Michael Ennis, the transportation guru at the conservative think tank the Washington Policy Center, emailed me today to demand that I correct yesterday’s Press Release Roundup.
At issue: I reported that WPC’s The Policy Guide for Washington deemed light rail “socialistic.” I was referring to this passage in the WPC’s book: “Manipulating transportation policies to force a particular behavior coerces people into abandoning their individual liberties in favor of a socialistic benefit where supposedly a greater collective good is created.”
Ennis wanted a correction, telling me: “Neither this sentence or the section in which it is found is about light rail…WPC has never said or implied that light rail is socialistic.”
But here’s a link to the book (which I also linked yesterday). WPC does use “socialistic” to describe light rail. Go to: Ch. 10 Transportation, Part 2 Freedom of Mobility. This section focuses on three bullet point recommendations, including “Reduce spending on costly, ineffective fixed-route mass transit” defined as “expensive systems like light rail and the Sounder Commuter Train.”
WPC leads the section off with a “Background” synopsis writing, well, this:
Manipulating transportation policies to force a particular behavior coerces people into abandoning their individual liberties in favor of a socialistic benefit where supposedly a greater collective good is created.
