Yeah I'm just such a light rail homer. I would give anything to sell my car. Not only am I throwing away a significant amount of money on a machine that makes absolutely no sense in my environment, but I lose 10 hours of my life every week commuting. Until they expand light rail (or lower rents in Santa Monica) I'm stuck. But a new line is supposedly opening this year, and I am so fucking excited. Yeah, sometimes on the train you encounter weird, mentally ill people. Sometimes it smells. I mean, it's masses of humanity going from point A to point B. But as long as it has solid law enforcement presence to keep it safe, it's the best option for the most amount of people. It does the greatest amount of good. The fact that we are so intent on isolating ourselves in our own little bubbles in an effort to (whether subconsciously or consciously) avoid "undesirable" people is really sad, IMO. I get the feeling that, in a lot of car-centric places (LA, STL, etc.) public sentiment towards public trans is dismissal or outright hostile. NIMBYs in Beverly Hills shutting down subway expansion for years, things like that. And I honestly think this issue is sort of a distillation of our American social values - rugged individualism, freedom, capitalism, all represented by the automobile. Public trans smacks of collectivism, socialism, continental Europe. It allows poor people greater city-wide access, something people don't want (growing up in Chesterfield, I can't even count how many times I saw cops harassing fast-food and restaurant workers walking to bus stops in the Valley).

I can't claim to know the details of funding, etc. But if we, as a society, wanted great public transportation, we would have great public transportation. But right now, we're still clinging to that 20th century car obsession.