We Can’t Have Nice Things: Our Expectations for Public Transit Have Been on a Decades-Long Downward Spiral

by David ColeA real subway train pulls into a real subway station in Washington D.C. Benoît Prieur / Wikimedia Commons
“You really shouldn’t have done that,” the youth pastor scolded me after several minutes of awkward silence. Coming from a mild-mannered Presbyterian minister, it may as well have been a temper tantrum worthy of an American Chopper meme.
I was a high school junior in Florida at the time, and my church youth group was visiting Atlanta for the weekend. We s