Well, thank you, I learned something today! Damn you, English! shakes fist (the language, not the Amish term for non-Amish people)

Plenty of Americans find those things “weird”. Myself, for instance.

It’s hard to effect affect effect (why, English, why 😭) change with just the two corrupt parties, with one being center-right and the other being far-right, and a voting system that keeps it that way. At least ranked-choice voting for some elections (reducing the pressure maintaining the two-party system) is up for a vote in my state soon.

Edit: affect (v.)/effect (n.)

IIRC, they didn’t raise it because of the crashes. It’s a privately owned rail line and they don’t care about that because the bridge itself wasn’t being damaged. It needed to be renovated anyway so they raised it to be level with the nearby at-grade crossing while they were at it.