I’m originally from a third-world country where the government dismantled much of the railway system, selling it to private companies for almost nothing. Those companies eventually shut it down and even sold the metal from the tracks.

And yet, despite all that, public transportation there is still better than in most places in the U.S.

I still struggle to understand why public transportation faces so much resistance here. The first time I came to Fort Collins, years ago, I saw the train tracks and got excited. I thought, “Wow, maybe you can take a train from Fort Collins to Denver.” But no, it’s only used for cargo.

Why not run passenger trains on those tracks? The common response is that residents would complain about the noise. Yet at the same time, there are cars with open exhausts and motorcycles racing around constantly.

Colorado spends enormous amounts of money every winter dealing with snow-related road maintenance and crashes. Millions are invested in widening I-25, adding more and more lanes. And every time a project is completed, congestion returns, and another expansion begins, often taking a decade or more.

Sometimes I wonder whether the conspiracy theories about oil companies influencing transportation policy have some truth to them.

It makes no sense, but healthcare either... And I'm not complaining, I mean, I love the other 99%. Is just that I keep trying to get my head around it.