Sorry, I did come across rather hard-handed, and that was not my intent. I spent 25 years fielding questions from the public on transportation and municipal services. It seemed the biggest complaints were from the people who had moved out to the fringe of the urban area. They didn’t like the hog farm down the road. They said the winding country road they had to drive wasn’t safe. They didn’t have a park nearby. The roads were crowded. What they never seemed to understand was that their choices, and those of their neighbors, had created many of the very problems they were voicing.
By contrast, I rarely heard from the people in the core of the city. Maybe a pastor would advocate for something, or a local political leader might bring up a specific problem to me. I did an on-board survey for a local bus system and found 90 percent of the riders happy with the service. That service was hourly, weekdays only, and two dollars a ride. Several people said it was the only way they could get around on their own.
The truth is that our entire transportation system is and has always been subsidized. My concern is that we conservatives seem to be losing any understanding for people who are not as wealthy as we are, who may not have as much education, who may face addictions or mental illnesses not of their choosing, who are elderly or disabled, or for whatever other reason can’t compete in our car-based, go-go suburban life-style. As a Christian, I believe those people are my neighbors, too, and for that reason our transportation system should address the needs of everyone as economically and efficiently as possible.
I actually get sick of people moving to the country or a small-ish city (population 50k) like where I live, and then whining about hog farms and other smells of the country, deer crossing roads at inopportune times, the lack of parks, sidewalks, “decent” restaurants, etc. It’s as if they didn’t notice anything when they bought the house.