Mass transit is of a political issue but it should not be. The Left has somehow or other come to believe that mass public transit is desirable. They particularly like fixed line public transit like light rail.
From what I am watching in the rapidly growing San Jose Bay Area this is a bad policy idea.
The initial thinking about rapid transit was based on workers who lived in one area commuting to a another area usually a downtown or near downtown production area. Mass transit was to be cheaper and reduce auto traffic.
That world has disappeared. First of all Joel Garreau demonstrated that much outer suburban commuting was in a great circle around the city center to other suburbs. This type of commuting arose because industrial production is gone and has been replaced by production that can be done in residential or near residential areas.
In the San Jose Bay Area that I watch, commuting is done from the urban area to the suburban areas 30 or 40 miles away. The high priced high-tech workers want to live in the more exciting urban center of San Francisco but their work locale is in the lower square footage priced suburbs.
As businesses move to lower square footage priced suburbs we are getting a Wagonwheel effect. There are many lines of traffic extending in and out of the city to many different locations that are constantly changing because corporations are able to move their headquarters or move their production office space to lower rent and lower tax locales
To put it in other terms: both the workers, the commuters and the companies that they work for are in rapid motion relative to the traffic patterns. Only autos and small buses can accommodate the changes.
Where I live, near a formerly modest traffic street, I have watched the street and the many avenues leading off of it reach traffic capacity in the past year, as people find new routes to connect their work schedule and their living accommodations. These changes are occurring on a year by year basis.
Public transit is lucky to get built in one 10 year period. In order to support revenue that doesn't get generated for another decade. This does not work in the current work milieu.
Additionally we have a local problem. With high-tech jobs 40 miles away in Silicone Valley and workers preferring to live in San Francisco, the tech companies now offer wifi enabled luxury buses. They now carry tens of thousands of people. It would take 15 years to build a rail line to service this traffic. The traffic might not be there in 15 years. Most certainly the residential county, San Mateo, that the rail line would cross is adamantly opposed to any bond financing for ANY form of improved transportation. The county wouldn’t let the BART transit extension into their territory. Period.