Ride on
Re: "On the bus" (News Hits, Aug. 3), for those seeking evidence of the oversold "American exceptionalism," look no further than the picture of people holding signs in front of a school bus-looking conveyance. In no other industrialized country, certainly not the G-8, would such a citizen lobbying for better public transit be required. In Detropia, for me the most uncomfortable part was watching the Detroit black woman at a microphone practically in tears, "Please don't cut my bus." What is that cliché? "Only in America."
The transit vote of May 2011 in the Grand Rapids metro area is clear field evidence of what Michigan people are like. It passed by a whisker. G.R. and East Grand Rapids approved, while the outlying suburbs — or whatever they call themselves — voted no. No better expression of anti-community or anti-civilization sentiments can be cited, and dare I gently mention where the Republican types live?
When the local political class wants a Grand Rapids South Belt, grossly over 1980's cost estimates, or a billion-dollar widening of I-75, they do not ride a bus to Lansing to dance. They quietly put the fix in with state and federal legislators and senior bureaucrats to support the natural order of things. —G. M. Ross, Lowell
