Have you ever noticed that almost any time characters ride a bus or a train in a movie, they…kinda hate it?

It’s not just you. Films, television and even music have long contributed to the stigmatization of sustainable transportation — and the celebration of cars. It all started as part of a decades-long campaign by the auto-industrial complex to put the car at the center of American life, and to this day, automakers employ entire product placement firms to keep their vehicles in the minds of Americans ... [as] soon as you start paying attention to all the ways that pop culture stigmatizes sustainable transportation, it’s kind of hard to stop seeing it. Because it’s simply everywhere — from the greatest moments in cinema history to the dumbest afternoon-cable-rerun bro comedies.

....

Seriously, has any small town in America ever been offered a comprehensive transit network — much less had everyone in town unanimously and immediately agree it would be great? If it were true that vaudevillian hucksters are coming to convince us all to invest in trains — unless we’re smart enough to demand the endless autocentric roads we really need  — then Streetsblog would not need to exist.