No public transportation please. We are American.

Got an insight into yet another American way of thinking when I was in the US last Oct'05.

My friend who used to live in Baltimore had moved to a swanky new row-type home in
Virginia and I had gone to visit him during the weekend. He has a 30 minute drive to his workplace in D.C. from his residence.

Since the place where he lives was now a big community and with most of the residents
working in D.C., I was wondering why they did not have any means of public transportation (buses, MRTS, whatever) connecting both the places. What he replied gave me an idea as
to why there is almost nil public transportation in the US whereas almost all of Europe is
connected by train and within the different countries they have efficient public transportation by means of buses etc.

He said that the authorities had come up with a plan to provide a means of public
transportation to connect D.C. and this part of Virginia. And the idea that they proposed, sounded pretty good to me. What they wanted to do was to make use of the existing wide beltway and have a kind of train service running on the median of the beltway with stations
set every few miles or so. I assume that the plan was sort of like the MRTS (elevated rail)
in Madras which runs over the swampy land of the Buckingham Canal which has no use otherwise.

But, it seems this idea was vetoed by the current residents, to my surprise. In India, we
would always like to stay somewhere that is well connected by a public transportation
system.

The reason for the residents not warming up to this plan was quite simple. Currently the
people owning / renting a home in the community would definitely need to own a car due
to the commute involved. But, if a public transportation system comes in, this would mean
that even people without a car of their own (read low-income, mainly black) would move
into the community.

As per the residents, this has two fallouts. The property / rental valus will fall if the
community projects residents of the kind mentioned above. Also, the residents seem to
have reason to believe that the current peace and tranquility that is prevalent in the
community will be lost and would give way to violence, which they would not like to
expose their kids and family to.

So, they veto any suggestion by the government to build public transportation to their community, like buses, trains etc. And this is true not only for Virginia. I have heard the
same argument in Atlanta too.

All these years, I was thinking that it was the powerful car manufacturers lobby that was
behind poor public transportation in the US. Now I know better.