The Core of Transit

Judging from the local transit blogs, Seattle has developed a new generation of transit fans. This mentally fresh generation thinks all ideas are created equal and deserve to be examined on their merits. As for paying for transit, however, the thinking is quite the reverse, and here they try to milk some scheme from existing taxes and revenues.

Rail transit, however, is and will be a socialist enterprise. There are a number of reasons for this, to be explored in a future post, but the bottom line is plain- no business as usual.

Fortuitously, this is a time when we have learned we cannot continue business as usual in any case. The question is not whether we will change ourselves, but how we will change ourselves.

Seen as a social asset, transit looks much different from how it appears as a collection of kludges and wild guesses by technocrats with little or no actual historical knowledge. And that's a good thing.