(12-20-2023, 08:12 PM)bravado Wrote: Then we're stuck with the status quo, because the latest City of Cambridge meeting agenda was 1206 pages and that essentially guarantees inaction and paralysis. It makes you wonder why we choose to vote on the things we do and not on other things. If the only way we can get an LRT built is for a significant part of the population to become both engineers, accountants, and urban planners, then we'll never get the LRT.
Also you keep mentioning the $5B price tag and I think it's really disingenuous. You know that all North American transit is inflated and wasteful and that nobody in government procurement is incentivized to actually do any better. If Ion Phase 2 has 5x'd in price since COVID, then that means that schools and hospitals and highways have also likely 5x'd and yet again I don't see why transit is unique as some kind of pork barrel target.
We have made a system where people get to vote on what their neighbours can do with their property and it's paralyzing us because of course people are only in it for their own interests.
I shouldn't have to give a speech and convince my neighbour that an obvious public good is a public good. It should be just built by people we empower to build public goods.
That puts A LOT of faith in government, though. To me, it makes more sense to try and inform someone that something is good and then they can maybe let their politicians know that. I sure wouldn't trust those elected into power to do the right thing because there are countless goals, priorities and philosophies guiding them. Chapman gets voted in and seems to enjoy popular support, but look how useless she is. She doesn't have the best interest of the people guiding her...she seems to only be guided by what will win her support to keep her cushy job. But if those who live in her ward flood her email telling her to do something good then one would hope she would consider doing it, lest she risk losing her job.
My point is just that this is democracy whether we like it or not. I sure as hell am not going to trust anyone in politics or government (that is why I am a devout anarchist at the core, only voting because I feel obligated to do so in order to support the greater good) nor am I going to trust uninformed voters to really have the intellect or patience to understand the bigger picture. But if you can connect with people who may not really consider what "the other side" thinks/wants/needs/etc or who just don't have the time to sift through a 1206 page document, then at least some progress can perhaps be made.
And at least for me...I'd argue that actually reaching out to our neighbours about things is in fact part of our duty as citizens in a democracy - or just being a good citizen and human being. Consider all of the ways that people have selflessly spent energy trying to do that. The people who try to reason with a drug addict or a white supremacist, for example, causing them to get clean or reconsider their racist beliefs. It's a joy when such things happen. There are countless stories of people who, after hearing from another person and thinking about things, changed. Or the people who formed pro-LRT groups to reach out to voters and definitely helped sway them to throw in the towel and support it. If public goods were obvious then there'd be no problem but it's a lot more nuanced than that.