zlacker

All these issues arise from political priorities. If you want good public transit, you must build it as infrastructure for the middle class. If the target audience is not the middle class, nobody really cares if your public transit works. You want to build a city where using public transit is the default, and driving is for situations where people have special needs.

Public transit is not a social program. Whether the poor can afford public transit on their own is mostly irrelevant. If you want social programs, start separate social programs. Don't ruin other programs with unrelated goals.

>>jltsir+(OP)
This is a big part of it. Almost unironcially you could make public transit work better by giving every single homeless person in the city a car, and then spending money on keeping the transit operational, safe, and clean.

34% of kids ride a school bus to school, and that's basically transit designed for the middle class.