I'm all for public transit, but I will mention for the sake of honesty, Paul Weyrich, the creator of the Heritage Foundation had a bizarre fixation on trains from an early age.
Government funding for basically anything else related to common public good was forbidden, but for some reason trains were like his one "thing" he believed the government should fund.
Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation
So I'm all for public transit, but I would still demand public accountability. We deserve to know exactly who is profiting from any publicly funded projects.
Edit: He wrote a lot, and frequently found a way to sneak something about his public transportation fetish in just about everything he wrote (even somehow in a blog post shitting on New Orleans days after Katrina), but this is probably one of my favorite takes:
Bring Back the Streetcars! A Conservative Vision of Tomorrow’s Urban Transportation
What’s Right with This Picture?
Everything. It is a fine summer day in New Westminster, British Columbia, in the year 1909. Car 39 has stopped briefly on Park Row on its way into town. It carries its passengers through a world that is ordered, serene, at peace. Their eyes feast upon the glories of Queen Anne architecture. They hear the birds and the trolley wire sing a duet in an ether as yet unpolluted by engine noise or boom boxes. Their poised servants, the motorman and conductor of the car, stand as visible assurances of responsibility and reliability. God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world.
🤣 This would be so hilarious if we weren't all watching the U.S. being torn apart as a direct result of his life's work.