Also he's wrong that "That's not doomerism". It's exactly doomerism, and it anchors the whole problem that doomerism creates: it asks you to be hopeless about changing anything. Indeed, says you are not part of the community if you think things can be changed.

We aren't going to "fix" the whole United States and we don't fucking have to. Do you think there are trains that visit every square inch of the Netherlands? If you think everything must be fixed for it to count, then the Netherlands isn't Fixed, either. Change is done gradually; sometimes gradual change is followed by rapid chaotic change. Look at the way we gained the right to gay marriage or legalized weed in America. I heard people saying they'd never see new weed laws in America as recently as 1 year before states started flipping the script.

Fight to change something, don't just give up. This guy sucks.

And almost all of the transit-related changes are things decided locally. Boston or NYC aren't Amsterdam, but they are very different places for transit with very different potential for solutions than something like a Houston suburb.

You're talking about one high speed rail like that was a divine revelation but in first world countries we call it building infrastructure