"This is not true. Increased public transportation usage directly corrolates to reduced traffic accidents: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/cities-with-good-public-transit-have-fewer-road-fatalities"

- Thanks for sharing but I'm not sure how the experience of these cities would be useful for a suburb like West Hartford.

"And this makes sense logically. If more people are using public transit, fewer people are driving. If there are fewer vehicles on the roads, there are fewer opportunities for accidents. If you can take the bus home from the bar, why would you drive?"

- Yes, I agree - in places like NYC or Boston, but not in WH.

"A common misconception. For one thing I bet this is cheaper than you're thinking. Sure it costs a few hundred million dollars"

- I've never seen new inter-town rail costing only a few hundred millions dollars. Have you? If so, where?

,"but the state is eager to drop 5 BILLION dollars on repairing a stretch of I-84 that's shorter than a mile in length."

- Which project is that?

"Also, every dollar spent on public transit returns four to five dollars in economic benefit: https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-reports/economic-impact-of-public-transportation-investment/"

- Yes, i'm quite familiar with that but I'm not sure how it is relevant to WH's vision zero goals.

"Entire cities in Europe are completely car-free and they're doing just fine. And they can do that because of strong public transit."

- Those places are very different than WH and the Greater Hartford area. i'm not sure how the experiences of these cities in Europe would at all be instructive here.

"If we aren't building and planning for future generations, what the fuck are we even doing??"

- My sense is that WH is looking for solutions in the near term, not merely in 40 from now ;-)