When I used to live in the Bay Area and near a BART station I would take the train plenty of places outside of SF. Downtown Berkeley, downtown Oakland, Oakland Coliseum, El Cerrito, Concord, and the list goes on. It was a convenient and fast way to get around. The fact that it trains didn’t run late was bullshit, though. If I was going out late I’d have no choice but to drive.
I guess I’m just an outlier, though.
from psychoderelict towards the end
""" Scene 30: Ray addresses the audience
RAY: “Gridlife” was a vision, a real vision. Not a fiction, not a fairy tale, a glimpse of the future. Today, twenty years later, the apocalypse it foresaw is nearer. But, whatever you read in the newspapers, we still don’t have any alternative reality. It’s all games now: all lies and deceit. What happened to the truth? What happened to the dream? What happened to all that lovely hippy shit? “”""
Because I’ve seen enough people with access to half a resource have zero fucks to give about anyone else using it. BART, which originally was to be a loop around the Bay; water, where historically the West has had all sorts of issues. Hell, I lived in Hayward in Caltrans housing. Caltrans had bought up the land preparing to make a road, but the city on the other side wouldn’t agree, so they rented out the houses for 20 years.
Looks to me like you either have NIMBY’s or the Feds. I’ll take the Feds - or whichever political entity surrounds the resource.
Poorer than whom? Have you ever been on the BART? I believe you are making uninformed generalizations that are counterproductive to communication. Maybe ask some questions.
[quote=“enso, post:56, topic:75240”]
Why should DC or some East Coasters have any say on California water issues? [/quote]
You say this like it’s a proposal, rather than the status quo.
At the very least, the Rio Grande is one good reason.
You’re not doing a particularly good job of that. Sounds more like an agenda looking for a place to pretend it is playing out, friend.
I’m pretty sure the Rio Grande isn’t on the East Coast. Let East Coast people worry about their own problems. I long for the day California becomes a true republic.
Untold millions of commuters in every major city across the country use taxpayer-funded highways to get to work every day, including those who drive in the S.F. Bay Area. So why should all those drivers get the benefit of State and Federal subsidies to enable their commute but not people who commute by rail?
California already pays considerably more in Federal taxes than it gets back in Federal spending. It’s the rest of the USA that is leeching off California, not the other way around.
My dear man, I do say, that is positively preposterous hogwash! Only pleebs drive Teslas. Anyone who is anyone has their Tesla drive for them.
This has been tried and shown to work:
As someone living under a regional municipal government I can vouch for the fact that this concept really needs to be implemented nationally!
EDIT: Not to mention that it also works very effectively to tie together transit, despite the fact it doesn’t actually operate the actual transit systems:
[Metro] Serves as the metropolitan planning organization for the area, responsible for the planning of the region’s transportation system. It is a separate organization from TriMet, which operates most of the region’s buses and the MAX Light Rail system.
Excellent, thanks for the link.
Because the computer I’m typing this on, the coffee I’m drinking while sitting here, the pot roast that I just put in the slow cooker, and the slow cooker itself all got to me on those interstate highways. I drive on a taxpayer funded highway every weekday to get to work. Don’t begrudge a dime of what I spend in taxes on those.
Now, the SF metro area is welcome to build as much rail as it wants, taxpayer funded, by its own taxpayers. When they build a link that I can use where I live, they are welcome to some of my money to pay for it.
I may never drive on the taxpayer-funded roads YOU use to get to work, but I don’t begrudge a dime I spend on taxes go toward our collective transportation infrastructure. Hell, Hawaii and Puerto Rico have “interstate” highways and I’m pretty sure the goods at my local supermarket didn’t need to travel across those.
I still don’t see the logic in "I’ll gladly subsidize the people who commute around the greater S.F. Bay Area on state and interstate highways but supporting a rail system that accomplishes the same thing more efficiently is an unfair way to spend tax dollars."
Um, well I guess the denizens of Hayward need to get to the city to sell their wares, but I’m also pretty sure that weed can be shipped. Hayward can probably float it without BART.
Agreed though I’d hope those doing the agricultural work and whose families are shouldering the disproportionate health and environmental harms of corporate agricultural production would be substituted for the comparatively few entities holding title to the land.
Agreed. And the obvious constitutional mechanism is to tax and then spend to hire the work done.
We’ve had a political party since the days BART was built that can’t acknowledge or accept reality. The rich kids and their staff are allergic to real work.
Sure, but what percentage of that rides the MARTA? Probably not nearly as many of us as should be riding it… that being said, it’s not nearly as comprehensive as the BART (or the Chicago, DC, or NYC subways) and it doesn’t go out into the suburbs very much at all.
YASSS!!! But also, sneezy!
This what the political class, both locally and nationally, have stopped doing in recent years. They focus on social issues (especially republicans, but dems do it too) instead of looking at infrastructure funding and repair. It’s insane that we keep re-electing these assholes again, as if it’s going to change anything.
While I think I agree that we out east probably shouldn’t have a say, isn’t it true that water issues can be an interstate issue, not just a statewide or local one? That, constitutionally speaking, makes it a federal issue, as it crosses state lines. In fact, we’re having a water issue here between Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, and I think the federal government has been involved in trying to work out the issue…
I didn’t read that as any kind of dig at Atlanta, merely a way of putting the impressive number of people BART serves into perspective. It’s like saying “the number of Americans who die of tobacco-related illness each year is approximately the same as the population of Cleveland.”
