A Portland bicyclist is fighting for his life after a TriMet bus struck him Monday—the latest victim of urban infrastructure that pours billions into transit while leaving everyday Americans to bleed on the pavement.
The establishment press will label this an “accident,” but when government transit vehicles keep crushing citizens, it’s a policy failure. Progressive city planners brag about their multi-million-dollar transit utopias, yet the streets are more dangerous than ever. This isn’t just a Portland problem; it’s a nationwide pattern of government transit monopolies failing the people they are forced to subsidize.
According to The Oregonian, a TriMet Lift bus slammed into a bicyclist in Southeast Portland just before 4:30 p.m. Monday on the 4300 block of Southeast 136th Avenue. The cyclist suffered life-threatening injuries and was rushed to a local hospital. His name and current condition remain unknown. Police say the bus driver stayed at the scene and is cooperating. No doubt the investigation will churn along slowly, shielded by the bureaucracy of a publicly funded agency.
When a private citizen makes a fatal error on the road, they face the full weight of the law and the insurance industry. When a government bus does it, the system circles the wagons. TriMet, like transit agencies across the country, operates on taxpayer dollars while enjoying the protections of a state-backed monopoly. If these agencies cannot safely navigate the streets they claim to own, why are they getting more of your money?
The Portland crash is hardly an isolated failure of government transit. Just Tuesday morning, an NJ Transit bus was part of a six-vehicle pileup on Route 130 in Cinnaminson after a vehicle rear-ended it, leaving two people with minor injuries, NJ.com reported. No summonses have been issued. Meanwhile, the general decay of American road safety claimed two lives Sunday night in Canton, Ohio, when a driver crossed the center line and crashed head-on into another vehicle, killing both drivers, according to cleveland.com.
Progressive strongholds like Portland mandate transit, force bikes onto crowded corridors, and spend a fortune, yet they consistently fail to engineer safe intersections or protect citizens from the massive transit vehicles they put on the road. They prioritize woke aesthetics and green mandates over basic civil engineering and human safety.
How many more Americans have to be maimed or killed by the very transit systems their tax dollars fund before city planners admit their infrastructure experiment is failing?
