I would guess the answer is no for Tokyo. But even in liberal states with liberal cities transit funding is still weak or poorly spent. I think Atlanta vs GA is probably the best example of a conservative government going against a cities transit needs but then that leaves out places like NYC that need massive upgrades and places like Chicago, both being in liberal states.

Point? Transit is a bipartisan issue. Both suck at it, conservatives just suck more.

I think that the prime example of a liberal city having trouble getting transportation from a conservative state is Baltimore in Maryland. I read an article once that described a tension between building subways in the city and highways in the outer parts of the state.

Another example might be Milwaukee and Wisconsin in regards to the streetcar and, perhaps, the phantom plan for commuter rail in the region.

Transit is a bipartisan issue. Both suck at it, conservatives just suck exponentially more.

Fixed

Is Atlanta particularly liberal?

I know that Georgia as a whole is red, and I assume that Atlanta is more liberal than are the more rural parts of the state, but I don't know how blue/red it is.

It's liberal enough that they voted for a 6 billion dollar transit plan back in 2016 with a sizable margin.

Maryland, a conservative state? I've never heard that one. According to Wiki:

Democrats:55%
Republicans:26%

I actually don't mind that edit lol

:cheers:

Well, I mean conservative as compared with the city of Baltimore. I'll dig up the article if I can.

Sorry if that was confusing.

I never thought American public transit was poorly funded. I think a lot of it is just poorly operated.

If you spend billions of dollars to build a rapid transit line, and then run trains every 15 minutes at peak, you're doing it wrong.

Not proven that the political system is flawed? It also hasn't been proven that the political system operates similarly to a market. Ironically, one thing that has been proven - or at least widely accepted by economists - is the existence of flaws in the market system, referred to as market failures. I hate to think of anyone as a hopeless case, but I guess I'll have to believe you. :yes:

I wonder to what extent the division of jurisdiction contributes to this.

The Bay Area is the classic example of this, where BART, Muni, SamTrans, VTA, ACTransit, Golden Gate Transit, Contra Costa Transit, ACE, Caltrain, multiple ferry companies, and, to some extent, even Amtrak California all provide transit in the region. Not too mention all the Facebook/Google/whatever buses and The Marguerite and Bear Transit and I'm sure other schools also have bus systems. At least they all take the same fare card nowadays.

I have to agree with several others here that I think it's more complicated then simply saying transit in the US is underfunded. There is quite a lot spent on transit in the US, it's just that it's not spent very efficiently. If operating\construction prices in the US were the same as they were in other 1st world countries there would be plenty of money to go around. Indeed there probably would be even more money because it wouldn't be such a political issue if it weren't for the constantly blown budgets.

Everyone seems to be leaving out one key factor here. In the US we spend unreal amounts of money to have transit "fit" our absurd decentralized land-use, instead of having our land use fit transit. To say this is a fantastically collosal waste of resources is like shooting fish ina barrel.

That might be true in cities like Seattle where they are building transit well out into the suburbs and getting diminishing returns, but the worst examples of cost overruns are lines in New York City and San Francisco which are all in high density areas, not the suburbs.

Delete please