U.S. travel by public transportation soared last year to its highest level in nearly six decades, a report revealed Monday—marking what many say is a positive step that underscores the need for broader environmental and social justice.

"This is a very good thing with respect to global climate conditions, but we need more improvements nationwide," said Barbara Lott-Holland co-chair of the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, in an interview with Common Dreams. "If we are serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to dramatically change the mode of transportation from single passenger automobiles to zero emissions public transit."

With a record 10.7 billion trips nationwide, public transportation use has been climbing for decades, reveeals the report released by by the American Public Transportation Association. Ridership is up 37.2 percent since 1995, yet the U.S. population has only increased 20.3 percent since then. Furthermore, the report finds that 2013 was the eighth year in a row that ridership exceeded 10 billion trips across the country, amounting to an increase of 1.1 percent from the previous year, compared with a 0.3 percent increase in vehicle miles nation-wide.

Virginia Miller, spokesperson for APTA, told Common Dreams that use of public transportation increased "when the economy started to come back." She said that "nearly 60 percent of trips on transit are for work commute," citing data the association collected between 2000 and 2005.

Reagan had accomplices, of course. One of them was his best-known speechwriter, Peggy Noonan. The first actor to become president understood the importance of his scriptwriter, and Noonan painted some of the prettiest word pictures that distracted folks in the era of Other People's Money. Even after writing "Read my lips, no new taxes" for George H.W. Bush, she managed to parlay her fame into a lucrative career as a columnist and a pundit.

And now from the lofty heights of the Upper East Side, Peggy Noonan is shocked, sch...well, you know, she's surprised and dismayed that the culture of greed that her boss and his minions unleashed has now metastasized into something, well, ugly.

Her column starts with a rant about "House of Cards" -- proving that as trenchant social commentary, "HOC" should be seen as a damn entertaining political fantasy, and nothing more. But it's interesting that Reagan's speechwriter would say this:

I don’t understand why members of Congress, the White House and the media become cooperators in videos that sort of show that deep down they all see themselves as . . . actors. And good ones! In a phony drama. Meant I suppose to fool the rubes.

When they were doing their jobs, the bosses (the word is a New York one, from the Dutch Baas, meaning master; a word that has spread from this archipelago off the New Jersey coast to the entire English-speaking world) looked in two directions. They looked out for the interests of their wards in Albany and, to a degree, in Washington; they also looked out for the individual interests of the pushcart vendors getting hassled by the cops and the sandhogs digging the foundations for the Brooklyn Bridge and the brides under their chuppas: everyone who either had a vote, or had the ear of a man with a vote.

In the most cynical terms possible, in modern politics votes are acquired through advertising, which is guided by the findings of public relations experts using the psychological technology of the focus group and the poll. Since 2004, House and Senate races have been won by the candidate who spent the most money between 83 and 98 percent of the time. The intimacy and persuasion needed in vote-getting are generated primarily through the medium of the TV screen, and the direct financial beneficiaries of that money are, of course, the TV stations.

By contrast, in Tammany New York, votes were acquired through social contact and practical favors, financial and legal assistance, jobs and drinks at the pub. The direct financial beneficiaries were, yes, the politicians and the businessmen who got contracts at far above the market price– but also the poor families whose rent got paid, the boy who got a job working for the new El being put up along Greenwich Street and 9th Avenue, the couple whose hotel room was paid for when they were burnt out of their apartment.

In less cynical terms: Tammany was a corruption, but it was a corruption of something good: the idea that government should, as Plunkitt said, be “warm and personal;” that decisions should be made locally; that rulers should directly and practically help the ruled; that there should be an everyday and immediate connection between the politicians and the people.