Nemo, 1 year ago

That’d be great, yeah. But scope is the issue.

“All Chicagoans have the right to public transit.” Sane and doable. Not done, not currently, as any map of the city will show you, but both possible and desirable.

“All Illinoisans have a right to public transit.” I’d love to see it, even if it’s just once-a-day trains to Springfield, to St. Louis, to the Region, to Milwaukee, to Rockford, to Peoria, to Chambana. But that’s a lot more train lines than we have now, and that means land for stations and RoWs, it means manpower and materials for maintenance, it means working out the logistics of scheduling and fare pricing for the communities being served. And it still won’t cover everyone unless augmented with bus lines, which also need logistics, manpower, and maintenance. Still desirable; not very efficient, especially for a perpetually cash-strapped state like Illinois.

“All Americans have a right to public transit.” At that point it’d be empty words, doing more harm than good.

“All humans have a right to public transit.” At this point, purely aspirational rather than descriptive.