On Expenditure

I am baffled by the sheer amount of public motivation and effort required to stop construction of a highway — and that the same amount of effort is required to start a transit initiative.

Consider the Spadina Expressway in Toronto, or Robert Moses's various plans for cross-Manhattan expressways. That these plans required momentum to stop — to prevent them from being built — is a testament to the blind motivation of urban planners of recent decades.

That transit takes such great initiative to start, and is subject to further public scrutiny than highway construction, is undoubtedly because the public will not only fund construction and maintenance (as is with roads) but also operation of transit infrastructure.

Nevertheless we should consider ridership first. But if we think a highway through greenfields will provoke new development, why shouldn't transit do the same?