Why the United States spends so much but gets so little public transit

Upon arrival to the United States, my bus out of Boston was an hour late, and there was no indication when it would arrive, and every time a bus pulled up at the airport, the driver would get out and start yelling the destination cities over the din of the traffic, and that was how you would find the right bus. It was like going back in time 100 years.

The US has fully legalized corruption, from the top, so no one at management level can be indicted for indulging in it, although they may be punished administratively for blocking it.

Now, public works projects are obliged to devote the majority of project funding to buying off gatekeepers with long-term revenue channels that, because they will dry up when the project is complete, promote delays and frequent, expensive (for us), and lucrative (for them) scope changes.

In some countries, corruption is commonly a retail affair. In the US, its privileges are more jealously held at the top. The US is now among the top five most corrupt states. In China and Russia, corruption is still technically illegal, just so that underlings may be threatened with prosecution for that if they step out of line. The US system is more streamlined; we know it suffices to fire most nuisances, reserving imprisonment for anyone exposing crime.

Those fired improperly may sue, but the government or insurance pays, so that is OK.

The way to get better at something is to do it more often. This is a lesson software developers learned from the agile movement. Do hard things more often. Experts in every field become masters at their craft by practicing it for many thousands of repetitions over tens of thousands of hours.

Rather than trying to make success more likely by approaching difficulty with excessive caution and planning, expect that, at first, things will go wrong, but have rapid feedback to learn for the next attempt. Rather than a big bang integration at the end of a software development project, integrate daily/hourly/continuously.

The US builds automobile-centric transportation successfully at a prodigious rate. American civil engineering is really good at it because they do so much of it, all the time.

[1] https://martinfowler.com/bliki/FrequencyReducesDifficulty.ht...

The train ran on its own rails, separate from roads for cars, and was run even late at night. Since it was automated, a loop run every hour late at night was possible for stragglers/night shift workers to use.

This would never happen in the USA since there is no union hiring if the tram is automated. Since hiring conductors late at night is expensive you get reduced hours. Etc etc.

They regularly call for extrajudicial confiscation of property of certain people by class. History is clear that this is equivalent to calling for extrajudicial killing of people by class (they are going to defend their property)

The US is very young and not dense, save for a few downtown clusters.

There is definitely a lot that can be done, but it really comes down to user demand. People actually prefer cars if it’s the viable option. But depends on distance, timing, distance, and goals.

We shall see how ridership shifts in Los Angeles - probably the greatest live experiment in trying to force habit change currently in progress. Anyone here have inside baseball numbers on the habit changes in LA?