cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/71474217
Unlike transit systems in other world-class cities that receive significant government funding, Bart has generated 60%-70% of its operating revenue through passenger fares, making it uniquely self-sustaining – and uniquely exposed to the low ridership during the pandemic and the Bay Area’s nation-leading shift to remote and hybrid work.
Witness the Bay Area consume itself with manufactured crisises that are products of the blindspots in the Bay Area mentality believing it is unquestionably the future. Witness what a future of Gavin Newsom types controlling things leads to.
Are you really going to keep the title as one of the great tech centers of the world without even a functioning mass transit system?
I share this in “collapse of the old society” because I think this crisis captures the collapse going on in US culture so perfectly, the idea that the Bay Area cannot afford to invest in mass transit is an absurd contortion of the reality that the Bay Area must invest in mass transit to grow and sustain itself.
In a sick collapsing society the choice for survival has become “rationalized” as the impossible choice that must be passed over in favor of austerity and ideologically driven decay and collapse.
Imagine if drivers had to pay their fair share for roads.
Free market capitalism is expressly reserved for industries capitalism wants to destroy.
In theory this does happen from land, income, and sales taxes. Also through vehicle registration and gas taxes.
But I agree with your sentiment, the average driver likely pays far less for daily access than the average train rider.
The point being that everyone pays (the same amount) for the roads, whether you personally use them or not, but the people who use public transport pay extra to do so.
Well, we can’t tax the Job Creators now can we? CAPITALISM, praise Jesus.
Why would they need mass transit? That is for the poors.
Sf will be a utopian tech dream once they build all the service bots and can then finally be free of the shackles that bind them to dirty not-rich people.
New robots to make the food and coffee, clean up, drive them home after they drink expensive liquor, fix the broken stuff, etc.
Soon all of the rich douchebags can just descend on the city and it will be all for them!
Then maybe we can drop a fat bomb on it.
SFO is bullshit, I hope it burns. I don’t think I’ve been to a more unlikable city. Assy people, shitty weather, impossible traffic, overpriced everything, piss-soaked sidewalks, crimey, just wtf. How is there so much money and “brilliance” here and its such a shithole? The only good thing about it is that I don’t have to go there anymore for work.