Very useful transit development info

Thanks to an alert reader of this weblog, I was pointed off to some very useful additional pieces about transit options. The first is a Star Tribune editorial from last week that argued for the necessity of developing a comprehensive public transit plan for the area. The second is a link to the EPA’s report on regional transit systems. We are in the middle of a bus driver strike here in the Twin Cities, and I confess to a deep degree of frustration at the lack of interest many of my friends seem to have in this issue. Some have “bought” the line that the state can’t afford to continue to provide health coverage at the level they have in the past to the bus drivers. That is only “true” to the extent that we give up on pushing the federal government to provide the kinds of services/funds they ought to be. In other words, rather than continuing to accept the unconscionable irresponsibility of the Bush administration (and Congress more generally), and doing our best to cope on the state and local level, ALL of our elected officials ought to be pushing back. Historians write that it has largely been union activism in the US that brought us the 40 hour work week, health and other employee benefits, and so on. Now is not the time to give up on the process! If the bus drivers can keep their benefits, we can organize to help others keep theirs, too, and eventually extend benefits in other areas. It’s not that we have unlimited funds, but it IS that we have disordered priorities, and we can reorder them (again, I refer you back to the “oreo cookie” argument [click on “the movie Dick Cheney doesn’t want you to see]). It is also worth remembering what the Catholic bishops have said about labor, and supporting unions.