this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Know how to fix those problems?

More funding

Never been on a public transport that smelled of urine in Belgium. It is obviously possible.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

More funding doesn't necessarily work in this situation. There's a big stigma about public transportation in the US where if you take it you're seen as unsuccessful and poor. It's also perceived as something like government intrusion whenever infrastructure is built to support it. Minorities would resist any kind of building of rail along their property because they were previously screwed over when several black and poor neighborhoods were bulldozed for the sake of placing freeways. Rich people simply lobby the government to stop construction or hold back on selling their property because they want to gouge them for all they're worth and sap the project's funds.

The solution of course would be a bigger willingness for the government to use eminent domain laws to force these projects through but because of the short term nature of their precarious elected positions, officials would rarely do that lest they get voted out in the next election cycle and the project simply stalls out. There's been some success with private companies building rail, like Brightline, because building public infrastructure in a capitalist way seems to be accepted more by the public thanks to our conditioning of loving the free market.

[–] StaySquared@lemmy.world -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That's because on average, people in Belgium are more civilized than Americans. Do you have homelessness problems in your nation? No? We do. Yes? Do your homeless literally pull their pants down in broad daylight and take a chit on the sidewalk for everyone to see without a single fk given? Bet you don't. We do.

I bet in your college towns and cities, if you have parking garages, you don't have urine and or chit in the elevators and or staircase.. we do.

You see.. in our nation, we truly have the chittiest of chitty people overall, mainly in large cities. They are chitty in many chitty different ways. And we have to share public everything with these chitty people. So yeah, unfortunately, public transportation is going to be chitty on average, day in and day out.