Today's "well, duh" report from the Institute for the Obvious:
For decades, urban planners have preached mass transit as the key to economic mobility, but new studies show that improving access to cars may be the best way to help the poor.Sometimes academic studies are good at officially validating what people already know intuitively. For Americans who wait through lengthy public transportation commutes, it’s common sense that owning a car would offer advantages. Now two recent studies show that cars offer more than just convenience: they can give lower income Americans an economic leg up.
Leave it to the "urban planners" to need academic studies to point out what has always been perfectly clear to everybody else on the planet. There is a reason that "a car in every garage" is paired with "a chicken in every pot" as essential to the American dream. A car means mobility, therefore choices, therefore freedom and opportunity. The planners love mass transit because it fits in with their world view. You can't decide when and where to go. You have to go on the assigned route at the assigned time, because, you know, can't have everybody out there just deciding on their own. Why, that would be anarchy! Much better that the wise ones decide what is optimum for everybody.
