the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 6, 2022
Maryland’s suburbs south of Washington, D.C. are blowing up. The population has doubled in the last 25 years and is expected to grow by another quarter in the next 25 years. But what is really exploding in this former tobacco-growing countryside is commuter traffic and accidents. Bloomberg News calls it America’s costliest commute. More housing developments, more people rushing to work—but not more transportation.
For 25 years politicians have been proposing to put a bus or light rail route along the median of the main highway going south. They claim if it is ever built it would take around 25,000 drivers per day off the roads. Great. But the highway carries nearly 100,000 drivers per day now, and the population is going up by a quarter—which would add around 25,000 drivers! So they propose to spend tens of millions of dollars, to not solve the problem.
It’s the whole trap of government under capitalism. Taxing workers to pay for piecemeal solutions solves nothing. It would take controlling and organizing the resources of society, all the wealth workers have created, to build a real transportation system. That’s the road to travel.