked into ghettos or on plantations or somewhere far away from them

The lingering effects of NYC racist city planning

LOL awval, who allegedly has a Ph.D., apparently has never heard of Karl Marx.

WTF is wrong with people? Not just the parents but the people who made this a very popular youtube channel?

And the kicker:

Pff, thats nothing, 90% of Chinese parents tell their kids they picked them up from a dumpster.

Solid rant against monopolistic companies: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...erything-sucks

Fake news!