Leftists want everybody to use transit because it is climate-friendly.
Leftists also want to electrify everything because it is climate-friendly.
Leftists have to cut bus routes because electric buses are too expensive.
In reality: Leftists hate mobility. Ride a bike, peasant.
Mayor Bowser wants tocut DC Circulator service in half to save money.
What’s happening: The plan is part of the mayor’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, pending the D.C. Council’s approval.
State of play: The cuts would get rid of three of the Circulator’s six routes — Rosslyn to Dupont Circle, Eastern Market to L’Enfant Plaza, and Woodley Park to McPherson Square Metro.
Yep, they want to cut the circulator service in half. To save money. But they are also considering making bus service free. They might even be able to do it if they just get rid of the bus service altogether.
But in the meantime, the buses they DO run will be electric. Yay!
Between the lines: City administrator Kevin Donahue told reporters that electrifying the buses is increasing costs.
Leftists have been at war with mobility for a long time. They hate suburbs, want “walkable” 15-minute cities, and consider it a good thing to keep people trapped in government-controlled areas.
It’s not just cars they hate–and yes, they do hate cars–it’s your freedom, and nothing is more freeing than being able to go where you want when you want.
Since cities have existed people have lived an average of a 20-30 commute to work. That seems to be a general psychological limit for people, although obviously there is some flexibility in those numbers. (People who live on farms obviously have no commute; this is for cities). As modes of transport evolved the size of cities and their density has changed, as people are able to maintain commute times and get nicer housing in suburbs, and have far more employment choices.
It’s no surprise that mobility, societal prosperity, and suburbs tend to go together.
Reducing mobility requires packing more people into dense areas, and this is something Democrats desperately want. Democrats own the cities and have far more power over people who become dependent upon them. These days most people and most jobs are not in urban cores, and Democrats hate that.
Hence the trillions that have been poured into rarely used transit systems over the decades. Transit ridership decreases, yet transit investments increase.
Once people are trapped, expensive services can be allowed to decline. DC’s Metro and San Francisco’s BART are both disasters, but people living in those areas are trapped. Metropolitan planning commissions all push for yet more densification, intentionally restricting mobility. They justify this by citing “induced demand”–the claim that building more roads just leads to more travel.
Yes. More travel is a good thing. Unless you are a Leftist.
Electrifying buses is a ridiculous idea if the powers-that-be in DC cared about the mobility of its citizens, but they don’t. What they want is to be able to impose their will on people, and electrification is the hot new thing, just as light rail was the hot new thing a decade ago. The riders are an afterthought.
Besides, if the riders really were good people they would quit bitching and just ride a bike, right? That’s why they keep on converting lanes of traffic to bike lanes.
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