Transit fights are usually a rich vs. poor issue with a streak of racism running through the middle, with different arguments used by the left and right as repr

Transit fights are usually a rich vs. poor issue with a streak of racism running through the middle, with different arguments used by the left and right as representatives of the rich, while the poor are largely uncourted(except as a minority group, which I will illustrate). In all cases the right will claim that roads and car ownership and home ownership foster independence and the solution is to build another highway to a far-flung suburb and to tear down the city. The arguments from the left are more interesting. The richest neighborhoods - in the suburbs - don't want transit. An unreliable once-an-hour bus is seen as a handout for the poors, an impractical feel-good project that cannot earn its way. A large transit development that aligns with a real neighborhood would upset the balance by making the surrounding area denser and busier. This is the position that the the western San Francisco neighborhoods have been in for the past generation - a bit too wealthy and a bit too suburban to break away from car usage, even as they are far denser than most suburbs. Many of the outlying BART stops, similarly, are large parking lots, a way of sealing in car dependence and transit as a last resort for commuters, rather than a benefit that makes the stop a destination. But then the reverse applies once you're in central cities and you're dealing with luxury condo residents: Anything less than a world-class rail system is deemed unsatisfactory, but the rails should, of course, go from one wealthy neighborhood to another. Getting the poor into the rapid system equates to more "criminals" or "thugs", and so you would get support for saturation coverage of an area that is already well-served, or a neighborhood that has undergone massive gentrification, but not underserved poor areas. This sort of thing contributes to transit system balkanization - a bad system for the poor, and a good one for the rich. In both density situations, minority political groups will get showcase wins if they can lock in by-the-doorstep bus coverage of their constituents that is too slow and indirect to be truly useful. This is something that SF and much of the East Bay has avoided, but maybe not for the right reasons. The areas that were historically lower-income got access to BART, but are simultaneously now the biggest targets for gentrification. They were intended to be handout zones, and then the rise of real estate prices ultimately flipped that idea upside down and turned BART into a gentrifying mechanism. And now we are in the situation where the system has to be developed for a plurality, rather than a handout - which is probably a good thing.