New York Times Columnist Ross @ https://nyti.ms/2UDjIWu gave us a column on 9 February under
the headline THE AGE OF DECADENCE in which he told us that “The real story of the West in the 21st
century is one of stalemate and stagnation” – the West, not just the USA.
I submitted a simple
comment suggesting that he was telling the real story of the United States of
America – only – not of the West of which Europe is a part. I used a simple
comparison of bus service in my USA New England and bordering New York State
and in my SE, mostly Linköping and Göteborg. My final comment is at the mini
URL above in Comments ALL about 5 down.
I write this today,
February 11, in case anyone reads that final comment and goes to my blog to see
what I might add here or even just to get my Gmail address.
In my first comment stating
bluntly that taking a Greyhound bus between Albany NY and Boston MA is to
experience American decadence I noted that taking Swedish Bus4You on a similar
trip between Göteborg and Linköping is always a great pleasure.
Two readers replied:
One, John from New York
told me in effect that the reason that Greyhound is so terrible has to do with
American demographics, not like Swedish. The other, Carl Bumba, told me in
effect that the explanation for the difference is that the “role of bus
transport” in America is completely different from the role of bus transport in
Sweden.
My instant reaction was
to wonder what they really meant by those statements since they offered no
explanation nor did they say that they had visited Sweden.
I post this today 11 February to
suggest what they might have had in mind was something having to do with the
people who take the bus in the USA and in Sweden. The idea comes from a reply
to an earlier comment by me on the same subject filed by Concerned Citizen –
Anywheresville USA, here CC.
CC wrote that in America
only poor people take buses so there is no reason to provide high quality
service. CC and more recently other Americans asked my why I would take a bus
since they would expect someone of my social class to simply rent a car and
drive.
I suggest that maybe that
is what John had in mind, the demographics of American bus riders, lower SES
status, any bus will do. And maybe that is what Carl Bamba also was hinting at,
that the role of bus transport in America is to serve only poor people or
perhaps certain minority populations.
Until they decide to
explain, I leave this as an illustration of why we need a Bernie Sanders or
Elizabeth Warren as president. Neither will fix bus service but they at least
understand the need for public transportation of European quality and the roads
and rails on which that transport must run.
Composed in haste in case
a Times Reader looks here today. I am off to the Red Cross to spend my
afternoon with asylum seekers and other immigrants who are learning Swedish.
All of us, them and my Red Cross colleagues, will get there by bus or bicycle.
2020-02-11 13:16 h CET