Thanks for the response. I agree with you on most of the points that, yeah, with what we have and know today, it’s a bit of a gamble and that it makes more sense to invest in Johnston County etc. more (and a lot of my positions only work with the assumption that they would come true by the time a Fayetteville rail route is operational).
There’s two things that caught my attention, though.
I don’t think you’d even need to assume that, though, if there’s enough transit connections to RTP (and even RDU?). The beginning-to-end trip doesn’t have to be profitable; you just need the sum of all trips taken to break even.
What if you helped make that happen by adding an express bus to RTP at Fuquay? Sorta like this:
That’s absolutely true. I won’t pretend to be neutral when I’m not; I’m not a huge fan of suburban development, even though I understand that’s what many people in the Triangle love about our area.
In my defense, though, I’m not coming at this from an idea of thinking that suburban sprawl is a cultural practice (it historically tends to be more of a white phenomenon, by the way) that has to die out. In other words, if people want to live in that sort of environment, on a personal level, I’m totally cool with that.
On a societal level, though, I’m not a fan, because I think it implies that personal comforts triumph the interests of humanity as a whole. Like what’s the point of encouraging and enabling people to do what they want when that endangers what we need, such as keeping a climate where our weather and planet doesn’t endanger our homes and jobs? (sources 1, 2, 3, and 4 out of many).
I’m not saying individual freedom doesn’t matter and a collectivist, Soviet/China/North Korea-like mindset is better. But sometimes, I do wish we did a better job with both being more idealistic and keeping an eye on the bigger cause like back in the days.
…and I wonder if that’s because voters’ voices aren’t the cause of how NC is today, but it’s because cultural assumptions are the result of design choices we made.