3 ms·

I don’t completely follow, this is people living in a Portland suburb lobbying against getting a public transport connection? How is less infrastructure better?

molsongolden 3y ago
This isn’t uncommon in suburbs. Some people care more about preventing easy access to their community than they do about having easy access to other communities.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  So it would make their community more accessible to everyone, including criminals?
  - AdamN 3y ago
    In Chicago there are neighborhoods that actively blocked subway access so they could be car suburbs and not get the change that comes with mass transit access. Same for the famous Robert Moses parkways on Long Island. There is some validity to the idea that preventing mass transit insulates a community from a certain type of change but it comes with major costs.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  Every time when I think I kinda sorta figured out American culture, I read a comment like this. To me this is batshit insane. I’m so happy my suburb has regular bus and train service!
cjrp 3y ago
Because the people who live there all have cars, so they don't see any positives only the (false) negatives.
apozem 3y ago
A lot of the time it's a race issue. I live near Atlanta, where white suburbanites have spent 40 years voting to cripple public transportation, because they're afraid black people will use it to come to their neighborhood. That is not an exaggeration. One of my coworkers did a historical study and read town hall transcripts from the last couple decades. People were extremely clear why they were voting down mass transit.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  The racist joke I was told as a kid was that MARTA stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." I was so young and naive, I said, "Really? Why would they name it that?" Ugh. The racism of anti-transit people is really inescapable.
rsynnott 3y ago
In Dublin, there was some lobbying at the time against building a light rail line (the green Luas line) through some affluent areas on the basis that it would somehow reduce property values (a perennial Irish obsession). In fact, in practice, it increased property values (as you'd expect, really; the already existing heavy rail rapid transport had done the same), and 20 years later the same residents' groups and so on had a fit at the idea that service might be temporarily curtailed as part on an expansion plan... (However, everything old is new again; there's widespread annoyance at plans to make the bus system actually work properly now...) People are weird about this stuff.

molsongolden 3y ago

This isn’t uncommon in suburbs. Some people care more about preventing easy access to their community than they do about having easy access to other communities.

nonethewiser 3y ago
So it would make their community more accessible to everyone, including criminals?
- AdamN 3y ago
  In Chicago there are neighborhoods that actively blocked subway access so they could be car suburbs and not get the change that comes with mass transit access. Same for the famous Robert Moses parkways on Long Island. There is some validity to the idea that preventing mass transit insulates a community from a certain type of change but it comes with major costs.
skrebbel 3y ago
Every time when I think I kinda sorta figured out American culture, I read a comment like this. To me this is batshit insane. I’m so happy my suburb has regular bus and train service!

cjrp 3y ago

Because the people who live there all have cars, so they don't see any positives only the (false) negatives.

apozem 3y ago

A lot of the time it's a race issue. I live near Atlanta, where white suburbanites have spent 40 years voting to cripple public transportation, because they're afraid black people will use it to come to their neighborhood. That is not an exaggeration. One of my coworkers did a historical study and read town hall transcripts from the last couple decades. People were extremely clear why they were voting down mass transit.

earthboundkid 3y ago
The racist joke I was told as a kid was that MARTA stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." I was so young and naive, I said, "Really? Why would they name it that?" Ugh. The racism of anti-transit people is really inescapable.

rsynnott 3y ago

In Dublin, there was some lobbying at the time against building a light rail line (the green Luas line) through some affluent areas on the basis that it would somehow reduce property values (a perennial Irish obsession). In fact, in practice, it increased property values (as you'd expect, really; the already existing heavy rail rapid transport had done the same), and 20 years later the same residents' groups and so on had a fit at the idea that service might be temporarily curtailed as part on an expansion plan... (However, everything old is new again; there's widespread annoyance at plans to make the bus system actually work properly now...) People are weird about this stuff.