Transit Strike

I live in Minneapolis, and our transit workers are on strike right now (issues about health care costs being the main issue). It hasn't affected me much, except I have to park two blocks further from work. However, it has affected my sister, niece and many of my friends a great deal. Even if I didn't know anyone that was having problems because of the lack of busses, I'd still see the need to get the busses back. People have been saying that traffic is better because of the strike, and therefore we shouldn't worry about it. Um, let's try to look at the whole picture. There are people who can't drive due to age or medical restrictions, there are people who don't own cars due to the expense and there are people who choose to ride the bus to save money and reduce pollution. These people do deserve to have options.

Perhaps I am being naive, but why can't we make transit profitable? Right now it is being subsidized by the state and that's part of what bothers people. Even if fares were slightly higher, if it was profitable to run a bus, we'd have less of an issue right now.

As for traffic, if only we had a subway/elevated system, people wouldn't have such an issue with the reduced number of busses on the roads. I doubt that will ever be approved, because of the debacle and debate over Light Rail that we had a few years back.