As the Antiplanner writes, it appears that Donald Trump will defy most polls and become the next president. While many people claimed his rhetoric was racist, the Antiplanner and others argued that he appealed to members of the working class who felt downtrodden by elitist policies.
Still, too many election results last night represented a victory of the elites over common sense. There is no better example of elitist thinking than light rail, which many people support because they are too snooty to ride a bus.
There were nearly 50 transit measures on various local ballots yesterday, and I haven’t looked at them all. (Update: APTA says 72 percent of yesterday’s transit measures passed.) But the biggest boondoggle appear to be winning, including Los Angeles’ $120 billion transit measure M and Seattle’s Sound Transit 3. It looks appears San Jose’s measure B, which would raise taxes to fund cost overruns for the BART line to San Jose, is winning.
