Many reasons why "American public transportation is such a disaster."

I've reprinted what amounts to the topic sentence, but this is an article very much worth your time to read from start to finish.

Here's another bullet:

"Meanwhile, a few structural elements of American governance exacerbate anti-transit attitudes."

Imagine that. A few attitudinal elements of cloistered American thinking don't help, either.

There are numerous reasons to be suspicious of the Indiana Regional Cities Initiative, which the Floyd County Council rejected yesterday, but still might be joined by the city of New Albany.

To me, chief among them remains the fact that One Southern Indiana's assembled committee of supposed experts, charged with determining (in effect) how to make an entire region revolve around River Ridge's jobs, failed to include any semblance of public transit spending amid its $450 million wish list.

More on that elsewhere.

The real reason American public transportation is such a disaster, by Joseph Stromberg (Vox)

... Although history and geography are partly to blame, there's a deeper reason why American public transportation is so terrible. European, Asian, and Canadian cities treat it as a vital public utility. Most American policymakers — and voters — see transit as a social welfare program.