The 2000s Video Game With an Unexpected Lesson for Today's Transportation Debates

In the spring of 2021, just months before Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act--heralded by the Biden administration as the largest-ever federal investment in public transit, bridge repair, and clean energy--I found myself playing a lot of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. This was a happy coincidence, because never in my life had the nation been so embroiled in wonky debates about infrastructure priorities and spending. And as it turns out, Mass Effect was the perfect 100-hour video game for that particular moment in history: It's absolutely obsessed with transportation technologies and their social, cultural, and political implications. Despite its revolutionary capacity, we often conceptualize transportation in mundane, frustrating terms: long commutes and congested highways, spotty bus service and increasingly crowded sidewalks littered with e-scooters. That's what makes fiction centered around these questions so important--especially when it comes to thinking through the big investments we want to make in infrastructure, what we hope to accomplish, and the challenges we should anticipate.