[w1ntermute]

Wrong—the claim has nothing to do with what rich or poor people like to use.

The claim is that the only way to provide affordable public transit that's sustainably accessible to people who aren't rich (that is, even when gentrification occurs in the city core) is to provide surface transit (buses), which can serve a much larger area than light rail.

> Maybe if we had more human-scale, walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods everywhere, there would be enough of them to meet the high demand and more such neighborhoods could support mixed-income residents.

Sure—let me know when you find the funding required to build all those "human-scale, walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods everywhere." In the meantime, let's provide affordable transit that's accessible regardless of which neighborhood you live in: high-frequency, reliable buses.

[jacobolus]

The problem is largely not about lack of “funding” per se, but more about zoning laws, urban planning more generally, and a whole society organized around driving and inefficient sprawl housing with large-scale short-term subsidies but long-term unsupportable infrastructure.

(More funding for transit certainly wouldn’t hurt. Also, buses are great, especially BRT with dedicated lanes. Buses, light rail, subways, commuter trains, long-distance trains seem like complementary parts of a transit system more than competitors.)

There are plenty of cities in the world with effective subways, light rail, and BRT serving working-class neighborhoods.

[w1ntermute]

Great—let me know when you've changed the zoning laws, fixed urban planning more generally, and how the whole society is organized around massive subsidies for driving and inefficient sprawl housing with long-term unsupportable infrastructure. In the meantime, let's provide affordable transit that's accessible regardless of which neighborhood you live in: high-frequency, reliable buses.