A Partial List of Pop Culture's Anti-Transit Stigma

Why do movies and tv shows hate public transit much? There's no answer here, but there is plenty of evidence that the question responds to reality.

1 minute read

March 13, 2020, 5:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell

"Have you ever noticed that almost any time characters ride a bus or a train in a movie, they…kinda hate it?"

That's how Kea Wilson opens a "Streetsblog 101" feature listing many examples of pop culture stigmatizing public transit. Let's get this out of the way, right away: the list includes the famous monorail episode from The Simpsons, for reasons that rarely get mentioned in transit advocacy:

Seriously, has any small town in America ever been offered a comprehensive transit network — much less had everyone in town unanimously and immediately agree it would be great? If it were true that vaudevillian hucksters are coming to convince us all to invest in trains — unless we’re smart enough to demand the endless autocentric roads we really need — then Streetsblog would not need to exist.

Click through to the source article to see a ton of clips of public transit being defamed on TVs and movie screen, and also read Wilson dispense with the many ways pop culture worships the automobile.

FULL STORY: Streetsblog 101: How Pop Culture Stigmatizes Public Transit

Thursday, March 12, 2020 in Streetsblog USA

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