Time for The Who framed Roger rabbit reboot, they’re trying to kill the red car all over again.
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In an area of such incredible wealth, they first cut funding for the most needing it.
Sounds like the people of the Bay Area need to dunk a lot of Neoliberal politicians in the bay. They can join their worthless hero Milton Friedman out there.
Makes sense, its not like there's any money in the area. Sometimes it's just impossible to pay for things....................
Because they just can't resist more traffic? People commute from across the Bay and shit, this would be a disaster I think.
The chosen headline here and OP's summary are kinda counter productive and misleading. There are two ballot measures on the ballot to fix funding. The cuts will probably happen if they don't pass. But the way this post is written implies that the cuts will happen and there is nothing that can be done about it. Which is kinda dangerous during an election. Unsurprisingly the comments section mirrors the post.
Thank you for the clarification. I hate the misleading stuff, hard bias and sometimes outright disinformation you find online. Sadly also here.
The article itself makes it much clearer that this is a vote and that the outcome is uncertain. Hence an article to show what is actually at stake.
stop fixing roads and divert the funds here
The area’s transit funding crisis was exacerbated by ridership that plunged at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and remains too low to fill the coffers of BART
knew it. COVID dropped ridership and it never fully recovered. the same thing happened where I am, they've been cutting bus and light rail lines and reducing schedules for the last few years due to low ridership. I'm part of it, pre-covid I used light rail often, but now I work remote and moved as well and hardly ride public transit now.
Shame it’s sales tax but people should pass it.
Ideally would prefer cap gains tax at the state level get used towards maintaining public transit like this.
It's interesting to see the implications of such drastic cuts to public transit in San Francisco. While I understand budget constraints, I'm concerned about how this may disproportionately affect lower-income communities who rely on these services. Have you thought about how other cities might adapt their models instead? street view
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.
Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Can we gut the billionaires instead?
"Disabled and low-income residents’ mobility is on the line."
And that's what is wrong with Public Transportation in the US. No, not that disabled and low-income residnets can and do use it. That it is first of all seen as such, sold as such and in parts almost exclusively by those groups and only because they really have to in many cases.
We can fix this if public transit users start gutting Billionaire capitalists.
Voters in the San Francisco Bay Area are split on a measure to rescue local transit. Disabled and low-income residents’ mobility is on the line.
Be thankful for two hours in crushing, soul destroying traffic, Peons! It's making your Job Creators more successful! They're just better than you.
Here's the deal. Public transit in Bay Area got slammed hard during COVID and ran huge deficits. Raising fares is a regressive tax on people who can least afford it. But having good transit means fewer cars in traffic-logged roads. Plus, easy ways to get to popular venues like sports stadiums and San Francisco. It benefits everyone directly and indirectly.
A lot of people can't afford to live in city cores like SF, Oakland, and San Jose. So public transit is the only way they can get to work from affordable, outlying suburbs. Local transport agencies have done a good job scaring the crap out of people, by announcing which stops and lines will have to be shut down if this proposition doesn't pass. Entire cities will turn into unreachable islands if they shut down those lines.
Given all this, any sensible person would support this. But there are absolute, self-centered idiots out there who are opposed, because it will raise muh taxes.
Can't believe this is even questionably close. If it doesn't pass, I will not feel sorry one bit for those suburban voters crying that their property values just tanked and their commutes doubled.
Also, this has nothing to do with billionaires. Really wish MJ wouldn't resort to this clickbaity shit.
EXCUUUUSE ME! This has everything to do with Billionaires! I was a kid in Concord touring the prototype BART cars before they had even built the first mile in the late ‘60s. And I was in Law school when Ronald RayGun’s “ Tax Simplification” act doubled the number of pages of the 1954 Tax Code it replaced. It’s always about The Billionaires and Trillionaire Wannabes! Capitalism only successfully exists when well regulated and taxed to support the infrastructure that allows it to exist. I always dreamed of an oceanside clifftop home North of Bodega Bay - settled for a hilltop 130 miles inland. But still had faith in our Country’s promise of the ideals of The New Deal. We have failed to continue the middle class progression of the post WWII economy.
Fascists play a looooooooooooong game. They were defeated in past Wars, but never expunged. And they have infiltrated and assaulted common society for Centuries.
I thought the French decapitated enough of them to teach them all a lesson.
But no. They continually crawl forward, increasing the population of uneducated to fall in line with their Victimhood propaganda.
So, yeah. It’s about Billionaires!
they prevent housing via nimbyism on several occasions in the bay, they solely are responsible. public transports just doesnt go far enough outside of the cities to make it useful.
they always word the props in a wierd to trick you into either vote against or for a bad measure.
SF transit already been scaled back in some areas. they will word in it way to make seem like you support the funding , but actually its defunding it.
plus public transport is lacking for tech biotech campuses in the bayarea to begin with, you are expected to commute excessively by car only limiting peoples options for jobs. its usually horrendous in the morning if you trying to get to any of the bridges, like bay bridges.
When Judge Doom tried this shit he got run over with a steamroller and washed away with Dip.
What public transportation? If you are not in NYC, Boston, DC, or Chicago there is basically no public transportation.
You are correct except you have ignored by far and away the most common form of mass transit in the US which are bus systems.
Bus systems are the only hope for the US as it stands for mass transit in the medium term, we must treat them as the focus of transit systems not a detail or sidething to compliment other forms of transit.
For example where I live in the US has a totally free bus system.
Yeah buses are the last remaining vestigial public transportation system outside of those major cities. There’s also a few cities that have a light rail system that is functional, provided you live close enough to a light rail stop and your destination is also near enough of light rail stop.
When I was in Denver, I decided to do a thought experiment and see if I could take the bus from where I lived to where I worked. A 20 minute drive with zero traffic is a one hour plus commute with traffic.
If I were to take the bus it would be 80+ stops, four bus transfers, and 2x 25 minute walks through private property and peoples backyards on either side of that bus trip. If I missed one single bus transfer the next bus didn’t come for at least another hour.
Needless to say, using the bus is not a viable way to reliably get to work. So while you can argue that there are buses, and that they do run, it’s not really a realistic public transportation system unless you have no other choice.
Let’s say I want to go to the grocery store. I would need to walk 20 - 25 minutes just to get to the bus stop, Wait 15 minutes to an hour for the bus to arrive, ride a bunch of stops Impossibly transferred to another bus, and finally walk from the bus stop to wherever the store is which could be another 20 - 25 minute walk in places where there are not sidewalks or on the edge of a 4-6 lane Strode. And after I’ve done my shopping I now have to carry all my stuff on the same return trip.
So just to get to the store I’m gonna walk 40 to 50 minutes, ride the bus for an hour, walk through infrastructure not designed for pedestrians, and then carry all my stuff back the same way. Total trip time is anywhere between two and four hours just to go to the store do some shopping and come back.
That’s not really functional public transportation. If you’re an elderly person and you’re 55/60 or older, taking the bus is not really a viable option. fuck you might get a heat stroke while waiting for the goddamn bus.
Well yes but this is by design, bus systems don't have to be shitty the US just insists on it.
Yeah well buses are for poor people. So nobody gives a shit about buses or their infrastructure.
If we really wanted buses to be a dominant public transportation system then there would be smaller local buses going on regular loops from housing complexes to stores or to other forms of infrastructure. We would design our housing to be even in a suburban area serviced by buses and shopping centers and whatever else you needed but instead of forcing everyone to buy a car and telling them it’s convenient.
Suburban sprawl car infrastructure bus is not really compatible with public transportation. Until we start building more dense housing and planning public transportation utilities etc. with all of that in mind it’s not going to change.
You also have the additional issue of existing infrastructure and converting that over to something that would work with any type of public transportation. And we all know none of that shits gonna change. If you want a good example of that look at all the small towns that are connected to Boston via the T, and how the residents and the small towns refused to allow the building of dense housing and are battling it out with the transportation Authority who refuses to upgrade their service or to keep their service going to the town unless there is more dense housing.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing about this for a while now.
I grew up in the Bay Area. I honestly have no interest in going back there permanently, and I don’t see myself changing my mind:
- transit is awful
- traffic is awful
- cost of living is awful
- real estate prices are awful
- modern tech culture in Silicon Valley is, imo, absolutely cancerous these days. SO MUCH KOOL AID DRINKING.
- annual fires because PG&E is categorically fucking useless and doesn’t maintain anything
- not enough seasons (I like actually having 4 seasons of weather)
Boston is where it’s at, imo.
Edit: forgot a big one - the government, while very reliably Democratic, is beset by the fact that a shitload of the state politicians are MASSIVE corporatists. The tropes about CA being a “liberal bastion” (in American parlance - as opposed to conservative) are hugely overstated these days.

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