You should note that those comments were made in reference to the platforms of the respective parties; as I suggested in the postscript, there are plenty of Republicans who are pro-transit and livable communities and plenty of Democrats who are against those things.

The idea here was to demonstrate the rather remarkable differences in voting patterns between people living in areas of different densities and to show that the parties have an incentive, usually at the national level, to respond to that fact.

Are you really this ignorant or just a hyper-partisan Democrat hack?

In CA the GOP gov just attempted to consolidate the state’s pursuit of Fed HSR funds to support their ultra-HSR proposal. Some may question that move, but it can’t honestly be portrayed as not support rail. It is just a difference of opinion on how best to do so.

The GOP-controlled FL legislature and gov are about to call a special session to approve funding for an Orlando rail transit startup and to increase their chances of obtaining HSR funding. For an HSR plan created and refined over a decade while the GOP was in power. Temporarily shelved by a GOP gov, but that was by the public’s vote and cannot be extrapolated into “The GOP doesn’t support rail.”

Texas also has a GOP gov and legislature, and in the last 2 sessions they’ve created and gotten voter approval to establish a rail relocation fund that would facilitate commuter rail startups, created a new rail division for TXDOT, created a statewide rail plan, and the gov ordered TXDOT to develop a HSR master plan. The last bill to establish a new tax for transit failed, but it was sponsored by GOP members and the argument was over how to pay for it, not whether to expand or establish rail transit systems.

I guess you are unaware that GOP-dominated Utah is creating a light-rail and commuter rail system equivalent to Portland’s in half the time it took Oregon? And yes, the voting area that created and funded TRAX is much larger than any Salt Lake liberal enclave, so spare us that myth.

Just 4 states, though there are countless other examples across the country. Maybe bipartisan isn’t as common now because so many loud-mouth liberals with blogs always raise their fists to the sky and damn the GOP whenever it rains or they stub their toe.

Having a (in my view, ridiculous) two party system means that you get a wide range of people calling themselves republican or democrat. Although the media likes to build up the fact we live in a hyper-partisan era, the truth is many transportation and liveable cities projects exist in a grey area where politicians can act a little more freely. This is not the case on issues that we’re forced to hear about everyday, like gun control or abortion, where interest groups on both sides produce score cards that can be used in election cycles.

I wish your equation of the Democratic Party with an urbanist agenda were correct, perhaps if the party elders looked these charts over it would become so. My favorite red/blue electoral map is the county map. Lots of very red states have very blue counties therein.

The Constitution was constructed to settle the frontier and protect the slaveholders. We continue to settle the frontier, though in this case it is really settling the farms that used to grow the food for the cities.