How common/usable is subway in bigger cities? Here in Prague we have an amazing public transport, with priority lanes from buses from time to time and most importantly a pretty decent subway. I’ve never had an issue getting anywhere around the city in a decent time, and the cost of an unlimited year-long ticket is just 150EUR.

In the US, public transportation is pretty much unusable in bigger cities except for NYC.

America has this weird, masochistic relationship with cars that just gridlocks everyone. But “FreEdoM.”

One potential reason posited by The 1619 Project is due to white Americans moving out of metro areas after WW2 in order to “escape” black residents. Then, they restricted expansion of public transportation development to those areas because making them more accessible and usable would potentially result in a influx of poorer, black residents who can’t afford a car to commute to the suburbs.

The specific example they used is Atlanta, which has staunch racial lines, horrible public transport, and some of the worst traffic in America. They make a very compelling case.

Here is the relevant New York Times article about it and it’s Chapter 16 in the actual book

This must also happen in reverse. The hip expensive city center and the poorer suburbs?