Update: “The Constitution demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior” www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

Isn’t a key problem that only one OEM manufacturers them for N America and they had to be persuaded by King County and SF MUNI not to end their production all together in the last couple of years?

29 years for me

To be fair, to the extent there has been reporting on divisions within the R’s there are some members who realize the role of a party is to win elections. The opposition to Dallas Heard was such an example. But overall the party has taken too many policy positions that too few Oregonians support.

They could run on a policy platform that could win a majority of seats in the legislature or statewide office. The lack of competition means D’s do not have electoral incentives to competently govern.

No. That’s not what it basically says. What the article states is there’s been no significant policy wins and that’s largely due to a dysfunctional council. A proper defense would say yes there have been and describe what they are. What are policy wins does the article miss?

The article is too generous towards republicans. Their actual proposal was to eliminate the dedicated transit tax altogether and redirect that funding to the state highway fund.

I think it is partly due to the fact that shamelessness and norm destruction is integral to their appeal

Death by car - that’s just how it works. Death by non-cars - it’s a crisis.

Congestion from cars - that’s how it works.
Congestion from non-cars - it’s a crisis.

It’s actually quite easy. All you have to believe is that ridership is not the only orienting value of public transportation.

We don’t provide ADA paratransit to maximize ridership or demand response in rural areas or broad coverage of fixed route in urban areas. There’s a host of other values.

The technocratic formulation of the issue - listen to those who study it - is both anti-democratic and misleads about the value choices involved. There isn’t a technocratic answer to “what should the nature of transit service be?” This is something @humantransit is exactly right about.

IMO the biggest hole in the anti-fare free argument is the issue of (electoral) politics. A candidate made fare free transit a significant priority in their campaign. To what extent does that mobilize a coalition and voters?

IDK, but policy (can) have political feedback loops.

This article is from May. The transportation bill passed out of committee in Oregon yesterday would raise the payroll tax to .3% and generate ~500m annually once fully implemented. Vote in the legislature this week. So we’ll see…

“Under the Defendants’ position, the Executive would be allowed to place any conditions it chose on congressionally appropriated funds, even when it would be entirely unrelated to the Dept’s purpose. Such is not how the three equal branches of gov’t are allowed to operate under our Constitution."

"The Government does not cite to any plausible connection between cooperating with ICE enforcement and the congressionally approved purposes of the Department of Transportation….” 1/n