It seems like a bit of class warfare on the part of the Koch's. Without public transportation people in lower income areas can't get to better jobs, healthcare or schools. People in these areas also don't have access healthy food because grocery stores won't open in areas where the majority of customers use food stamps and government aid. Yes current modes of transportation are becoming out dated the newer modes like self driving cars are not ready for the mass public. What the Koch's fail to grasp is that the more people making a living wage we have means we have less people living off entitlements like food stamps. If we have more people paying taxes instead of living off the taxes of other we will see improvements for all and possibly lower taxes due to a surplus not a deficit. Sorry for the soapbox.

Some commenters questioning the benefit of public transit infrastructure in an age of self-driving electric vehicles have perhaps never lived in a city with good public transit. Road traffic in Victorian London was on average faster than it is now, but investing in underground tunnels for trains was still deemed necessary (even profitable). Likewise, buses massively reduce the road footprint per passenger, not to mention the increased energy efficiency, regardless of whether it renewable or not.

And finally, end-to-end transport offered by personal vehicles or taxis has been disastrous for public health. The difference between walking to your driveway or curbside versus a five minute walk to a bus stop or ten minute walk to a train station everyday would be enormous aggregated across an entire population. It would be a great missed opportunity if the idea of being able to summon a driverless electric car (we still have no idea how this technology will really pan out, whereas buses and trains have been around for over a century) kills public transit as an alternative to single-occupancy vehicles before it's even off the ground.

I think there's an interesting take on this - we are on the verge of a huge technological shift with the advent of self-driving cars. Should we hold off on massive transit projects where they don't already exist that is the community doesn't already have a subway and wait to see how self-driving cars pan out?

It's like investing in traditional cargo ships right as containerization started happening. Or investing in horse related infrastructure when the automotive was first being released.

This seems relatively sensible to me. Address near term issues - small fixes. And not fund huge projects that may become obsolete before they're finished.

I guess the question is -- how quickly will self driving cars be deployed, and how will they effect the areas. Will self driving cars completely replace buses?

European here, living happily without a driver's license.

Could someone please explain the gentrification argument? How is public transport supposed to make it worse?

Assuming gentrification occurs when one area is much more desirable to be in than others, then with good public transport it can be reached more easily. People can live outside the center (or the nice district) and still get a good experience, work or spend time there. The desirable area expands. It seems to me that if anything, this should work against gentrification.

Also, living in cities means giving up some freedom. We share it, we have to make some kinds of compromise: keep the noise down, take up less space for our private use and use the public more (like parks instead of own gardens). In my opinion this also means limiting the use of cars, so that city centers don't have to accommodate wide roads and parking space and could become more walkable and generally pleasant. I appreciate that most major European cities seem to develop in that direction.

Want freedom - go live away from people, no one will restrict you then.

What’s the story here? Seems like Koch Bros are against raising taxes. They aren’t “killing” anything.

Let’s assume the tax raise will only go to public transport. Let’s assume for now it’s a good plan and actually wanted by the public. The issue isn’t the previous assumptions but the fact that taxes will not be lowered afterwards.

So even after completion of the project, the tax that was put in place to raise revenues to fund the project will still remain in the books. That’s the insidious nature of government. Once it has it it will not let go.

That project would have kicked their sales tax to 10.25%, highest in the country, and like every major public project they’d go far over their 5.4b budget.

The link to Koch brothers is a bit tenuous, it was the voters who killed this project, once they knew the costs.

The article paints their motivation as naked self-serving hypocrisy:

> One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.

> Americans for Prosperity counters that public transit plans waste taxpayer money on unpopular, outdated technology like trains and buses just as the world is moving toward cleaner, driverless vehicles.

> Most American cities do not have the population density to support mass transit, the group says. It also asserts that transit brings unwanted gentrification to some areas, while failing to reach others altogether.

> Public transit, Americans for Prosperity says, goes against the liberties that Americans hold dear. “If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want,” Ms. Venable said, “they’re not going to choose public transit.”

Public transport is against freedom? I got to say, that is creative.

"The group’s Nashville victory followed a roller-coaster political campaign, including a sex-and-spending scandal that led to the mayor’s resignation."

Oct 2017 - Unveils $5.2bil plan Mar 2018 - Pleads guilty to felony and resigns; interim mayor (vice mayor appointed) May 01 2018 - Vote on plan May 24 2018 - Vote for new mayor (vice mayor wins with 55% of vote)

Yeah, sounds roller-coastery.

Such public transit tax boondoggles always include buses and commuter rail in one measure. But the OVERWHELMING majority of such spending (ignoring the other trendy items such as hiking trails, beautification and congestive bike lanes) is for rail — NOT buses.

Buses are FAR cheaper and relatively much more efficient than rail. But central planners LOVE choo-choos.

Rail is NOT desired by most commuters. From 1985 to 2015 the Los Angeles region spent $9 billion on transit improvements — almost all on rail. At the end of these 30 years and with a bigger population, public transit in the region has fewer riders in 2015 than they had in 1985. Not just a lower PERCENTAGE of rail travelers — fewer ACTUAL riders. http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2016/02/billions-spent-but-fe...

There are very few cities in America where public transport is the most efficient option for MOST trips - e.g. think about cities where a family of four could honestly say that they wouldn’t need a car.

If a large capital project is not going to change that equation, it seems unlikely that that is an efficient use of money.

It’s sad to say that in all but the largest and densest American cities mass transit is used for the most part by people that can’t drive.

OK that seems pretty vile.

Still, one gets the sense that these campaigns succeeded mostly because there was no response to them. This "team" the reporter followed talked to 66 people in one day? The campaign in total raised $1.1M? These are not overwhelming numbers, if the entire Nashville business community and political apparatus had really been united as described in TFA. It seems possible that support was a mile wide and an inch deep. It's easy to give lip service to a popular politician. This charismatic mayor was not around for the long haul, even if her bodyguard had not been the type of cad to kiss and tell. If her scandal had been delayed a year, the measure had passed, the money raised, etc.: then what? What strong constituency existed to keep pushing this project in the right directions over the decade it would take? If those people exist, they should have gone door-to-door a week after these AfP yokels to complain about rich Kansans interfering in our politics to sell us asphalt.

Public transit is the way of the future in higher density urban areas. Not only is it more energy efficient per rider and of assistance to those that are financially less well off. It has a much lower impact on air quality. Check out the article on electric vehicles from The Guardian Aug 4, 2017. Always concerned when rich people with a vested interest discourage a service that helps the working poor.

Americans for Prosperity has 2.3 million members, according to Wikipedia. Current headline, "The Koch brothers are campaigning against tax rises for public transit projects", is an improvement over original NYT insane "How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country" but still misleading. Kochs are financing a 2.3 million organization, which in part - by activities of their local activists, going door to door, which is impossible without wide support on the ground - opposes some public transportation projects. Which sometimes are a colossal waste of taxpayer money. For example: https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/22/corruption-incompetence-c... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... https://reason.com/blog/2017/09/18/seattles-sound-transit-pa... https://www.aei.org/publication/whod-a-thunk-it-like-most-ce... and many more.

From the article itself:

Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition

So the evil Koch's money was actually less than the benevolent whoever-that-was-NYT-is-not-going-to-tell-us's money. So how did it happen?

“This is why grass roots works,” said Tori Venable, Tennessee state director for Americans for Prosperity, which made almost 42,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 6,000 doors.

So it's not nefarious Koch Brothers and their dark magic. It's people on the ground making phone calls and knocking doors and convincing people that they are right. This is how democracy is supposed to work. But of course for NYT it is anathema since their side lost this time, so they would present it as some kind of dark magic of evil Satan brothers. I would want to say I expect better from NYT, but the times when I did has long passed.

When Americans pronounce their name as "Coke", is that a mean-spirited jab at the troublesome byproduct of Fred C. Koch's petroleum cracking process, or is that how the family pronounces it themselves?

I live in nyc now, but grew up in a small conservative-learning town.

So many of my friends & colleagues who have spent their lives in liberal areas refuse to see the issue from the perspective of middle-class conservatives --> instead calling them 'deplorables' or 'morons'.

If you went around at my town's local supermarket handing out $50 gift cards - telling people that this was how much their taxes were going up - that proposition was getting voted down.

Driverless cars are tested in Arizona. I am not impressed. The US is FINALLY being weened off their urban sprawl fetish, every city on the planet is heavily investing in public transport.

When Trump was talking about how North Korea could one,day look like Singapore I smiled. Why does LA or New York not look like Singapore?

Where is the need to spend 5.2 billion on public transit ? A few electric buses with point to point connections will do. Start small and expand as needed. Just one high density suburb <-> Downtown connection is sufficient to start with. Electric buses are so good, they have instant torque - so there is none of the lag that plague traditional diesel buses, they are fast, quiet and since it's point to point, your range anxiety is practically eliminated. A dedicated bus lane or the HOV lane and a stop every 1/2 ecits should cut it.

Sure it's not as fast as a dedicated subway or the Shinkansen but at a fraction of the cost, you are bringing in people to start using public transit.

Big cities never seem content to let public transit compete with cars on a level playing field. Instead, they adopt anti-car policies to force people to behave like they want them to. See the highly inefficient HOV lanes, the purposeful underdevelopment of roads, exorbitant parking prices, punitive fuel and car taxes, closure of lanes, and so forth.

If the people really want public transportation, why do you have to punish them for using cars? Could it be that people value the freedom and privacy of having a car and living in the suburbs? Of living in quiet suburbs free of street crime and roving gangs of ne’er-do-wells? Of being free from the inherent restrictions to freedom that come with being in closer proximity to others?