Good article, but needs some expansion:

1) WW2 wasn't good for transit. Sure, they had lots of riders due to gasoline rationing, plus the lack of tires and new cars. But they also had their fares frozen and had little or no resources to maintain or modernize. Many transit systems struggled to survive WW2, and in the postwar boom years got no help rebuilding.

2) After WW2, many transit systems didn't just die; they were murdered. Holding companies like National City Lines (google is your friend) bought up struggling lines like L.A.'s Pacific Electric and carefully destroyed them so that the only alternatives were cars or (maybe) buses. The main survivors of that era were systems that were so big (Boston, NYC, Philly, Chicago) that they couldn't be bought easily.

3) Until about the 1970s, most transit operations in the USA were private companies, who had to pay property taxes on their rights-of-way and facilities while competing with modes that had their rights-of-way built for them with taxes.

3)

Not Pittsburgh.

You are of course absolutely required per Salon/San Fran dogma to utterly discredit BUS mass transit. Too bad really because so called 'flat' cities will never be able to afford the massive capital investment required to adequately cover their sprawl with rail.

But the flipside of that is that when fuel prices are very high, BUS mass transit may operate at a very large loss. And then what? How do flat cities afford it? Through what mechanism do they pay for it? Ratchet up fares? Tax everyone to hell and back?

My experience confirms the article's main contention. I ride the Los Angeles commuter train system, Metrolink, to my job. We've had an increase in ridership from the gas crunch. New riders are happily amazed at how much better their commute is when they take the train. And these are supposedly car-mad L.A. commuters. New riders are surprised to see how clean everything is, and they love napping, talking, reading a book or working when they would otherwise be sitting in traffic. It's an easy sell.

But there aren't enough cars. I used to talk up the train, but I no longer do—because I want to keep my seat on it. Visionary national leadership would be rolling out new cars like Liberty ships and welcoming these new riders with confetti, but of course we don't have visionary national leadership.

Yet.

Privatize the roads and make them fabulously expensive to use. People will naturally crowd onto trains and buses like the last cattle car to Sobibor. You don't even have to worry about providing good service since there aren't any options. Keep costs low and tell them how lucky they are to be able to meet new people.

I haven't done an economic analysis, but based on a gut feel, I'd bet that $750 billion would build a fully functional mass transit system for every city in the U.S. with a population of 300,000 and over. Plus, a couple of brand new, fully staffed and fully equipped hospitals. Plus free ice cream for everyone. At least.

What a pity. What a waste of $$$.

Grind on, Washington politicians. Grind on.

I have a real problem calling the riders of BART from Contra Costa county "mass transit riders". Yes, they do ride the train for PART of their commute, but almost all of them leave their houses in fossil-fool powered wheelchairs. They are, at best, mixed-mode commuters.

I notice you omitted Sacramento from your list of cities that put back in part of their trolley systems in the '80s. Mayor Ann Ruden fought valiantly to get a single line in from East Sac through downtown and out to North Sac. She was public enemy number one (she's killing our businesses, construction is making a mess of traffic, yadda yadda)until the trains began to run. Suddenly, she was the savior of downtown. Since then, everyone has been fighting to get the system expanded into their neighborhoods. Sadly, I doubt there will ever be sufficient funds and will to expand the light rail to the size of the murdered trolley system that once existed there.

I've got a 40 mile each way commute (Brisbane, right south of San Francisco, to Pleasanton, right West of Livermore), and for about a year and a half had been driving both ways. The economy being what it is, gas prices being what they are, and my wife losing her job led us to look at BART. Good news is, I take BART from the first stop to the last stop, which means no transfers, and no missing my stop. Bad news is, it's a bitch. Door-to-door (driving to Daly City, taking BART, waiting for bus, taking bus to work), it's just about two hours. Driving takes about 45 minutes. I justify it both because I get Commuter Checks and because I get to work (or sleep) on the train, but the four hours a day are a pain.

Problem is also that BART is actually less reliable than driving (at least for me, since I'm counter-commuting). Today was the second day in a row the train was 20 minutes late, which impacts my commute. Could I have aimed for the previous train? Sure, but then I have to wake up even closer to 5AM.

Nonetheless, I'm going to continue to use BART almost exclusively (I'm averaging maybe one drive to the office every 12-13 workdays). I'm just not very happy about it.

i take the caltrain system down the peninsula to the south bay. starved for funds, operating broken rolling stock that was ancient when they purchased it in the 1980s, it's a miracle that it works at all - which it often doesn't. they keep talking about getting new trains or electrifying the rails plus did you know they're going to run a high-speed rail line up the same right-of-way?

When I lived in NYC, I only had to get mugged once to buy a car for my evening's outings. Its safer than a gun or taser.

Currently, I live in the East Bay of Northern California. The cost of property and rentals in Silicon Valley, as well as the volatility of the job market, made it seem unwise to leave a location that I actually enjoyed living in. I would have loved to take mass transit to work, instead of grinding my nose into the freeway for 90 to 120 minutes at a crack during the boom times, but there was no service in that direction. Transit agencies seemed to think that the only commute movement was into San Francisco in the morning and out from San Francisco in the evening. It amazed me that the transit people didn't twig to the fact that everyone and his brother was working high tech from 1998 to 2001. Now, I know BART could not have gone down that far, but would it killed them to have extra buses running during the day?

Fortunately, I managed to find a job 7 miles from my house. I can drive it in 20 minutes or so. I checked into buses, and that would take 70 minutes. When it was suggested I bicycle through West Oakland to get to work, I politely chuckled. You don't put a skinny middle aged woman on even a cheap bike in West Oakland after 5PM from October to April.

Buses are quick to deploy, unlike light rail or subways, but no one wants to pay for them. Seems the only folks who use them are those pesky poor people.

I'm voting yes on 1A, btw. I'd love to see fast rail between us and Los Angeles. Driving that is almost as agonizing as air travel there.