In the service of ideology

The hacks at TOLLROADSnews rip a report on the New Jersey transport trust fund. Let's look at this little gem:

"Readers [of the report] are assured that contrary to all recent and past trends this will turn the tide away from the automobile and in favor of transit (p22) though how far this might be accomplished, or why, is undiscussed. Despite opening of new lines, increased service, modernization etc the report notes that transit ridership has declined 4%, which it attributes not to people's preference for automobile travel but to a "weakening regional economy." Mysteriously, that weakening regional economy has been accompanied by continued growth in vehicle-miles traveled on the roads! "

The report, which I'm having trouble finding online, uses statistics that are less than two years old, which means they reflect conditions after you-know-when.

Democrats have been accused by some of the more unscrupulous Republicans of forgetting the lessons of Sept. 11, whatever that means (they usually mean that criticism of Republicans is unpatriotic). Here's one lesson that's not open to debate: If terrorists destroy a train station used by over 65,000 people, people won't take trains there, since they can't.

The folks at TRN have already proven themselves hostile to average workers, so I don't think anyone notices when they selectively omit facts to advance their dream - mile after mile after mile of toll roads, giving upper-middle class SUV drivers an uncongested path from gated development to office park.

UPDATE: There is one thing I forgot to mention in the initial vitriol-filled post. Notice that he compares the number of vehicle-miles travelled and the number of mass transit riders. Does this mean people are moving to cars? No. It is likely that a similar number of people made longer trips over the period the study looks at. The one thing keeping the economy going (until recently) was the housing market. Sprawl in New Jersey, as in elsewhere, continued apace throughout the recession/jobless recovery-thing we just went through. The increased vehicle milage is mostly because the same people are going farther to work and the decrease in mass-transit ridership is due to a closed transit hub. How hard is that to understand?