“In these tough economic times”, it annoys me to see the government throwing billions of dollars at dead-end projects. With the amount of money being tossed around by the government, we could see some real progress and change. Instead money is going to build more road infrastructure and bailing out the auto industry.

The Vancouver area is short 500 buses, which would cost around $250 million to buy. Not an insignificant amount, and the province refuses to pay it. However it just announced plans to build a $3 billion 10 lane super bridge in the Vancouver suburbs.

People complain that saving the environment would cost too much money, and yet we continue to pour obscene amounts of money into auto infrastructure. The problem is we’ve become so reliant on cars for transportation that people can’t imagine shifting away from them. Luckily I’ve been seeing more articles like this in Wired managed – It’s Time for Cities to Favor People, Not Cars. People are starting to realize we need to make a shift. The government is just slow to catch up.

Amtrak has been trying for months to increase the train service between Vancouver and Seattle, in recognition to huge demand. However, it has been stalled by the Canadian Border Service Agency and there doesn’t seem to be much government will to break the impasse. As soon as they add a new train, Emily and I plan on making a trip down to Portland.

Maybe I should just give up and move to Sweden.