Americans drove 1.5 percent more miles in November 2022 than November 2019, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. This is the third month in a row that driving exceeded 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels. For the year to date, Americans drove 99.99 percent as many miles as in 2019, so if December is even just 0.2 percent above 100 percent, the year as a whole will be as well.
That’s so odd, because I recall being told by the traffic troons over and over that crime is a reason to not own a car, despite real people saying that they won’t take public transit because of crime. Remember this guy who almost had a breakdown over the “Garage Mahal” pun? Well he’s back to soysplain away violent crime.
(Starting at 1:40)
Also a disclaimer. I myself have never been a victim of violent crime. I mean, I guess I’ve experienced the violence of having my Honda Accord broken into and every possible thing being stolen or ripped out of it. And if you’ve had your car broken into it is something that feels like a personal violation. But I don’t pretend it compares to the experience of actual violent crime.
Also, car break ins these days are common enough to be almost insipid to the point where it’s a huge pain just to figure out where to park your car securely. And it’s actually, in my opinion, just one more reason to not own a car in the first place.
Having your car being broken into doesn’t compare to being the victim of violent crime. That’s why you shouldn’t own a car, and should instead expose your body to the violent criminals on public transit and the streets.
The combination of midwitism with soyboy freakouts makes these people amusing and insufferable all at the same time. I have never found myself shaking my head while involuntarily giving out a baffled chuckle as often as I do when covering these fags. It honestly gets to the point where I can’t do much more than point and laugh, and since that type of content gets old, let’s switch up and go back to another AntiPlanner piece.
Minnesota transportation agencies need to reinvent themselves if they are to survive after the pandemic, according to a new report published yesterday by the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s free-market think tank. Off the Rails: Minnesota Transportation After COVID-19 says that the world has changed so much that any transportation plans written before 2020 will no longer make sense (if they ever did).
“Demonstrations.”
Gee, it sure is amazing how much “Covid” changed the world. Surprisingly driving is back up to higher levels post-Covid-19 than public transit, so business appears to be resuming as scheduled. It’s just that people don’t want to take public transit for some strange reason that must be disease related with no other explanations.
In case you can’t read the fine print on the image above, the report was written by yours truly and so all of its themes — increased numbers of telecommuters, the follies of light rail, the importance of funding transport out of user fees, not to mention more than a dozen brightly colored charts — will be familiar to Antiplanner readers. But in some respects, the Twin Cities’ post-pandemic experiences have been more extreme than most.
I can’t wrap my head around what could possibly be the reason for this. It just doesn’t make any sense. People are avoiding downtown Minneapolis, the place where Fentanyl Floyd overdosed, for no apparent reason. It’s so odd.
Downtown Minneapolis has been one of the slowest central business districts to recover from the pandemic,
Damn that fiery, but mostly peaceful pandemic.
which means telecommuting will remain high and transit ridership low for a long time. Another factor hurting Twin Cities transit is that its light-rail system suffers from far more crime than any other light-rail system in the country, experiencing almost twice as many crimes per billion passenger-miles as the next-highest system and six times the national average for light rail.
How about instead of “another factor,” you just admit that is the one singular factor. It is literally the most crime-filled public transit system in the country by far, therefore no one wants to ride it.
This is on top of the fact that light rail is just about the most crime-ridden form of transit in the country. (San Francisco’s trolley buses also experience a lot of crime, mainly because it, like light rail, uses an honor system of fare collection.)
It’s just so ridiculous that Covid-19 started causing fires to spontaneously break out everywhere. Why would Covid-19 do such a thing. I swear to god I’m getting sick of all this Covid of Colour committing crimes on the light rail system and making everywhere it goes an unlivable hellscape.
For these and other reasons, the report recommends that the region convert the Southwest light-rail line, which is under construction with the usual cost overruns, into a dedicated bus line. This will be less expensive to complete, less expensive to operate, and — should there be any real demand — have a greater capacity to move people than light rail.
The solution, according to the LOLbertarian, is a bus line. That’ll show the criminals.
It’s honestly just funny to me that no one involved in this debate except us is allowed to say “lock up the criminals.” That is obviously the solution to low public transit ridership, as well as all other aspects of our decaying society. Instead, the urbanite soyboys totally ignore this, or bizarrely tell you not to own a car, because reasons. The LOLbertarians acknowledge this, but have to come up with Rube Goldberg explanations. I’m sure the federal governments subsidization of fructose syrup is what lead to all this.
Being politically serious means facing lots of censorship, but it’s nice to not have to humiliate yourself by believing things that aren’t true.
Thank you for writing about this topic. As a former bus rider and transit user, I can relate to all the different levels of dysfunction you describe; and I resent that the-powers-that-be and their minions only want to shove more of this crap in our faces.
BTW, the final straw for me was the masking requirement to ride a bus. I’d rather walk/bike/drive and be able to breathe, than seethe behind a mask, while pretending the bus was some kind of immaculately clean, hospital ward on wheels.
So now I just avoid, avoid, avoid public transit like the plague.