The GOP has long treated transit like a culture war issue, much like climate change, abortion, or LGBT rights. But Dems don't get this for some reason and keep trying to find bipartisan compromise on transportation issues.
It's not clear to me that public sentiment is anti-transit, but policymaker sentiment has. In CA, this is a consequence of most of our transit money going into ZE buses and partial funding of still-incomplete capital projects, rather than enhanced service and ridership.
If there's a Dem revenge tour in 2029, they need to attack the material base of MAGA: car dealers, car companies (like Musk), and sprawl which makes voters lonely, uninformed, hateful, and conservative.
Denial about the housing crisis, denial about the energy crisis, denial about the climate crisis, denial about the crisis of democracy... blue state leadership asleep at the wheel on every major issue
Few things depress me more than Democrats shamelessly chasing the median voter (or the x.com mirage version) and rejecting taxes, climate action, and trans rights.
The through line is a rejection of activists and planning for the future and a tacit acceptance of DOGE's destruction of the state.
CA pols could invest funding more wisely by moving from competitive grant programs to multi-year investment frameworks that provide more stability and oversight. Yet the leg has shown little appetite for this or other project delivery reforms. bsky.app/profile/cale...
Ive been studying up on this and the big issue is commercial rents are tied to mortgages and commercial spaces are too large to be affordable nowadays. We should encourage commerical space subdivision. Smaller units get leased much much quicker.
