Yeah, this panic over the imagination of trains exporting cars full of unwashed masses into your social flight suburb is a tension in literally every regional rail rollout in the west, or at least in North America. The facts of the matter is that TriMet does already police Max ridership (I’d know, they’ve ticketed me), and commuting either by car on a traffic jammed highway over a century-old earthquake-vulnerable bridge or by rail while sitting across a passenger car from a potentially homeless person is a decision that remains securely in the hands of Washingtonian suburbanites, they need not fear that decision being taken from them and they will ultimately get whichever choice they deserve.
But for the time being, Washington is importing thousands of gas belching lifted pickup trucks into my Portland neighborhood every weekday morning, and I don’t personally get much of a say in that matter.
Yeah, this panic over the imagination of trains exporting cars full of unwashed masses into your social flight suburb is a tension in literally every regional rail rollout in the west, or at least in North America. The facts of the matter is that TriMet does already police Max ridership (I’d know, they’ve ticketed me), and commuting either by car on a traffic jammed highway over a century-old earthquake-vulnerable bridge or by rail while sitting across a passenger car from a potentially homeless person is a decision that remains securely in the hands of Washingtonian suburbanites, they need not fear that decision being taken from them and they will ultimately get whichever choice they deserve.
But for the time being, Washington is importing thousands of gas belching lifted pickup trucks into my Portland neighborhood every weekday morning, and I don’t personally get much of a say in that matter.