Transportation Coverage

To Whom It Won’t Concern: 

We are writing to you as a collective mob, an amorphous blob, a group without cause but with consternation. We are writing about serious issues as unserious people demanding respect. This is about the editorial bias of major outlets when it comes to transportation issues. 

Some people at these outlets “get it.” They ride to work on scooters, e-bikes, or an old-fashioned Schwinn. Others, sadly, do not. They tele-commute or worse. 

We began counting the words many publications have wasted on transportation issues and we decided to count the letters instead. This being a letter and the number being much higher to overly dramatize our point. 

This year alone there have been several questionable articles. “When Light Rail Goes Dark,” “The Express Bus to Nowhere,” and “Planes, Trains, and Automatons.” Many of these articles give space and legitimacy to anti-transportation advocates, members of the so-called “couch lobby,” who’d prefer nothing more than to sink into their upholstery with a bag of Doritos and a daytime Soap. These people are by definition part of the fringe. Who crossed the Bering Strait land bridge? It wasn’t the sedentary, that’s for sure. 

Many guest essays give credence to the notion that if a child plays with model trains they will grow up afraid of planes. That’s simply not true. There are many forms of transportation that barely get a mention. What about unicycles? Just because we all identify as clowns, doesn’t mean any of us have a background in the circus. That said, we’re not asking for opinion pieces on the efficacy of unicycling and juggling – but a single wheel is a viable way of getting from point A to point B. 

In a recent piece on the romance of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the author contributed to the erasure of transportation issues, lest we forget that the ball team began as the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. Because trolleys are what British people call shopping carts, they probably thought they could get away with such an omission. We’re here to say in one unified, creepy voice: nice try. In the so-called record, we actually read “roller blading” described as a “rare and eccentric form of movement.”

With everyone looking to Mars, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about boats as a perfectly acceptable form of travel. Callous dismissals of transportation date back to beginning of civilization. “I’ll walk instead,” was a rallying cry for luddites everywhere. Wagons and ox carts were rarely appreciated in real time. When Washington crossed the Delaware, some have said there were members of his own outfit snidely commenting on the size of his boat. So this nothing new.

Enough of space travel. We want features on roller skates and bark canoes. Stop it with tales of exotic ziplining when there’s nothing wrong with jumping on the back of a garbage truck for a few blocks.

Remember when the actual third rail was a Third Rail Issue? Neither do we. Ever eaten skirt steak at a truck stop? Drank an adult beverage on a commuter ferry? We didn't think so. And where do horses figure in all this? 

We’ll happily wait for your response as long as it takes. We’re not going anywhere. 

Choo choo,

“Plane Jane” AKA “ John Train” AKA “Skater Boy” AKA “The Boatman of Alcatraz” 

 

P.S. One last thing: it’s not our fault that one of the biggest transportation advocates of the last 50 years was Robert Moses.