[kaitai]

I visited Greensboro once for an event at the university. I make a point of taking public transit all over the world and have made transit work for me in Europe, Asia, rural parts of Mexico... but I couldn't in Greensboro. The transit instructions to get to & from the airport on a weekend involved steps like, "get a taxi, take it 20 miles to this bus line, then sit on the bus line for an hour" when the hotel was 15 miles from the airport.

I tried to walk to a fellow conference-goer's hotel from my hotel to meet up for dinner. It was just 2 block. After confronting a bunch of 10-foot tall fences around parking lots and ending up on a highway entrance ramp from a dead-end sidewalk, only 50 feet from my destination but unable to get there, I was finally forced to admit that car is king there and they don't want you walking. (I did finish walking there by going around all the fences, darting down an unlit busy street in a valley with no sidewalk and no shoulder, and approaching from the other side.)

Being my cynical self, I don't think the government didn't care enough to make infrastructure investments possible. I think they actively didn't want to give handouts to those no-good lazy moochers of government service who oughta get real jobs and get a car like responsible citizens.

I've heard Heritage Foundation people and others argue very strongly that people should just buy cars -- public transportation is an inefficient handout -- but I can't find any quotes right now. Stephen Moore in this debate made remarks in that direction (http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1...) but he didn't include my favorite line (by some candidate) that people should just join a church that will help them monetarily with buying a car so they can be good US citizens.

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2012/07/race-class-and-stig... http://www.wnyc.org/story/285757-back-of-the-bus-documentary...