When I was at SXSW last month, the excellent Jeff Wood of the Overhead Wire did a long interview with me as part of his Talking Headways podcast series. He gets me talking about all kinds of things other than transit, including more about my personal history and experience than I usually get into. And new uses for pipe cleaners.
Great talk. I really appreciate your perspective on the urban/rural policy divides, and how each side naturally leans to different perspectives. I am personally very much on the rural side of this, but am also a transit supporter (where it makes sense in urban contexts), and in fact work for transit in a city.
Naturally, as more of an urbanist advocate, you focused on the experience of a rural person going to a large city and the fears and misconceptions that can be involved. I think it’s also important to think about the flip side: when an urban dweller goes to a rural setting, they are often quite afraid of nature, being in the woods in the dark, people carrying guns commonly, etc. I wish we could find a way for each side (urban/rural) to leave the other alone a bit more, and each make different decisions based on their context. We both need the other. The rural side makes most of our food, and the urban side creates a large portion of the rest of our economy. It’s also totally okay to prefer one environment over the other. Under the current state system, sometimes one side dominates the other, and forces their way of life on the other.
Any ideas on how to work through the political system to allow more mutual understanding and freedom between urban and rural areas?
Jack. All I can say is that this is something I think about a lot … Jarrett
With regard to the rural-urban divide, the only case I’m familiar with is in West Marin county, CA. There Marin Transit District would like to service the area with small buses on the weekend and maybe commute service during the week. (There are nice places to visit but are inaccessible without a car.) But angry residents are against it, claiming that no one works in the city, so commute service is waste of tax money and too many tourists would ruin the character of the county. they say you need a car to live way out in the country. Seems like Nimbyism to me.