Getting From B To A

I'm just a little confused regarding these supposed billion dollar infusions into high speed rail...confused because on the one hand we'll be promoting an extremely efficient mode of transportation while abandoning local transit rail services on the other.

From a SACTOWN bee article yesterday, SF Muni and BART have recently shed jobs due to the combination of decreased state funding and loss of fares from riders who aren't commuting to their non-existent jobs. Sacramento RT will undergo massive cuts and fare increases. High speeed rail is a huge political score for creating hundreds of thousands of jobs while this job creation will simply offset the loss of thousands of transit workers across the U.S.

I shall repeat for all those who decry transit as a shamefully wasteful publicly subsidized ride from A to B: so is your fucking car, slick. Even more so.

If not for federal matching funds California wouldn't build one additional freeway. Interestingly, we all like to call road building "infrastructure investment," while monies funding a bus route is a "transit subsidy." Because California car owners don't directly pay the full price for roads, traffic accidents, pollution abatement, IHS improvements, auxiliary lane building, traffic signals, the new Bay Bridge, the CHP, red light cameras and free towing during rush hour, of course they choose to drive as much as possible. And they do.

I asked a white co-worker of mine who recently moved from Elk Grove to Folsom if she now takes light rail to work. "No, I prefer the convenience of my car, and besides, I wouldn't ride it in any event." Read: her car is a prosthetic device; it's within 100 yards of her physical presence at all times. More revealing, she would never associate with the commoners...the filth, the dregs, those without personal transportation means, and those who don't look like her. Of course, she would never say that to me directly. She would never say that to anyone else, either, but it was crystal clear: she lives comfortably within her private realm while covertly engaging in economic and social racism. She likely votes down transit "subsidies." She'd pay good money to hire a black mechanic to fix her car yet would refuse to sit next to him on a bus. Her daughter isn't disabled and she'll be driving her own car soon enough.

I am making all sorts of assumptions regarding her behavior. But these are the decisions we make all the time and in the aggregate, it continues to marginalize transit. We refuse to fund it, we refuse to ride it, we tell riders to "get your own damn car, I'm tired of paying for your ride," yet high speed rail's gonna be one of the most subsidized forms of transportation there is and I ain't heard that word used even once; it's called a "federal grant," or "investment," or "recovery money," or an "economy stimulus." Whatever we call it, it's still a goddamn subsidy! And only eight billion to boot -- what, GM alone got what, $16.6 billion?

My guess: we are collectively willing to fund high speed rail because it'll come with a high priced ticket -- sufficient to keep away people who don't look like us. Let them take the bus from A to B; I'll be taking the bullet train from B to A.