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# Trains certainly aren’t in vain
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/trains-certainly-arent-in-vain-editor/
- Published: 2007-02-19T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T00:05:03.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. President, The Transit Coalition*

I really don’t know if (Melody) Hanatani is trying to be balanced in presenting both sides of the issue, or maybe she’s just confused (“Is light rail good for Santa Monica?” Feb. 7, page 8)... but quoting the Reason Foundation?

These libertarian bizarros have this idea that freeways and roads are magically free and that they subsidize themselves, but that rails don’t. Let me make something clear: Virtually all modes of transportation (including roads and freeways) do not pay for themselves directly, but do so indirectly via an enhanced economy that comes from increased business, tourist and recreational commuting.

Furthermore, the contention that mass transit is easier and cheaper if we just get more buses doesn’t take into consideration that development will never occur around a bus line that can always change, but will much more likely occur around fixed infrastructure like rail lines and freeways and roads. Buses and vans are excellent and necessary forms of local mass transit, but for longer distances with larger capacities, nothing can beat a train that these buses and vans will need to feed into... in the same way that surface streets and major surface arterials feed into freeways.

On a related note, I might be a political conservative, but I am as offended as anyone when I see urban transportation turned into a “put those people on a bus” campaign. I know what that means, which is to suggest that ethnic minorities should be shoved into second-or third-class modes of transportation. Perhaps our modern civil rights struggle should be altered from allowing minorities to sit at the front of the bus to not limiting them to a bus. Most of us white Westsiders will also always prefer a train over a bus, period. And we should recognize that this Expo Line will best serve all people of all geographies and of all ethnicities.

Behind virtually all the anti-Expo rhetoric, I hear classist and racist rhetoric that I’ve no time or patience for.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 19, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021907.pdf?ref=smdp.com)