There is a primer on my website which has an annotated slide show on how public transportation is funded in California.

Click on my name here and then scroll down on the front page to “Transportation 101″.

What are your options in Cali? Preferred and otherwise?

Presuming they can.

In California, a large part of the public transportation funding comes from the sales tax on gasoline sales (by amount paid) and the per-gallon gasoline tax. The latter is restricted by the state constitution from being used for anything but capital projects, and the former is allocated via a complex formula which only allows a relatively small percentage to be used for operation of transit service.

Do any of the cities that have significant mass transit seem to fit any of your nightmare scenarios, or do they seem better off?

Clearly, history says otherwise about politicians.

The best solution always has been the fact that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. For instance, in the quest to bring under $30 fans, cheap cat play toys, and inexpensive faux wood television stands to the masses, companies such as WalMart have redistributed more American money to the third world than all the first world socialist politician feel good self-congratulatory confiscatory police power actions have combined, never mind the bumbling panhandling morons at the laughably named United Nations.

Similarly, every time a problem comes up in society, some other drive of human nature leads to one or more humans engaging in the classic behavior of “it seemed like a good idea at the time” and this totally by accident negates the other issue while creating entire new ones, but mankind is unhappy without self-created problems to come up with self-created solutions full of unintended consequences for. World War II eliminating the Great Depression and creating the Cold War comes to mind.

In every case, specifically laid out initiatives to be engaged in by political bodies turn out to be anything other than what is stated which would if it was not true be alarming as the people laying out the initiatives are politicians and for politicians not to engage in duplicity and deception for self-aggrandizement would probably trigger G-d to throw up His hands in total amazement and cancel creation altogether.

Clearly we cannot take the chance of that, even if there’s about as much odds of it happening as the Cubs winning the World Series ten straight years.

More threatening, we cannot take the chance of giving politicians any more of our money or worse yet, the idea that we actually want them to take it and talk of increasing taxes to bring about social change, justice, and all that malarkey is only pandering to their sense of hunger for empowerment at the expense of all and sundry and worse yet, will eliminate the minuscule chance of their stunted consciences being bothered by the theft.

Many years later, you will be without all that money, mass transit of the sort you envision based on 70s ex-hippie futurist moving sidewalks and mach 2 superconductive levitating trains will still be so much fodder for fluff programs on The Science Channel. I know, I grew up with all that and did the calculations to eight decimal points longhand on the energy generation, conversion, and transmission efficiencies and losses and it’s nonsense to say the least. The economics from start to finish don’t work unless you suspend human free will and even G-d Himself hasn’t done that since before the Torah was set down.

On the other hand, if you truly believe that the same government which exposed soldiers to direct nuclear blasts is more trustworthy with your income than let’s say any given Orthodox institution you’re currently upset with, well feel free to donate as much as you like to them. Just don’t expect me to do so. It’s been barely two months since tax filing deadlines and most Americans are still walking bowlegged after the experience.