ERIE, Pa. -- Erie’s industries provided generations of hardworking people with well-paying, lifetime jobs.
As employers have downsized, moved away, or closed, workers and their families have suffered from unemployment, poverty, crime and hopelessness.
The journalist, transportation expert, and Albion native, James McCommons, says that “America has a passenger system suited to a third-world country.”
For much of the past century, the U.S. has poured billions of tax dollars into massive highway systems instead of investing in public transit. Like any addiction, the more you feed it, the more the needs of our automobiles grow.
As Joni Mitchell sang, “they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” Charles Buki, in his 2016 Comprehensive Plan, Erie Refocused, noted “recent development on the Bayfront ha[s] featured an abundance of … parking which cannibalizes prime waterfront sites.”
