Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

Chiming in from Los Angeles, USA to say wow, must be nice living in a modern society that prioritizes public transit and peoples' ease of movement. I know, I know, it comes with trade offs of living in an authoritarian state, but the absolute abysmal state of infrastructure in this country is maddening. Ever been on a train in Denmark or Japan or Switzerland?

Truly the worst of both worlds that we now have authoritarianism without good public transit.

I don’t see what this has to do with authoritarianism. If anything it is an example of the opposite.

Authoritarian regimes traditionally touted public transit. From "he made the trains run on time", the German autobahn (which actually predated a certain party) to the lavish halls of the Soviet subway stations, to China's highspeed rail networks, public transit is just a thing that strongmen like to do. And absolute power certainly helps when you want to plow a road/rail/bridge through a neighborhood.

I watched an in-flight documentary about the architecture of soviet rural bus stops. Each one of them looked like it cost most than the neighborhoods they serviced.

I just find this crazy - you can have good public infrastructure without be authoritarian.

But you cannot have good public infrastructure without a strong state (strength on its own isn't authoritarianism).

A lot of western governments are rather weak, I swear baumols cost disease and spiraling social/retirement/debt spending has crippled their ability to provide for the public.

Switzerland has a weak federal government. The cantons are smaller than US states, but have more autonomy, and a lot of matters are decided by direct democracy. Yet they still seem to have good public infrastructure.